I hadn’t been to the Public Record Office in Kew since 1999 and dug out my Reader’s Ticket to make a return visit. Luckily I checked to see if anything had changed.
The PRO was governed by the Master of the Rolls and its archives stored in Chancery Lane. However, due to insufficient space, a new building was commissioned in Kew and by 1997 all their stuff was garaged there. In 2003 the PRO merged with the Historical Manuscripts Commission and was re-named The National Archives. The Master of the Rolls no longer holds sway over it.
Quite a lot had changed. I applied for a new Reader’s Ticket on line and at the same time ordered the document I wanted to read. I went on Tuesday morning and got a warm welcome at the Welcome desk in the atrium only slightly tempered by being told to leave my biro and newspaper in a locker. The NA are understandably fussy about their valuable collection that includes records of court proceedings going back to the Middle Ages and the original manuscript of the Domesday Book.
I was directed upstairs to a First Timers’ desk where I was re-directed to another desk as I had pre-registered. Then, armed with a new Reader’s Ticket, I could swipe in to the archive area and go to a desk to find which locker my document was in and my allocated seat in the reading room. Needless to say someone was in my place so I found a spare desk and hoped my anarchy would go undetected.
The document in question is a Special Bond dated 4th August 1846 made out by Richard Lalor Shiel of Long Orchard, Tipperary, in the sum of £10,000 by two guarantors pledging £5,000 each.
Whereas Her present Majesty Queen Victoria by her Letters Patent under the Great Seal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland bearing date at Westminster the 14th day of July – last past Hath given and granted to the above bounden Richard Lalor Shiel the Office of Master and Worker of all her Majesty’s Monies both Gold and Silver within Her Majesty’s Mint in Her Tower of London and elsewhere within that part of her United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland called England to have hold exercise and enjoy the said Office of Master and Worker to (?) the said Richard Lalor Shiel by himself or his sufficient Deputy or Deputies for whom he is to be answerable …
The document rambles on for three pages but leaves the said Richard Lalor Shiel in no doubt that if he or his minions are caught with their fingers in the till his guarantors can each kiss goodbye to £5,000. A currency converter website suggests this is equivalent to £2.8 million today. You’d think twice before signing one of those Special Bonds wouldn’t you? Well my great, great, great, great uncle Richard Montesquieu Bellew did just that to oblige his brother-in-law, the said Richard Lalor Shiel.
Once I had read the document I was able to photograph it and have the shots e mailed to me (free) and printed on A3 paper for only £1.80. If you like that sort of thing it is most enjoyable to mess around in The National Archives.
Sorry that the Hon …that splendid honorific …didn’t make to the new card. I used to post notes to friends at front gate Trinity(Dublin) and all got to proper parties accept for those addressed to the Hon Oliver S. (Dad was Lord Stowhill). Inevitably nicked.
It certainly lingers in US…testimony yesterday by the dodgy Hon Jeff Sessions , Attorney General,with cameras lingering lovingly on his flop sweat and the card board with his title. He is addressed as ‘general’ by the old political lags not as the honorable anything. Quite right.
I once got very polite treatment from an immigration officer at JFK culminating in his asking me what my position is in the British government.