Catalogue description Public Record Office: Petrie Transcripts

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Details of PRO 31/5
Reference: PRO 31/5
Title: Public Record Office: Petrie Transcripts
Description:

This series contains transcripts of medieval chronicles, lives of saints, registers, etc, for the most part printed in the series of Chronicles and Memorials issued under the direction of the Master of the Rolls and elsewhere.

These transcripts were assembled by Henry Petrie, keeper of the records at the Tower of London, from 1819 until his retirement in 1840. In 1843 they were transferred to the Master of the Rolls by his executors.

Annual reports by Petrie on the progress of his work are in PRO 36/47
Date: c600-1393
Arrangement:

The abbreviation C.B.H. is used in piece descriptions to refer to T D Hardy's history of Great Britain and Ireland (see publication details below). The abbreviation R.S. refers to the Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland("Rolls Series").
Related material:

There is also some correspondence and papers relating to a plan for continuing the publication of 'Materials for the History of Britain' in the 1840s in PRO 1/124
Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Legal status: Not Public Record(s)
Language: English
Physical description: 15 bundle(s)
Custodial history: After Petrie's death in 1842 the transcripts were transferred to the master of the rolls by his executors and deposited in the Public Record Office in March of the following year.
Publication note:

Some of these transcripts were used in T D Hardy's Descriptive Catalogue of Materials relating to the History of Great Britain and Ireland to the End of the Reign of Henry VII, published in three volumes between 1862 and 1871
Unpublished finding aids:

An alphabetical index to the series is available on open access. Please speak to staff at the enquiry desk for the precise location.

Administrative / biographical background:

In 1823 Henry Petrie was appointed by the Record Commission to undertake work, with the assistance of the Rev J Sharpe, his brother-in-law, upon the early sources of national history. Partly on account of the deterioration in Petrie's health the work was put in suspense in 1834, except for sections concerning the Anglo-Saxon laws and the Welsh laws which were published separately under the respective editorships of Benjamin Thorpe in 1840 and Aneurin Owen in 1841.

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