The Bardon papers : documents relating to the imprisonment & trial of Mary Queen of Scots / edited for the Royal Historical Society by Conyers Read ; with a prefatory note by Charles Cotton.

Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The Bardon papers : documents relating to the imprisonment & trial of Mary Queen of Scots / edited for the Royal Historical Society by Conyers Read ; with a prefatory note by Charles Cotton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Society, with the result that I was invited to read a Paper on the subject in December 1907. 1 An abbreviated report of this Paper appears in the Transactions for 1908. Third Series. Vol. 2. Following this announcement of my discovery, a proposal was made for the publication of the complete text of the Papers, and I had much pleasure in placing my transcripts at the disposal of the Council for this purpose, more especially as I was aware that they would be prepared for publication by such a competent Editor as Dr Conyers Read of Oxford and Harvard Universities. To return to the subject of the discovery of the MSS. in the year 1834 at Bardon House in the parish of St Decuman, Somerset, where they had been stowed away in an attic amongst a mass of other documents, the accumulation of over two centuries— Bardon is a i5th century house, of one story only, above a low pitched ground floor, and built of cob ; in plan something like the letter E, with picturesque roofs and gables, surrounded by about 70 acres of land and by trees which are reputed to be several hundreds of years old. The house lies in a secluded spot not far from the old Cistercian Abbey of St Mary at Cleeve, and about midway between Williton, Watchet and Washford, though nearer to this last named village. Mr William Leigh, the owner in 1834, was quite unable to account for documents of such historical importance being found in a house so remote from the stirring transactions with which their dates connect them. It will be observed that the MSS. range from 1572 to 1588 ; it would seem, therefore, that they were written shortly before the Leighs came into possession of Bardon. The endorsement on the bundle containing them—“ Concerning the Q, of Scottes ’’—was in 1 For a detailed account of the discovery of these MSS. I must refer readers to a small quarto pamphlet issued by me in 1907 and published by J. T. Savage of Chatham Stieet, Ramsgate, entitled “ The Bardon Papers, a collection of Contem- porary Documents (MS. Eg. 2124) relating to the Trial of Mary, Queen of Scots. 1586.”