State Papers, Etc.

Abstract

The State Papers (Domestic) at the P.R.O. are not an organic archive but a ‘voluminous conglomeration’ chiefly associated with the Secretaries of State: mainly letters, papers, etc., received by them. This huge collection, much of it calendared in a hundred volumes to the start of Anne’s reign, plus four of ‘Home Office papers’ for the beginning of George III’s, contains an abundance of essential source-material for the study of Catholicism in England from Elizabeth I’s reign onwards, so vast and varied that it is almost impossible to classify. It includes statements by spies and informers, petitions from papists, intercepted Catholic correspondence, prison and other lists, reports and queries from various officials, evidences of conformity (not necessarily the last word), details of travel-passes issued, for example, to Catholics anxious to go abroad during the ‘Popish Plot’ crisis, and of awards of recusancy-penalties to grantees; numerical and financial data; papers relating to Assizes, Sessions and ecclesiastical administration; tantalising items of unknown origin and relevance.