PARLIAMENTARY HISTORY

Part 2: The Braye Manuscripts from the House of Lords Record Office

PREFACE

H S COBB CBE
Formerly Clerk of the Records in the House of Lords

The Braye Manuscripts, the papers accumulated by John Browne, Clerk of the Parliaments 1638-91, are the most important collection of seventeenth century parliamentary records to have passed into private hands. After Browne’s death the papers were moved to Stanford Hall, the home of the Cave family, which eventually succeeded to the Barony of Braye. Many of the papers were listed by Sir Henry Maxwell Lyte in the 10th Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission which was published in 1887.

In 1947 the 6th Lord Braye began to sell the manuscripts, a process which continued until 1987. Over a period of forty years, the House of Lords Record Office managed to purchase the bulk of the manuscripts and to obtain photographs of most of those which passed into other hands. In the course of acquiring the manuscripts, the Record Office issued a number of lists of the purchases and photographic copies viz The Bray Manuscripts purchased in 1952 (HLRO Memorandum, No 7); The Braye Manuscripts sold at Messrs Christie’s, 23rd June 1954 (HLRO Memorandum, No 11); The Braye Manuscripts bought by the Record Office on 26th January 1961 P(HLRO Memorandum, No 24) and the Braye Manuscripts (Additional) Purchased from Dorothea, Lady Braye, 6 November 1989. Many of the manuscripts acquired before 1962 are calendared in The Manuscripts of the House of Lords vol xi (New Series) Addenda 1514-1714.

The purchase in 1987 of what would appear to be the remainder of those Braye Manuscripts that were of parliamentary interest makes this an appropriate time for the publication of a consolidated handlist of the manuscripts. The opportunity has been taken to revised and amplify certain of the entries (with references to published texts, if any) and to provide an introduction describing the methods of record-keeping of John Browne and his predecessors and the archival history of the manuscripts.

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