In fashionable consciousness, archivists (when observed in any respect, and never confused with Indiana Jones) are normally otherworldly, whey-faced people poring shortsightedly over mediaeval tomes, their institutional domains obscure, dusty areas with little connection to the ‘actual world.’ The central position of archives as repositories for necessary authorized data is thereby usually ignored, however this perform took on essential significance within the English early fashionable constitutional disaster: the dispute between the absolutist Stuart monarchs and a Parliament intent on defending its rights underneath the ‘Historic Structure.’
“the involvement of English archives – each public and nominally personal – in offering precedents for the constitutional-political struggles of the seventeenth century, and the direct involvement of archives-keepers within the latter, have by no means been examined at size and in depth.” (p. 1)
The Crown and Its Data, printed in October 2023, is the primary detailed investigation of the early fashionable English archival ‘system.’ The archival perspective reveals new data regarding this watershed within the Anglo-American constitutional custom, a turning-point with modern relevance, for the reason that Stuart monarchs exploited the everlasting state of emergency created by warfare on the Continent and the specter of home spiritual terrorism to limit political expression.
The extent to which the Parliament common-law jurists constructed their defence of ‘historic freedoms’ utilizing analysis within the publicly-accessible archives has been insufficiently explored or acknowledged. (That is maybe partially as a result of the influential Whig historians – who repetitively portrayed this episode as considered one of England’s Biggest Hits – themselves eschewed archives and archival analysis.) Nonetheless, when they’re learn collectively in opposition to the background of the secondary sources, the first sources (the parliamentary minutes, the legal-historical works of these concerned, and the archives’ personal inside papers) not solely illuminate the nexus between excessive politics and archives generally, however additionally they illustrate specifically the position performed by archives-keepers and archival precedents in in the end securing the Tudor-era ‘Crown-in-Parliament’ and in forestalling the transition to absolutism that befell many different early fashionable European nations.
Half One in every of The Crown and Its Data investigates the historical past of the publicly-accessible repositories and the sensible constraints on the Parliamentarians’ analysis. Regardless of the gradual centralisation of the English authorized system within the twelfth century and the significance of historic precedents in widespread regulation, the archives suffered from chaotic situations, with sporadic makes an attempt at reform by the Crown and Oliver Cromwell. Rodents, fireplace, flood, misfiling, and light-fingered statesmen all troubled Arthur Agarde, who supervised the data in essentially the most distinguished public archive, situated within the Tower of London. Dysfunction intensified underneath Henry VIII: private archives seized from disgraced statesmen like Thomas Cromwell (an intimidation tactic which additionally sought to discover a put up facto floor for his or her arrests, a prefiguring of the seventeenth-century habeas corpus controversies) had been then mixed with Henry’s personal already disorganised papers. The untidy public repositories distinction sarcastically with the situations of Sir Robert Cotton’s so-called ‘personal library,’ really a publicly-accessible reference archive utilized by statesmen, the monarch, attorneys, and historians, later nationalised by William of Orange and Queen Anne.
“‘why this bloody Enterprise ought to be now once more introduced upon the Carpet, at close to two Years Distance, is a Secret’” (Cobbett, questioning why Parliament had fastidiously produced and proclaimed the data of the Regicide so lengthy after the very fact, p. 97)
Archives and data had been more and more contested within the seventeenth century. In 1643 Parliament sequestered the place of Keeper of the Data within the Tower of London to the MP John Selden, a number one proponent of the common-law ‘Historic Structure.’ In late 1650 there was an obvious try by Parliament to retroactively legitimise the Regicide (and ship a threatening message to Charles I’s son, now allied with the Scots in opposition to England) by ostentatiously deploying extremely formalised courtroom record-making procedures. The meticulous creation and endorsement of the ‘document’ – within the extremely particular authorized sense, wherein a correctly made courtroom ‘document’ had supreme evidential worth and authority – of the ‘trial’ implicitly represented the latter as a respectable courtroom continuing and never, as was broadly felt on the time, a kangaroo courtroom. Political power-plays had been expressed in additional seizures of data within the 1640s, together with of manuscripts belonging to Charles himself, in addition to in the course of the Restoration of Charles II, whose administration vengefully hunted down expropriated Interregnum data, significantly these related to regicides. With the Superb Revolution of 1688-89 the workplace of Keeper of the Data within the Tower of London was disputed between Tory and Whig pursuits, and following the Revolution a Tower archives-keeper, William Petyt, used his workplace to disseminate historically-based propaganda for his specific Whig imaginative and prescient of the ‘Historic Structure.’
Openness and Opposition: The Publicly Accessible Archives and the Constitutional Debates
In Half Two of the e-book the constitutional controversies and the accompanying archival analysis by the Parliamentary facet are mentioned, in addition to their wider contexts (historic analysis within the Renaissance and Reformation, and the Society of Antiquaries; an more and more repressive censorship system; and a authorized system fragmented between civil and customary regulation, and the everyman’s proper of entry to the ‘public data’).
