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Documents are the very stuff of history, and by far the largest collection is held at the National Archive at Kew. There,
all the documentation generated by central government going back to the earliest days, is preserved. This includes the ancient
and modern records of Chancery, the Exchequer, the Privy Council, the Central Courts of Law, and of all government departments.
Some of these documents, because of the fragility of the originals, are available to readers only in microfilm copies or on
line. Among these are the sixteenth century State Papers, from the Elizabethan sequence of which the illustrated document
is taken. This is one of a pair of 'charges' given by the Queen allegedly on the eve of her coronation, the first to her secretary,
Sir William Cecil, and the second to the Lords in general. This document is endorsed in a contemporary hand 'Words spoken
by her majesty to Mr. Cecil'. The text reads:
'I give you this charge, that you shall be of my privy Council and content yourself to take pains for me and my realm.
This judgement I have of you: that you will not be corrupted with any manner of gift, and that you will be faithful to the
state, and that without respect of my private will you will give me that counsel that you think best, and if you shall know
anything necessary to be declared to me of secrecy, you shall show it to myself only. And assure yourself I will not fail
to keep taciturnity therein, and therefore herewith I charge you'.
Although it is usually regarded as a unique and almost prophetic description of their future relationship, which was to
endure for forty years, these words could in fact have been addressed to any councillor. All were equally supposed to respect
confidentiality, to be above bribery, and to give their advice with regard to their own consciences and 'without respect of
my private will'.
The exact status of the document is unknown. It is dated 20th November, which was almost two months before the coronation,
so there is a slight inconsistency there, and it is written in the hand of an anonymous clerk. The chances are that it is
a near contemporary copy of the original minute, which was taken in order that the Queen's words should be 'of record'.
Artefacts can tell us about the daily lives, the technical skills, and the style sense of the past; but only documents
can communicate ideas, debates, relationships and decisions. The most ancient are the most formal. Charters and liturgies
tell us only about property transactions and forms of worship. Court records and accounts tell us about legal processes and
about economic structures, such as trade and taxation. It is only more recently, roughly from the sixteenth century onward,
although there are earlier examples, that personal letters, minutes of meetings, statutes, proclamations and memoranda of
government business, tell us something about the formation of policy, about individual aspirations, and about the collective
aspirations of public authority. This document is a good example of the latter.
Wills tell us about family structures, about personal wealth and about religious attitudes; pamphlets and ballads tell
us something of the relationship between government and society; and chronicles tell us what their authors wanted us to know
about the histories and events of their communities. Chronicles, ballads, pamphlets and plays began to appear in print before
the end of the fifteenth century, and statutes and proclamations were regularly printed from the early sixteenth, but the
great bulk of these records continued to be hand written down to the advent of the typewriter in the twentieth century. Since
about 1950, the arrival of tape recording, video, and more recently of e-mail have transformed ideas about archive storage,
and even about what constitutes a document, but in this context the traditional definition will suffice.
A document is a piece of writing, either in verse or prose, which is designed to record intentions, decisions or transactions
for the benefit of posterity. In evaluating a document it is always important to remember that it was written for a purpose,
and that purpose may bear no relation to the reason why the researcher is reading it. A piece of political or religious propaganda
was written to persuade or convince, not as an objective record. A court roll was intended to record the decisions of a particular
tribunal in dealing with given offences and misdemeanours, not as a general statement of judicial philosophy. A business letter
was written to transmit or to solicit certain specific information, not to convey a relationship. Personal letters may not
always mean what they actually say - and so on. A historical researcher will always have an agenda, and will usually be asking
particular questions of the documents which he (or she) is reading, but that researcher must always remember that the document
was not written with those questions in mind. Consequently the search for 'roots' must always be conducted with caution, because
it falsifies the past to impose contemporary agendas on it. For example the records of the slave trade should be read in the
context of contemporary ideas of Christian morality not those of twenty first century human rights; and family documents,
bearing in mind the ideas of duty then prevailing rather than modern ideas of the positions of women or children. These caveats
apply with particular force to religious and ideological history, where it is important to understand the mind-set of the
author before seeking to interpret the work.
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