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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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