As can be seen from the above, there was an incremental increase in public records from year 1 to 1899. One would not expect this, but rather dramatic drops, or even cessations of public records, if there had been one or multiple total collapses of society, or ‘resets’.
Therefore, I wonder what the explanation could be for this? Are all of these archived records fake? How long would it take to forge 12,497,522 documents? Is there anywhere to accommodate one or multiple mudfloods and/or ‘resets’ within the above figures?
A number of known techniques could be brought together to create voluminous official records. There are probably many more unpublicised techniques and technologies that are beyond our imagination. For an example of the latter that has apparently just crept into our ability to conceive, consider the
micro-brush strokes that have apparently been found in works attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. What technology did this? Could it be used to forge written records? Could other not-yet-identified techniques also be used to forge records?
We could each ask ourselves: what don't I know about how to forge records?
Turning to known techniques, we have accounts of monks, abbots, etc forging ownership documents. Rev George Oliver is one source of these claims. But there are others: here are a couple of quotes from
A History of the Toft cum Lound and Manthorpe Parish by the Witham on the Hill Historical Society just north of Stamford:
There is a record in the National Archives dated early 14 th century of a “Quitclaim” in which
“Clarice and Matilda, daughters of William of Billeford give all rights and claims which they have in the land which Ralph the son of John of Burthorp, gave to the monks of Croyland in the town of Burthorp and Manthorpe, Lincolnshire to the Church of Saint Guthlac of Croyland and the monks of the same”. Witnesses are “Lord Reginald de Welle, Lord Alexander de Pointon, Nicholas de Flora, Reginald de Berch, Peter de Lekeburne, Peter de Brumford, William de Lardar, Osbern de Cellar, and Nicolas, his son”.
A quitclaim - for those unfamiliar - is a formalised giving up on a claim to possess land (or title to land). So how very generous of Clarice and Matilda. One hopes they were not under duress. Perhaps they had died and title to their former land was being 'provenanced' before any relatives or incoming new farmers showed up.
And:
The Spalding Gentleman’s Society has a handwritten book with translations from the Latin of legal documents that include the villages of Manthorpe and Bowthorpe (Manthorp and Burthorp). These transcripts, mostly dating from the 14 th century in the reigns of Edward III, Richard II and Henry IV (covering 1312 to 1413), are records re-written by the monks at Crowland of earlier documents. A suspicion exists that the monks may have been trying to establish a formal title to lands only loaned to them, and as very few outside the church were literate they could get away with it. There is an entry for the tenth year of the reign of Henry III, which would be 1217, listing many transactions of assets passed by noblemen to Abbot Henry and the Abbey at Croiland (Crowland) for the good of their souls, mostly in the form of Quitclaims and Frankalmoins giving plough land, tofts (cottage with a garden), oxgangs, woods, ridges, meadows, pastures, waters, fisheries, marshes, even villein-ages and the service of free men.
Claims like this cast suspicion on archive records that claim to be:
copies of the original probates written into volumes by clerks at the church courts
Another problem with 'church courts' is that we moderns think the English church goes back before, say, 1815. There is reason to wonder if the institution now thought of as the English church was largely fabricated between 1812-1840 from the remnants of different institutions and physical structures left over (in very dilapidated form) from earlier. In which case, when do these church courts really date from? Perhaps they are just constructs of the same authors who wrote and edited the Victoria County Histories (which so often read like surveys, as if they were notes of the newly found).
A technique that may have been used to create human-seeming records was to take records created for/by other entities and simply pretend the entities were humans. For example, English archives should contain claims, statements and testimony on behalf of well-known entities John O' Gaunt and Gilbert de Gaunt (AKA Gant). I very much doubt they were human in the sense we understand it. If we follow that line of questioning then we could ask if the archives are truly records of humans and human activities. Other threads here discuss red-headed, six-fingered and double or fang-toothed entities who may appear human in the archives but may well not have been human as we understand it. Another set whose records would be worth examining carefully for fraud are those of the big early 19th century landholders: the 'Dukes'. One can conceptualise similar for 'the gentry'.
Prior to their coming - say 1750 - it seems the country was covered with something more like 'manors' and 'baronetcies'. Fortified houses and halls occupied by who knows what, predating on who knows what. Or maybe the dukes were predating. Oddly, very few of these fortified houses, their occupants and the activities of their occupants are well-described in public records. This map suggests there were enough of them that they should be:
64 moated houses and halls on a random 20km high line
It shows the locations of remnants of moated houses/halls on a line from a random location in the downs north of Bedford to the east coast of Suffolk. There are more (way, way more) remnants of these structures north and south of this line but I am only showing the 64 that fall into a 20km high visor.
The above points matter because of this National Archives statement:
“Until 12 January 1858 all wills had to be proved by the church and other courts. The PCC was the most important of these courts dealing with relatively wealthy individuals living mainly in the south of England and most of Wales.”
Monasteries, manors and 'Church' appear to be very different entities than we're told. If the PCC was 'Church' it may have been a post-1812(ish) creation and - regardless of its creation date - what seems to have been its staffers appear much less honest with records of contracts, etc, than we've been sold. I have my own conjectures about what this sentence was originally conceived to explain, which boils down to: why so few individuals held title after the end of foodalism and how so much ended up in the hands of so few after 1785-1790.
Does the changing size of your archive record-count reflect changing size of the population? And changing size of its recordable legal activities?
A few finds (made while researching) make me think the growth-rate of Britain's archives should be very, very variable if the archives reflect recordable legal activity and if recordable legal activity reflects human numbers.
While looking at the history of the Fens, for example, I found five examples of researchers (geography, history and older 'antiquarian' researchers) complaining that Fenland records had been removed, stolen and lost (where the researchers thought they should normally have been carefully protected and passed on into national and local archives). If we assume the records are missing but the people and their recordable legal activities existed, how far short are the records from the recordable facts? Should the archives be bigger?
The northern and western fens were once very heavily populated (Rev George Oliver claims) and Lincolnshire is certainly famous for its abandoned 'plague' villages. At the time John Clare wrote
The Ruins of Pickworth, he was employed picking human bones out of a field and burning them for lime. Whether reduced by plague or 'other', we have plenty of physical evidence of larger populations in the past. If the British records are complete, can we mine the archives to collate the possible names of the original owners of those Pickworth bones? I don't think so, So, again, should the archives be bigger than they currently are?
Among the techniques for preventing archives from reflecting reality is to prune the archives heavily and then prate on about how big and all-encompassing the remainder is. Do the archives reflect massive pruning of what should theoretically have been a much larger archive?
Given we have discussions about missing people, is it possible that a great many humans existed in the past but never reached recordable status?
Based on what I find while researching along IHASFEMR lines, I'd suggest the earlier archives largely represent non-human activities and do not reflect most human existences and activities. My sense is that only in the last 500 years or so - at best - have they begun to reflect human activities. Obviously, many board members aren't working with as gruesome a model as I am. They may well have their own thoughts and explanations for the archives' characteristics.
Summary: all these factors are in play. Along with others I haven't conceptualised. And what's missing from the archives is likely bigger than what is present.
