ADDRESS FOR A RETURN. (Hansard, 28 March 1870)

§ LORD ROMILLY

moved an Address for— Return from each diocese, stating the places in which the records of all ecclesiastical and diocesan matters are preserved, explaining the manner in which these records are kept, distinguishing such as are kept in fire-proof places, stating the names of the persons in whoso custody they are kept, the conditions under which access is permitted to them, what fees are taken for leave to inspect and to make copies, what is the total amount of such fees received within the last five years, what steps are taken for the preservation of these records from damp and from improper abstraction or removal.—(The Lord Romilly.) He had hoped, when the Bill of the noble Earl opposite (the Earl of Shaftesbury), with respect to the Ecclesiastical Courts, was sent to a Select Committee, they would have provided for due care being taken of the muniments and documents now lodged in the diocesan registries. Unfortunately the Bill, as it now stands, provides for the preservation of these very registries in which no care whatever is taken of the documents lodged there. He was, twenty-two years ago, Chairman of a Select Committee of the House of Commons, the Report of which recommended that these registries should be done away with, and that the documents deposited there should be transferred to some proper repository; nor could he help hoping that before the noble Earl's Bill passed the Government would yet take care that the documents shall be transferred to the custody of 718 the Master of the Rolls, in order that the same system might be enforced with respect to them which is now in operation as to other papers in the custody of that functionary. Every respectable person could now have access, at any reasonable time, without payment of any fee, to the documents in the care of the Master of the Rolls; but he feared that large fees are in many cases exacted for the consultation of those in the diocesan registries.