which has a fine set of early oak cupboards for the storage of documents . Here , in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries , the tenants waited on audit day to pick up tickets for the dinner that would follow , from two quiristers known as the Bursars ’ Quiristers . The inner room , Audit Room , is where the annual audit actually took place , on St Simon and Jude ’ s day ( 28 October , soon after Michaelmas ). It is a decidedly handsome room , with a ceiling of wooden beams supported on plain stone corbels . The floor is paved with medieval Flemish tiles , decorated with lions , griffins and other devices . Here is another ancient iron-bound oak chest , originally intended , it is thought , to contain the College ’ s modest library of books . Against the east wall is a long , high backed wooden settle , probably dating from the seventeenth century . Both rooms are lighted by two windows and have large fireplaces : it is the more modern College archives that are now stored in them .
THE KEEPERS OF THE MUNIMENTS
The Founder ’ s statutes laid particular responsibility for maintaining and preserving the College ’ s records on the Warden and the two fellows appointed annually as Bursars . For the first 150 years of the College ’ s existence , these duties seem to have been discharged pretty conscientiously . The earliest Bursars ’ accounts are usually in the hands of one of the two relevant fellows . Robert Heete , fellow of the College ( 1421-33 ) and more than once a Bursar , put together a register of instruments under the College seal , lists of fellows and scholars , and an inventory of College property and books . Warden Stempe ( 1556-81 ) introduced some practical reforms ; from his time on , the Bursars ’ annual accounts and the records of proceedings in the manor courts of College estates , traditionally recorded on bulky parchment rolls , were entered into more manageable paper books . The Bursars ’ Books and Court Books are for the historian among the most valuable series in the muniments .
As time went by , and especially in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries , something of what a Provost of Eton , writing of their archives , described nicely as “ the system of higgledy piggledy ” crept into the keeping of the m u n i m e n t s . A good many records and documents found their way to cupboards and cubby holes in the Warden ’ s Lodgings , where track of them was lost for the time being . Four Anglo-Saxon charters , the oldest documents among the
College ’ s archives and historically among the most prized , had a particularly chequered history , straying from a drawer in the Muniment Rooms to the Fellows ’ Library , then after recovery straying again : they were finally found in 1926 in the bottom of a drawer of a bedroom in the Warden ’ s Lodgings , wrapped in a brown paper parcel . It was , again , in a box in the Warden ’ s own bedroom , that the unique manuscript of Malory ’ s Morte d ’ Arthur , previously unknown , was discovered in 1932 - but that belonged to the Fellows ’ Library , not the Archives ( it is now in the British Library ). As late as 1962 , a bundle of papers , some of them dating back to the seventeenth century , turned up unexpectedly in the Warden ’ s study . The oldest private letter in English among the archives ( of ? 1487 ) was found in 1977 under the floorboards of Election Chamber , ( over Middle Gate ); it is from one John Goldring to Warden John Baker , thanking him for “ the gret chere that I had with yow at my last beyng with yow ”, and praying his continuing “ goud maistership unto the childe that I spoke yow of .”( fig 2 ) There may be more to come yet !
Fig 2 . John Goldrings letter to Warden Baker (? 1487 ).
The story of the eighteenth down to the mid-nineteenth century is not however wholly one of neglect . Most official records were still being deposited in the Muniment Rooms : they include some fascinating papers concerning disputed elections to the Wardenship and complaints of misdemeanours against fellows . Robert Lowth made substantial use of some of the older muniments when putting together his life of William of Wykeham ( 1758 ), and clearly found them in place . In the 1770s Charles Blackstone ( elder brother of the great lawyer William Blackstone ) had the distinction of being the first person to undertake serious research among the muniments , in the process of compiling his Book of Benefactions to the College : the recurrent notes in his hand among the Account Rolls ,“ Examined C . B ”, with a date , show that he was able to work on them systematically . William
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