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Series
Public Record Office: Rome Archives Series II
Catalogue reference: PRO 31/10
What's it about?
PRO 31/10
This series consists of transcripts of documents in the archives of the Vatican, the English College at Rome, the Angelica Library, the Barberini Palace and elsewhere in Rome.The last four volumes (PRO 31/10/18-21) were added to the series in...
Full description and record details
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Reference (The unique identifier to the record described, used to order and refer to it)
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PRO 31/10
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Title (The name of the record)
- Public Record Office: Rome Archives Series II
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Date (When the record was created)
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c 1200-20th century
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Description (What the record is about)
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This series consists of transcripts of documents in the archives of the Vatican, the English College at Rome, the Angelica Library, the Barberini Palace and elsewhere in Rome.
The last four volumes (PRO 31/10/18-21) were added to the series in November 1995. They were accessioned from the Round Room shelves of the Public Record Office (PRO), Chancery Lane (where they had been on open access with the Round Room references RR 19/20-21 and 45-46), as part of the PRO finding aids move from Chancery Lane to Kew.
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Held by (Who holds the record)
- The National Archives, Kew
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Former department reference (Former identifier given by the originating creator)
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TRANS 10
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Legal status (A note as to whether the record being described is a Public Record or not)
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Not Public Record(s)
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Language (The language of the record)
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English, Italian and Latin
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Physical description (The amount and form of the record)
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21 bundle(s)
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Subjects (Categories and themes found in our collection (our subject list is under development, and some records may have no subjects or fewer than expected))
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Unpublished finding aids (A note of unpublished indexes, lists or guides to the record)
- A partial card index which contains a catalogue of contents of the documents showing folio numbers and using the series former references TRANS 9 and TRANS 10 is available on open access. Please speak to staff at the Map and Large Document Room enquiry desk for the precise location.
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Administrative / biographical background (Historical or biographical information about the creator of the record and the context of its creation)
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In 1872, the British government decided to publish, under the direction of the Master of the Rolls, all materials illustrative of the history of Great Britain which were extant in foreign libraries and archives (in particular, Venice, Madrid, Vienna, Brussels and Rome). For this purpose, the Master of the Rolls, Lord Romilly, appointed the Rev Joseph Stevenson of St Mary's College, Oscott, to go to Rome to transcribe copies of documents and papers preserved in the libraries and archives there which related to the history of Great Britain, commencing with the reign of Henry VIII.
On 24 December 1876, the Rev Stevenson resigned his appointment due to ill-health. He was replaced by Mr William Henry Bliss, formerly an assistant in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, who commenced his researches in January 1877. Bliss was assisted in his research in Rome and in the editing of the calendars, in particular by Mr Charles Johnson of the PRO, and primarily by Mr J A Twemlow, sometime Professor Emeritus and Reader of Palaeography at Liverpool University, who later had responsibility for editing the series of Calendars of Papal Registers.
On 8 March 1909, Bliss died in Rome and was succeeded, from September 1909, by Mr J A Rigg, editor for the Selden Society and an inspector for the Historical Manuscripts Commission (HMC). Rigg continued the work until 1917 when it was reported in the 79th Deputy Keeper's Report (1920), p 7, that the 'actual work of research in Foreign Archives has been wholly stopped by the war'. From 1920, the editor(s) of the Calendar of Papal Registers recommenced visiting Rome to acquire material for their continuation.
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Publication note(s) (A note of publications related to the record)
- Reports and statements made by Bliss on his researches are printed in the appendices to the Forty-First Annual Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records (London 1880) and in the ten subsequent reports (to 1890). Some of these reports are particularly informative as they contain detailed lists of documents examined by Bliss. The Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers illustrating the history of Great Britain and Ireland volume I was published in 1893. The transcripts were also used in the publication of the following volumes which are also to be found on open access in the National Archives reading rooms Please speak to staff at the Map and Large Document Room enquiry desk for the precise location: Calendar of Papal Registers: Petitions to the Pope 1342 to 1419 (1 volume W H Bliss [ed] Public Record Office 1896); and Calendar of State Papers Rome: Entries in the Papal Registers relating to Great Britain and
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Record URL
- https://beta.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/id/C12055/
Catalogue hierarchy
Over 27 million records
This record is held at The National Archives, Kew
96,787 records
Within the department: PRO
Domestic Records of the Public Record Office, Gifts, Deposits, Notes and Transcripts
You are currently looking at the series: PRO 31/10
Public Record Office: Rome Archives Series II
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