The Hattiesburg news. (Hattiesburg, Miss.) 1908-1917, 1909-12-28
sT0RY OF ARCHIVES
Public Record Office in London
Contains History Of England.
Source from Which Froude, Freeman
and Green Devised Materials for
Their AnnaIs-state Papers
In Collection.

London.-Go through an imposing
archway in Chancery lane any day
of the week, enter large stone imi-
tation antique building. write your
name in a book. give up your umbrel-
la, enter a small circular hall with
desks and book shelves all round IL
and you find yourself in the search
room of the public record Office of this
ancient kingdom, where are stored
during the last 800 years.
The famous Shakespearean discov.
cries of DR.. c. w. Wallace have d.
rected fresh attention to this wonder
full stOrehouse of the archives Of the
past. These last few days numbers
of people have drifted thither in the
vague hope of seeing the document
he describes or of finding something
equally valuable. 1t is only necessary
to breathe the name of Shakespeare
to make oneself exceedingly unpopu-
lar with the officials. They are al
ways ready to help serious searcher.
but they dread and detest the merely
curious person or the crank.
People who believe there is money
due them are a perpetual trial. They
have hazy notions of some chancery
suit In which an ancestor was con-
cerned. They sit all day pouring over
court records. They are almost as
fatuous as the searchers at Somerset
house, who start reading all the wills
Of the last century in the hope of
finding themselves entitled to some
forgotten legacy.
Broadly, the records are Invisible
into two classes-state papers and
legal documents. 1t was among the
former that Froude and Freeman and
]. r. Green and other historians found
materials for their books. The latter
are not quite so interesting but there
are fascinating side lights upon our
social history to be drawn from them
Their very number shows, for ex-
ample, how amazingly litigious Eng
lishmen used to be.
The reason probably was that near
ly all were copyholders of land and
knew a certain amount of law them
selves. At all events they delighted
in lawsuits; would institute proceed.
ings upon what seem now the slight
est ground, and even get up cases in
friendly way apparently just to keep
their hands in. Law was, In fact, that
Elizabethan substitute for golf. This
accounts for the number of great fam
lilies founded by lawyers. who were
in those days the only people who
heaped up wealth.
There are literally millions of sheep
skin parchments relating to lawsuits
stored up within these fireproof walls.
One has a vision, first of hills white
with the fiocks which Y 'lded up the
writing material; then of the litigants
-sharp-eyed, apple-cheecked farmers.
cunning, smooth-spcken townsmen,
Jolly abbots and warrior bishops.
great noblemen, living like princes,
dignified masters of provincial trade
guilds; finally Of the vicissitudes
these records have passed through be-
fore being housed in safety here.
Every single document tells a story.
carries one back at bound into the
past. Here is writ of King Edward
III. directing sheriff to inquire into
the death of royal tenant and to
discover the next heir
II is the history of the English peo-
pie that is found, here in the rough
No other nation has such records.
And there is hope for many mora
discoveries since there are yet noun.
taips Of them UNEMPLOYED.