Opposite to later historians’ complacency, it was neither apparent nor inevitable that the Parliamentary constitutional historians would ultimately overcome the Royalist facet. As a result of Tacitus’ affect, narrative histories had been already learn as allegorical political criticism and/or coverage suggestions, however the observe of historical past grew to become extra harmful in the course of the Stuart period. With the introduction of the doctrine of constructive treason, the mere possession of paperwork interpretable as important of the federal government was made an offence. As a result of safety afforded by Parliamentary privilege, Parliament grew to become the one discussion board wherein legal-historical arguments may very well be made in opposition to James I’s Divine Proper dogmatism.
The connection between archives/archives-keepers and excessive politics within the constitutional disaster is examined by means of the biographies of Sir Edward Coke and the (inter alia) archives-keepers Sir Robert Cotton, John Selden, and William Prynne. Coke famously championed the widespread regulation and Parliament from 1611 as a choose and – after dismissal in 1616 for his inconvenient selections – from 1621 as an MP. Coke was principally chargeable for the content material of the 1621 Protestation in opposition to the Crown (utilizing, amongst others, precedents beforehand unearthed by Cotton), asserting Parliament’s proper to debate even prerogative issues. In response James arrested him and seized his personal archive, with a purpose to (a) unearth a justification for his arrest and doubtless (b) to stop Coke from conducting additional archival analysis on Parliament’s claims. Coke later bitterly complained to the Commons that three manuscripts, together with (considerably) a list of an important Tower data, had been by no means restored to him and that he would give £300 (roughly £37,000 as we speak) for his or her return. The sanctity of personal property, a recurrent theme within the Petition of Proper debates, right here takes on a brand new significance – related to the problem of habeas corpus – in these repeated seizures of non-public archives.
“a notable document, it cheers me to think about it […] It’s worthy to be writ in letters of gold” (Coke, praising considered one of his favorite archival sources in Parliament, p. 205)
Coke was distinguished within the Parliamentary debates regarding the drafting of the Petition of Proper (1628). He portrayed the writ of habeas corpus because the instrument for the enforcement of the Magna Carta freedom in opposition to imprisonment with out legam terrae (in flip interpreted as a reference to an completely common-law cost). In retribution for Coke’s ongoing exegesis of Magna Carta the Crown as soon as once more seized and searched his archival assortment in 1631, repeating the motion posthumously in 1634 after Coke had threatened Charles I with a definitive new commentary on the statute. (In 1641 the commentary was lastly launched; the Parliamentary curiosity voted its publication in commemoration of Strafford’s execution.)
Parliament’s orders to conduct constitutional analysis within the public archives, along with the work of its analysis committees, are investigated, evoking an general impression of intense exercise, particularly within the Tower of London. The profession of the Parliamentary researcher and Courtroom advisor Sir Robert Cotton reveals that his well-known archival assortment was each the important thing to his speedy social and political ascent, and a weapon that the Crown might flip in opposition to him. Its first seizure and closure by the Crown, collectively along with his arrest, in 1615-16, had been seemingly (partially) a coverup of the Crown’s covert marriage negotiations with Spain; Cotton was suspected of getting given the Spanish ambassador entry to secret authorities papers in his archive, and thus of excessive treason. The second imprisonment and archive seizure, in 1629, had been most likely punishment for offering Coke and Selden with precedents for the Petition of Proper. The official cost was that Cotton had stored and circulated a pamphlet libellous of the Crown, and the archive remained sealed even after his amnesty, which is assumed to have induced his dying of a damaged coronary heart in 1631.
Against this, John Selden was well-known as a jurist, authorized historian, Hebraist, and MP fairly than in his (later) position as an archives-keeper. He developed a core doctrine of English constitutionalism (later related to Burke), ‘continuity by means of change,’ reconciling ancientness with flexibility. For this he carried out meticulous analysis within the main sources, together with the Parliament rolls within the Tower of London. As an MP and Parliamentary researcher he’s thought to have discovered precedents for the 1621 Protestation, which can be a cause why the Crown arrested him and confiscated his personal archive of historic sources (in parallel with its seizure of Coke’s assortment). His assortment was solely (partially) restored to him (with the exclusion of paperwork regarding ‘issues of state’) after outraged protest from the Lords, for whom Selden was excavating their historic judicial perform.
As a defence lawyer within the milestone 1627 5 Knights’ Case regarding unparliamentary revenue-raising, Selden unsuccessfully invoked habeas corpus because the authorized treatment for imprisonment with out cost, however the judges postponed delivering a judgment on the query of discretionary imprisonment and Selden then re-presented the case in Parliament, along with the proof and new analysis from the Tower archive, to indicate that obscure prerogative ‘causes of state’ might by no means be used to justify an arrest. His revelation of the Crown’s try and illegally introduce a judgement in favour of prerogative imprisonment into the closed courtroom roll provoked fury in Parliament: not solely was the motion itself a felony, however it additionally signalled to Parliament that the Crown had deserted the rule of regulation. (The Royalist facet later tit-for-tat accused Selden of getting destroyed a document – a capital offence.)
