TNA SP 9/150, Letter-book of Sir Robert Cecil, 1605-1611

The National Archives Catalogue entry:

Index of SP 9/150, ff. 352-353.

Transcribed by Samuli Kaislaniemi.

Cite as: "Index to the Letter-book of Sir Robert Cecil, 1605-1611 (TNA SP 9/150/352-353). Transcribed by Samuli Kaislaniemi, 2009.

(Normalised version by Samuli Kaislaniemi, 2012.) http://sites.google.com/site/klaispublications/home/tna-transcriptions/sp9-150_index".

The transcription, normalised version, code, pdf and digital images of the index on this site are made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 3.0 License.

Description of index:

The index is on 2 folios bound at the end of the letter-book volume, on different paper from the letter-book itself.

The index is written in a untidy and hasty hand; this seems to be the same hand as the index to a letter-book of Sir Charles Cornwallis held at SP 9/213.

The foreword on fol. 1r of the volume is in pencil in in a 19^th-Century hand, signed by Robert Lemon (the younger), senior clerk at the State Paper Office.

Editorial comment:

This transcription is meant to be a rough finding aid, an addition to the TNA online catalogue. It should be noted that the aim was neither to provide a proper, regularised finding aid with modernised spellings, nor a scholarly edition of a part of an unedited manuscript. The transcription below falls somewhere in between; it tries to reproduce the manuscript source exactly, with the following exceptions:

1. Abbreviations and contractions are retained, but their markings have been normalised to apostrophes.

2. The layout has been normalised, both extralineally (across the page) and intralineally (between words). Line division is retained but normalised.

3. Original punctuation is retained with some normalisation: underscores/ellipsis regularized to "…"; curly brackets "}" spanning several lines set to standard sizes.

4. Original spelling is retained, except for the transcription of "I" as "J" in proper names. Long s's are retained. Superscripts are reproduced. Dubious cases (of which there are many in this manuscript: e.g. "S" vs. "ſ") are normalised.

   • Note: While my aim has been to reproduce the original spelling, the rapid cursive of the present manuscript renders this impossible in many cases. In the interests of usability, I have normalised the spelling in most of the index. I feel that the repetitive nature of the index - recurring names and phrases - justifies this approach, and comes closer to the intent of the scribe than a more faithful reproduction of the mangled letter-forms on the pages of the index.

Editor's insertions and comments are marked in bold. Undecipherable characters are marked as "??".

Each letter in the index has been given a unique identifying number in the underlying code. To view letter ID numbers, float the mouse over the date column in index entries.

Note on the index:

I have not collated the index with the letter-book copies. Anyone needing to establish the veracity of this index will need to consult the volume at TNA in Kew.

The index as a pdf:

You can download a copy of this page as a pdf here.

Transcriptions of letters:

It is likely that many or all of these letters have been printed, and that in many cases the letter in the letter-book is a copy of an extant original. I have no intention in creating a concordance of Robert Cecil's correspondence, nor have I endeavoured to search for one. I have no plans of transcribing this letter-book myself at present; any letters I do transcribe, however, I will put online and link to accordingly.

Note on images:

All images are taken at TNA by Samuli Kaislaniemi. The thumbnails link to a folder of large images on Google Photos.

ADDED JANUARY 2012:

Here is a normalised version of the above. I have followed the same principles as with my version of the table of contents to Winwood's Memorials:

I have expanded all names and dates and normalised their spelling in order to attain sortability and searchability. I have also normalised the names in the search columns: for instance, Sir Robert Cecil, later Viscount Cranborne and then Earl Salisbury, is named "Robert Cecil" throughout - although I have embedded titles in the code, which will be revealed by floating the cursor over the name. Many of the dates - namely years - are uncertain: these are indicated by underlining.

NB this table will inevitably contain errata. I hope to correct them in due course, but this would require a study of the volume at the National Archives in order to ascertain the veracity of the names and dates in this index. Which is not going to happen anytime soon, I'm afraid.

Last updated 14.2.2012 by SK.