§ MR. MAURICE HEALY (Cork)I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether the attention of the Deputy Keeper of the Records has been called to the continued complaints made as regards the manner in which the several volumes of the calendar of entries in the Papal Registers relating to Great Britain and Ireland have been compiled; whether it is intended in the subsequent volumes to correct the errors in those already published, a number of which have been set out at length in two articles in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record; whether the direction of the deputy keeper abrogating the original Rolls Instruction (eleventh), that each series should be chronological, will be reconsidered; and, if not, whether, in view of the fact that the French publication relied on as a precedent gives an index setting forth the date, etc., of each document in proper sequence, a similar index will be provided for the English volumes; and, whether, in view of the importance of this work for historical purposes, the Deputy Keeper of the Records will submit for inquiry to some persons eminent in this branch of scholarship the several allegations which have been made, that the documents of which the series in question 90 are intended to be a calendar are confused as regards their order, imperfectly summarised in many instances, often mistranslated, and indexed imperfectly; that dates are often not given; that technical terms are misunderstood; that errors are frequent; and that the work displays a general want of knowledge of the subject matter dealt with.
§ THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Sir MATTHEW WHITE RIDLEY,) Lancashire, BlackpoolThe Deputy Keeper of the Records informs me that his attention has been called to complaints respecting the manner in which the first two volumes have been compiled. Such entries as are proved to be erroneous will, of course, be corrected, but several of the charges made in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record have been found on investigation to be groundless. The rolls instruction mentioned by the hon. Member referred to calendars of State papers, which are detached documents, and is not applicable to calendars of rolls or registers. In dealing with these it is usual to follow the extract order in which the entries occur in the original manuscripts, and this has been the system pursued by scholars of different nationalities working on the Vatican archives. A proposal to supply a chronological table of political entries is now under consideration. The Deputy Keeper will be willing to discuss the whole question with some impartial scholar.
§ MR. MAURICE HEALYI beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether any assistance has been provided, as promised, for the present editor of the Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers relating to Great Britain and Ireland; and, if so, whether he will state the names of the person, or persons appointed for the purpose; to what departments of the work such assistance extends, and what assistance has been provided for him in the Irish portions of his work; and, whether the Deputy Keeper of the Records will consider the advisability of having a separate volume compiled relating exclusively to the Irish entries.
§ SIR MATTHEW WHITE RIDLEYYes, this assistance has been provided, as the volume issued last week shows. Mr. Johnson, of the Record Office, was assisting the editor at Rome from 91 January to May last year, and Mr. Twemlow from last November to the present time. Their assistance extended to the whole of the text and the index alike. All entries, moreover, which related to Ireland have been examined by the Very Reverend M. Costello, of the Dominican Priory of San Clemente in Rome. It is not considered advisable to have a separate calendar of Irish entries.