This episode galvanised the Commons into rejecting prerogative imprisonment underneath all circumstances (even terrorism) and all revenue-raising with out consent. Within the well-known joint convention with the Lords on historic English liberties on the seventh of April 1628, Selden was in a position to exclude putative opposite precedents as invalid on the bottom that they didn’t fulfill the formalised record-making necessities to represent legally-binding courtroom ‘data.’ Whereas Coke’s barnstorming speeches have lodged in historic reminiscence, this episode was arguably extra vital: Selden’s exclusion of rival precedents on the idea of their invalidity underneath courtroom recordkeeping guidelines demonstrated that the burden of legitimate precedent lay on the Parliamentary facet. (Relatively than take his phrase for it, the MPs in contrast Selden’s copies of the cited data with the originals to verify his arguments in his subsequent debate on the caselaw with the Legal professional-Normal, and in addition archived these supplies along with these utilized by the Commons within the Lords convention; all through this session they had been preoccupied with archiving their actions and analysis, to offer posterity with evidences of its historic freedoms for future confrontations.)
The consensus that English authorized historical past was a normative supply for the current was mirrored within the well-known debates concerning the type of – and Royal assent to – the Petition of Proper. There was euphoria within the Commons and London when Charles, having first supplied a traditionally inappropriate reply to the Petition, lastly gave the model thought to be mandatory to show it into an entire Act of Parliament. Nonetheless, the Crown then used its prorogation of Parliament to suppress this model of the Petition and publish the primary, mistaken model. These and additional outrages provoked a Commons riot to which Charles responded with a dissolution in March of 1629, arrests of Selden and different leaders for ‘sedition’ (unknown underneath widespread regulation), and seizure of Selden’s papers. The Crown exploited a technicality to disclaim the prisoners bail, and Selden’s imprisonment lasted till 1631.
From 1640 Selden was an MP for Oxford College, a reasonable within the more and more radicalised Lengthy Parliament, trying to avert the Civil Battle. From 1643 he was Keeper of the Data within the Tower, defending the Cotton assortment and different archives from plundering. He opposed the spiritual and political cleaning and the dissolution of Oxford and Cambridge. Following Charles’s trial in 1649 he withdrew from London and declined the request to jot down a structure for the Republic.
Following the Restoration a very completely different persona, William Prynne, was appointed Keeper of the Data within the Tower. Beforehand mutilated by the Crown for his spiritual pamphleteering, Prynne grew to become a Royalist in 1648, producing historic propaganda for an Historic Structure which foregrounded the abolished Lords. For the reason that first extant archival supply for the Commons was from 1265, Prynne concluded (following Robert Filmer) that it had not existed earlier than then; ergo solely the Lords might declare ‘immemoriality’ and due to this fact sovereignty, and the Commons couldn’t abolish them. His monumental document catalogues regarding England’s Historic Parliaments help this thesis with their repetitive, combative marginalia; they’re essentially the most excessive instance of archival agitprop that the period can present, singularly unhelpful as analysis aids.
Secrecy and Autocracy: The State Paper Workplace
Half Three of the e-book explores the Crown’s ‘secret’ archive, the State Paper Workplace (SPO). Whereas the publicly-accessible archives supported the Parliamentary curiosity, the SPO collected intelligence from informers overseas and at house (together with furtive notes on Parliamentary debates). Its Keeper Sir Thomas Wilson continued working as a spy: assigned to lure Sir Walter Raleigh into self-incrimination, he then exploited Raleigh’s execution to accession his papers. Analysis requests (usually politically charged) had been dealt with extraordinarily restrictively.
The distinction between the publicly-accessible archives, and the key SPO along with modern Continental archival programs, means that archives are usually not impartial however serve democratising tendencies or the reverse, relying on whether or not they’re open or closed. Like their Continental counterparts, early fashionable English archives performed a central political position, arguably enhanced by the prominence of precedents in a common-law system. The intensive use of archives throughout this turning-point of constitutional historical past highlights their significance for civil society: the alert attorneys in Parliament exploited them to formulate arguments that will in the end triumph within the Superb Revolution, protect Magna Carta, and forestall a shift to autocracy. The solidifying doctrine of binding precedent gave them dedication and absolute certainty, whereas additionally spurring on their analysis and dramatically elevating the stakes.
“The common-law mentality colored perceptions of the data as […] the incarnations of conventional English liberties […] Possession of historic data conferred nice social status […] in order that the seizure of data collections correspondingly represented a traumatic lack of standing.” (p. 450)
The perceived liminality of archives has allowed many desirable sources to slumber largely unnoticed for hundreds of years. When these are lastly examined intimately, the image that emerges of English archives’ and archives-keepers’ intensive involvements on this necessary episode of constitutional wrestle suggests – just like the analysis already out there for Continental Europe – that archives are usually not practically so arcane as they’ve been portrayed.
Dr Isabel Taylor is Head of Archival Core Features on the College of Hamburg Archives
(Steered quotation: I. Taylor, ‘Not So Arcane After All: Archives and the Battle for ‘Historic Freedoms’ within the Stuart Everlasting State of Emergency’, U.Ok. Const. L. Weblog (tenth September 2024) (out there at https://ukconstitutionallaw.org/))
