| Description | Joseph Brigstock Sheppard compiled the first volume of the Christ Church Letters, pasting in 77 letters, soon before 1875. In this year he exhibited the volume at a meeting of the Royal Archaeological Institute at Canterbury. He published most of these letters through the Camden Society in 1877. In the published volume, entitled 'Christ Church Letters'; the letters are numbered following Sheppard's first numbering scheme.
Sheppard also included in the volume the first 12 letters from the Canterbury Letter Scrapbooks (DCc/Cant Let), numbering these from 77 to 88. There are thus 2 published letters numbered 77.
In the introduction to the Camden Society volume Sheppard writes that the letters were found amongst the uncatalogued part of the Chartae Antiquae series (piv). In 1887, in the introduction to the first of the Literae Cantuarienses volumes, he wrote that the letters had been retrieved from outhouses, to which they had been banished during a 'rearrangement' of the archives (pxxxiii).
This 'rearrangement' presumably refers to the work on the archive by Cyprian Rondeau Bunce (1752-1807), who completed the catalogue to the Chartae Antiquae in 1806. Sheppard continued to discover documents stored in the cathedral and buildings in the precincts.
Sheppard's account of the history of the first Christ Church Letters does not give the full story. Some of the documents which were included in the scrapbook by 1877 had in fact been removed from Bunce's Chartae Antiquae series. The letters numbered in the present scheme as 94, 96 and 99-104 were in the scrapbook in 1877 as they were printed in the Camden Society volume and were included in the first numbering scheme. They all appear in Bunce's catalogue of the Chartae Antiquae.
These letters have now been removed from the volume and returned to their original places in the Chartae Antiquae series, with the reference numbers which Bunce had given them.
Many letters were added to the scrapbook after 1877 and some letters were removed. The numbering scheme was also changed. The volume once contained 119 letters but there are now only 109. 10 numbers in the present numbering scheme are void.
Sheppard published some of the letters that had been added in the Literae Cantuarienses volumes, which were published in the Rolls Series between 1887 and 1889. Here he begins to use page numbers rather than document numbers as reference codes, although he is not consistent. He prefixes these numbers with 'LB' for 'Letter Book'. When transcribing documents for his volumes on Canterbury College, Oxford, WA Pantin uses both page number and document number. This catalogue uses the document number alone.
RL Poole lists and transcribes some letters in the Historic Manuscripts Commission's 1901 Report, pp214-215, and these letters are indicated with a 'P' written in blue pencil on the backing pages.
The majority of documents are mounted or pasted in along one edge only, the dorse thus being still readable. Sheppard has usually written either a full transcription or notes on the backing pages. Seals have been removed.
At the front of the volume are reproductions of the signatures and signs manual of various kings and queens of England. As noted by them, they were made from tracings by William Henry Ireland, the Shakespeare forger, which once belonged to Archdeacon Benjamin Harrison, and from tracings made by CT Martin of the Public Record Office. |