"No such restrictions exclude literary inquirers from the British Museum, where there are papers equally valuable. The Public Record Offices are all open, either gratuitously or upon payment of easy fees. The Secretary of State for the Home Department grants permission of access to her Majesty's State Paper Office. Your Grace's predecessor gave the Camden Society free access to the registers of wills at Lambeth--documents exactly similar to those at Doctors' Commons. The Prerogative Office is, probably, the only public office in the kingdom which is shut against literary inquirers.
"The results of such regulations are obvious. The ancient wills at Doctors' Commons not being accessible to those to whom alone they are useful, yield scarcely any fees to the office; historical inquirers are discouraged; errors remain uncorrected; statements of facts in historical works are obliged to be left uncertain and incomplete; the researches of the Camden Society and other similar societies are thwarted; and all historical inquirers regard the condition of the Prerogative Office as a great literary grievance.
"The President and Council of the Camden Society respectfully submit these circumstances to your Grace with a full persuasion that nothing which relates to the welfare of English historical literature can be uninteresting either to your Grace personally, or to the Church over which you preside; and they humbly pray your Grace that such changes may be made in the regulations of the Prerogative Office as may assimilate its practice to that of the Public Record Office, so far as regards the inspection of the books of entry of ancient wills, or that such other remedy may be applied to the inconveniences now stated as to your Grace may seem fit.
"(Signed) BRAYBROOKE, President. THOMAS AMYOT, Director. HENRY ELLIS. J. PAYNE COLLIER, Treas. HARRY VERNEY. H. H. MILMAN. JOSEPH HUNTER. WILLIAM J. THOMS, Sec. CHS. PURTON COOPER. THOS. STAPLETON. WM. DURRANT COOPER. PETER LEVESQUE. THOS. J. PETTIGREW. JOHN BRUCE. BERIAH BOTFIELD. BOLTON CORNEY.
_25. Parliament Street, Westminster,_ _13 April, 1848._"
As the Archbishop stated his inability to afford any relief, THE CAMDEN SOCIETY availed themselves of the appointment of the Commission to inquire into the Law and Jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical and other Courts in relation to Matters Testamentary, to address to those Commissioners, in the month of January, 1853, a Memorial, of which the following is a copy: