The Materials of Parliamentary History.

THE EARLY JOURNALS OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS The early history of the Lords' Journals has been discussed several times. First came A. F. Pollard who in a well-known article debated what he called the ‘authenticity’ of the Journals and concluded that those beginning in 1510 started then as the clerk's private notebook and gradually underwent an ‘evolution’ or development towards a more formal record. He drew attention to the inadequate editing which produced the printed Journals and from his analysis conjectured various consequences for the history of the House, and indeed of the Parliament as a whole, especially that it was clearly still in a very unfinished state in the reign of Henry VIII. Pollard's article initiated the serious study of these materials, but it was not altogether satisfactory. Its age will readily excuse not only some odd attitudinizing about authenticity and evolution but, more obviously, the fact that he could not take account of manuscripts since discovered; it is more serious that he tied himself up in certain misconceptions about the purposes and history of the manuscripts available to him. Nor is it at all clear whether he himself really made the careful study of the manuscript Journals and later copies which he succeeded in suggesting lay behind his paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]