Calendar of the Fine Rolls published

The first 4 of 22 volumes from the Calendar of Fine Rolls has been published today, beginning progress on another of the four major collections of medieval English chancery papers (the others being the Close and Patent Rolls (many of which are already published) and the Charter Rolls).

The Fine Rolls record payments to the crown arising from administrative or judicial business, and therefore contain a great deal of local and financial information, but also political matters, such as the inheritance after an oath of fealty of Robert Bruce to Edward I in 1304, and an account of how Bruce 'seditiously slew John Comyn of Scotland in the church of the Friars Minors of Dumfres', and Edward I's death at Burgh on Sands in 1307 on the way to 'repress with a mighty hand the rebellion of the same Robert'.

State Papers, Elizabeth

Another batch of manuscripts from the reign of Elizabeth are now available as part of MEMSO (Medieval and Early Modern Sources Online) (TNA SP 70/95 to SP 125). More are being added soon, along with increased metadata and other information to assist with navigation. (www.nationalarchives.gov.uk).

That brings our current total of manuscript images included in MEMSO to over 46,000, many of which have never been published in any form ever before.

25% Discount in the TannerRitchie Fifth Anniversary Sale

We can't quite believe it, but it is already five years since TannerRitchie Publishing was founded. We've come a long way in a short time, and we think we've established ourselves as both a leader in our field, and a company that is highly responsive to our customers' requests and suggestions.

The most rewarding part of our work over the last five years has been the enormously positive feedback that we receive from our clients and customers, both in terms of enthusiasm for the titles we have published, and appreciation for the way we do business. Many thanks to everyone who has taken the time to provide comments and feedback over the years.

To celebrate our anniversary, we've introduced a 25% discount on all our individual ebooks. Everything is discounted, so there has never been a better time to buy, and US customers can take advantage of recent exchange rate changes which have wiped off about another 10% from the price they pay!

Witchcraft, libraries and the Calendar of Treasury Papers

The Calendar of Treasury Papers, edited by Joseph Redington, published this week by TannerRitchie Publishing, has been requested by customers for some time. The volumes contain a wealth of records relating to this most central of governmental offices between 1556 and 1728. Patronage, crown finance, and every avenue of interest of the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury is recorded here. Moreover, the documents are particularly clearly and colourfully written.

In 1842, the Master of the Rolls described them thus: "They are of the highest historical interest and curiosity, throwing light on a variety of civil and political events; the progress of the Revenue, the Crown lands, the Colonies, the public transaction of office, and many of the private affairs of persons of every class".

The very first document in the volumes acts as a good example. On 11 January 1557, John Dee, described as a simple 'gentleman', supplicated Queen Mary, complaining of the 'lamentable displeasures' brought about by the attacks on the monasteries of Henry VIII's reign, but above all on their libraries:

wherein lie the treasures of antiquity and the everlasting seeds of continual excellency; but notwithstanding many precious jewels and ancient monuments had perished (as at Canterbury the work "Cicero de Republica"), yet the remainder, which were scattered, might be saved."

Dee continued to petition the queen to do what she could to recover the lost ancient libraries of England's monasteries, and, further, to allow him to create a new library in the queen's name which would contain new copies of many ancient volumes.

Dee was in fact a mathmetician, astrologer and antiquary (source, Oxford DNB article by R Julian Roberts, 2004), and was being, perhaps, a little disingenuous by this tacit attack on Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries. Henry VIII had given Dee a pension of 100 crowns over the previous years, and also given him two rectories, while Dee had become tutor to the powerful Dudley family. In the reign of Mary, Dee's powerful Dudley patrons had fallen dramatically from power, and in 1555 Dee was arrested by the Privy Council and accused of witchcraft and 'enchantments to destroy Queen Mary'. Although released in 1556, Dee's interest in the controversial subjects of astronomy and mathematics were perhaps the reason he remained a peripheral figure in the reign of Mary Tudor.

Yet, in 1557 it seems Dee was trying to resurrect his reputation - and he would do so successfully over the following decades, receiving some favour from Elizabeth I and Cecil and buying a large residence for his expanding collection of books. In time he would build one of the largest English libraries, and travel widely across Europe, taking 800 volumes with him on a trip to Poland. It was lucky he took so many, as his house was raided and those he left behind were stolen by rivals and former associates. He would remain financially poor for the rest of his life, dying in poverty in 1609.

Growing pains

The last month has been a hectic time for the staff at TannerRitchie Publishing, and that's by the standards of a year that has already been our most hectic by far. The swiftly expanding demands on our servers from the complexity and size of Medieval and Early Modern Sources Online (MEMSO) required that we take a long term look ahead at the hardware we were using, and make the necessary investment to ensure we are prepared for the future.

As a result, since our last post in July, we've undergone a complete change in the server hardware that runs our websites and MEMSO. We've also moved the location of the hardware from Vancouver to downtown Toronto. In the process we migrated our increasing complex web application (in fact applications), including databases and hundreds of thousands of files, onto a new architecture without creating too many problems for our users.

By and large we are happy that we managed a reasonably smooth transition. However some users certainly noticed some glitches, and a short period when MEMSO was not accessible via the internet at all. The best laid plans of mice, men and web administrators go oft awry,* and unexpected glitches arose even after extensive testing of the new hardware. For those that have been inconvenienced, we apologize, and hope you appreciate that these growing pains are evidence of TannerRitchie Publishing's commitment to the continuous future development, improvement and growth of MEMSO and our other websites.

We welcome questions about the changes. Please contact us and let us know your thoughts.

*Or, to be more historically accurate, "The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft a-gley."

Vancouver Harbour Centre Power Outage - 14 July 2008

For several hours today MEMSO and all TannerRitchie's websites were offline because of a major fire/explosion and power failure in downtown Vancouver, which cut power to our servers in the Vancouver Harbour Centre. The Harbour Centre is one of North America's main internet and telecommunications hubs, but although it has a large backup power system, it was unable to cope with the prolonged outage.

A news story connected to this power outage and the associated disruption can be found at The Vancouver Sun website.

We sincerely apologise for the disruption and inconvenience. Although the Vancouver Harbour Centre is one of the two most highly trusted and respected locations for servers in Canada, we are coincidentally moving our web servers to the Toronto telecommunications hub in August this year, as part of a major expansion of our hardware.

Additional Manuscripts from the State Papers, Foreign, & State Papers, Spain (1553-1780)

(TNA SP 70/87, f. 642r. MEMSO Permalink )

Users will already have noticed that manuscript images from the The National Archives (UK) are increasingly a key element in Medieval and Early Modern Sources Online (MEMSO). The first wave of a major expansion of our manuscript images was launched on Friday, 4 July, with the availibility of TNA SP 70, The State Papers, Foreign, Elizabeth I (1558-1577) (part I of II, with the remaining MSS appearing in August), and SP 94, State Papers, Foreign, Spain (1577-1780).


The manuscripts are arranged for ease of use and access in high definition greyscale images, and we will be adding further metadata and links between printed books and manuscripts over the coming weeks. However, of particular interest to many users will be the fact that most of the new images from the State Papers, Spain, are absent from the printed volumes of Calendars of State Papers, Spain, and Calendars of State Papers, Foreign.