First Part of State Papers Online project now live

by Kathryn Hadley

The first part of the State Papers Online project has now been completed and 200 volumes of the papers are available online. The aim of the project is to create an online database of the State Papers Domestic and Foreign, the Registers of the Privy Council and the State Papers in the British Library from 1509 to 1714, making them accessible to academics and the general public and providing a new resource for the study of early modern Britain and Europe.
Part I of the project contains a complete collection of the Calendars of the Domestic State Papers from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I from 1509 to 1603, which details every facet of government as well as social and economic issues. It brings together 380,000 facsimile manuscript documents linked to fully-searchable calendar entries, the translations and summaries which were compiled in the nineteenth century. The documents notably refer to the Reformation, the Dissolution of the monasteries, Henry VIII’s relations with Europe, the marriage and the succession of Elizabeth I, the voyages of discovery of Drake, Gilbert, Hawkins and Frobisher, the relations between the crown and the nobility and the rise and fall of the Earl of Essex.
The papers are available on the British History Online website
www.british-history.ac.uk.
Part II includes Foreign, Scotland, Borders and Ireland papers for the sixteenth century as well as the Registers of the Privy Council for the whole of the Tudor period and is due to be released in the coming year.
Parts III and IV are similarly divided into Domestic and Foreign papers and cover the reigns of the Stuarts from King James I to Queen Anne, from 1603 to 1714.