Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Robert Harper and parliamentary agency
- 2 Treatises and handbooks
- 3 The clerks: fees and agency
- 4 Parliamentary business
- 5 Private bill procedure
- 6 Estate bills
- 7 Inclosure bills
- 8 Local bills
- 9 Promulgation of the statutes
- 10 Conclusion
- Appendix I List of bills drawn by Robert Harper
- Appendix II Note on parliamentary sources
- Index
Appendix I - List of bills drawn by Robert Harper
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 October 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Robert Harper and parliamentary agency
- 2 Treatises and handbooks
- 3 The clerks: fees and agency
- 4 Parliamentary business
- 5 Private bill procedure
- 6 Estate bills
- 7 Inclosure bills
- 8 Local bills
- 9 Promulgation of the statutes
- 10 Conclusion
- Appendix I List of bills drawn by Robert Harper
- Appendix II Note on parliamentary sources
- Index
Summary
The nature of Robert Harper's collections and the indexes to them have been described briefly in the text. The only section of Harper's professional papers now extant, with the exception of a little of his ‘great precedent book’ is that covered by the index at Lincoln's Inn which is entitled ‘Index to Acts of Parliament’. When these volumes were acquired by the Museum they appear to have been catalogued at first as they stood, under references beginning 356 to 358. Each volume was usually in the order: printed private bills; printed public bills and other parliamentary papers; a section in manuscript containing copies or drafts for the measures with which Harper had been personally concerned. At some later date in the nineteenth century, the printed private bills were removed from these volumes and used to make up the set of so-called ‘Private Acts’ under pressmark BS Ref. 2. Almost all the private bills were removed in this manner so that copies remain under references 356 to 358 only if Harper had two copies, or if (rarely) the Museum possessed a clean copy from another source (except those in the King's Library, under references 212 to 215, which were then, as they are still, sacrosanct). But the original Museum references, beginning 356 to 358, can still be seen pencilled on the private bills now bound under BS Ref. 2 and these have been of assistance in reconstructing the volumes.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Bills and ActsLegislative procedure in Eighteenth-Century England, pp. 194 - 225Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1971