Focus on
The corsair state of Rabat-Salé
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Series
State Papers, Henry VIII: General Series
Catalogue reference: SP 1
What's it about?
SP 1
An artificial collection of public and private letters, memoranda and papers brought together by the editors of the Letters and Papers...Henry VIII. Unlike later SP series, SP 1 contains both domestic and foreign correspondence and papers. The...
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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SP 1
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Title (The name of the record)
- State Papers, Henry VIII: General Series
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Date (When the record was created)
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1509-1547
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Description (What the record is about)
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An artificial collection of public and private letters, memoranda and papers brought together by the editors of the Letters and Papers...Henry VIII. Unlike later SP series, SP 1 contains both domestic and foreign correspondence and papers.
The series includes official correspondence and papers generated by the secretaries of state, officials, English representatives abroad, commissioners, judges and informants. A large part of the collection consists of the confiscated official papers of Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell, and Thomas Darcy, Lord Darcy. Sir Thomas More destroyed his equivalent papers after his resignation as Lord Chancellor.
The collection is particularly full in the late 1520s and 1530s with the marriages of Henry VIII with Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Katherine Howard and Katherine Parr, and the break with Rome, the dissolution of the monasteries, and the Pilgrimage of Grace. It also covers wars and alliances with the rest of Europe.
Access to the contents of this series is by way of the published Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII (22 volumes, London, 1862-1930). Unfortunately, this work does not give modern references to the documents in SP 1 or the many other series of documents also used: these have to be worked out from a key available at the National Archives.
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Arrangement (Information about the filing sequence or logical order of the record)
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Arrangement
The letters and papers were sorted from several different sources into one chronological order between the 1850s and the 1920s and were rebound in that order. Documents dated between 1 January and 24 March are arranged according to modern form (i.e. a document bearing the original date 10 Feb 1535 is placed as 10 Feb 1536). No attempt was made to indicate provenance, apart from some stamping of the papers.
Some larger treatises were bound into separate volumes.
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Related material (A cross-reference to other related records)
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additional finding aid ZBOX 1/54/1
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Separated material (A cross-reference between records that are related by provenance but now kept separately)
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Records too large for the standard binding are in
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Held by (Who holds the record)
- The National Archives, Kew
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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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Public Record(s)
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Language (The language of the record)
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English
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Physical description (The amount and form of the record)
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246 volume(s)
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Access conditions (Information on conditions that restrict or affect access to the record)
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Available in digital format
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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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Custodial history (Describes where and how the record has been held from creation to transfer to The National Archives)
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In 1832 the Treasury was ordered to transfer letters addressed to Thomas Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell, and any other papers relating to matters of state in the time of those two ministers, from the Treasury of the Receipt of the Exchequer in the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey to the State Paper Office.
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Unpublished finding aids (A note of unpublished indexes, lists or guides to the record)
- See also the Introductory Note to the SP 1 paper list available at the National Archives for a much fuller discussion of the origin and sorting of the letters and papers.
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Publication note(s) (A note of publications related to the record)
- The records are calendared in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII ed. J S Brewer, J Gairdner and R H Brodie (London 1862-1932). Transcripts of some documents are printed in State Papers Henry VIII (London, 1830-1852). These works are available at the National Archives and in good university or reference libraries.
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Record URL
- https://beta.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/id/C13543/
Catalogue hierarchy
Over 27 million records
This record is held at The National Archives, Kew
208,922 records
Within the department: SP
Records assembled by the State Paper Office, including papers of the Secretaries...
You are currently looking at the series: SP 1
State Papers, Henry VIII: General Series
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