Abstract

Three Williams — Camden, Dugdale, and Dethick — each a king of arms, made and left to posterity manuscripts containing notes on parliaments from 1396 to 1559. Each of these officers of arms made lists of peers allegedly present at various parliaments; and each derived much of his information from a single manuscript in the College of Arms. This manuscript includes the names of peers said to be present at parliament in 1396 and at many others including that of 1559. The lists of peers from 1402 through Henry VII's last parliament in 1504 are worth having. Some of them also preserve notes and memoranda about what was done and said in parliament that add to information found in other parliamentary records published since 1935. Up to now, however, historians have not used the evidence in Dugdale's manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, nor Camden's Commonplace Book in the Beinecke Library, let alone their source, described as “Summons to Parliament, Lists of Lords, etc.” in the College of Arms Library. However, hopes of any spectacular revelations must not be raised. Yet these three manuscripts do offer a warning against the inaccuracies that they contain and a caveat about the unreliability of such seventeenth-century transcripts from earlier books and records. In addition, they afford evidence with which to confirm or to refute or to correct various conjectures about the Lords' Journals made since 1935.’ jQuery.click { event.preventDefault(); })