Publisher's Synopsis
In 1838 the Public Records Act brought the public records, then scattered through London in a vast number of different repositories, under a single administration, and over the following decades a new centralised building, a Public Records Office, for keeping them was erected in Chancery Lane. Exactly 50 years later the Index Library of the British Record Society was created to publish indexes to the public records. Over the following century much has changed and in 1988 the Public Record Office and the British Record Society joined to hold a celebratory conference. This volume publishes some of the papers read on that occasion.;The fifteen papers on the public records are concerned, firstly, with the history and development of the Public Records Office, and, secondly, with access to records by way of calenders and indexes. These are followed by two papers representing the interests of consumers of public records. The six papers on probate records offer some new approaches to wills, inventories and probate accounts and should be of particular interest to those working in early modern English history.
