APPENDIX
THE MANUSCRIPTS AT HATFIELD
THE following account of the origin and contents of the famous 'Hatfield MSS.', which have provided so much material for the foregoing pages, is condensed in the main from the Introduction to the first volume of the 'Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Hon. the Marquis of Salisbury, K.G., etc., etc., etc., preserved at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire,' published for the Historical MSS. Commission (1883).
In early times, before the State Paper Office was established in 1578, each of the principal Secretaries of State, of whom there were always two, and sometimes three, had the custody of the documents and correspon- dence which passed through his hands, and their future destination depended in great measure " upon accident, upon the care or negligence of the individual or of his clerks, and above all, upon the good or evil fate which awaited the Secretary when he resigned his Seals." It was thus a mere chance whether the documents were preserved intact, or whether, as frequently happened, they were dispersed or destroyed.
Robert Cecil, the first Earl of Salisbury, made an effort to collect all his father's papers and others in his care, and place them together in an official library at Whitehall. On his death in 1612 a warrant was issued directing all his papers to be delivered to the Keepers of the Records, who had been appointed two years before to take charge of " Papers and Records concerning matters of State and Council." One of these Keepers, Thomas Wilson,
