Catalogue description House of Lords: Journal Office: Main Papers

'Main papers' is the widely-used term to describe the 'laid papers' of the House of Lords which are those records declared to have been 'laid on the table of the House': that is, all sorts of records which are brought to the attention of peers during their sittings in the chamber. They include bills, petitions, appeals, reports, accounts and many documents from government departments -anything which the Lords had asked to see, or which institutions or private individuals wanted the Lords to see, or which the Lords needed to debate on a particular day. The main papers are divided into 14 sub-series as follows.

HL/PO/JO/10/1: Main Papers 1509-1699.

HL/PO/JO/10/2: Main Papers: Parchment Collection.

HL/PO/JO/10/3: Main Papers: Large Parchments.

HL/PO/JO/10/4: Main Papers: Parchment Main Papers.

HL/PO/JO/10/5: Main Papers: Parchment Books, Rolls and Plans.

HL/PO/JO/10/6: Main Papers: 1700-1749.

HL/PO/JO/10/7: Main Papers: 1750-1799.

HL/PO/JO/10/8: Main Papers: 1800-1849.

HL/PO/JO/10/9: Main Papers: 1850-1899.

HL/PO/JO/10/10: Main Papers: 1900-1949.

HL/PO/JO/10/11: Main Papers: 1950-1999.

HL/PO/JO/10/12: Main Papers: 2000.

HL/PO/JO/10/13: Main Papers, Supplementary, 1576-1625.

HL/PO/JO/10/14: Main Papers, Addenda, 1556-1714.

Within slipcases, the main papers are generally ordered by the date of laying on the table, not by the date of the creation of the document.

The House of Lords Journals contain the minutes by the House of its action in relation to these records. The corresponding series in the House of Commons are known as the 'unprinted papers', and date from 1834 onwards (HC/CL/JO/10).

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the practice was introduced of separating large format or parchment records from the main papers series. Where records within individual deposits of papers have been split between series, this is noted in brackets in the descriptions in this catalogue. Please see relevant entries in the Parchment Collection (HL/PO/JO/10/2), Large Parchments (HL/PO/JO/10/3) or Parchment Main Papers (HL/PO/JO/10/4) for further details.

House of Lords, Journal Office, 1509-

Records from 1498 to 1692 were catalogued by members of the Historical Manuscripts Commission up to 1900. Records from 1692 to 1714 were calendared by Parliamentary Clerks in summer recesses up to 1923. Records from 1714 to 1718 were calendared by Record Office clerks following the establishment of that archive in 1946, and records from 1718 onwards have been catalogued by Record Office staff on a regular basis since then.

They accrue daily while Parliament is sitting and have done so since the fifteenth century.

At the end of the nineteenth century, the Historical Manuscripts Commission calendared these records from 1498 to 1692 in various reports. Subsequent calendars were created by the House of Lords covering the period 1692 to 1718. Concise versions of these calendar entries form the basis of the descriptions of the main papers found here up to 1718.