XV 



of the Municipal Corporation Commissioners, though he withheld 

 his signature from their report. He was knighted in 1831, as an 

 acknowledgment of his contributions to constitutional and parlia- 

 mentary history ; and was appointed Deputy Keeper of the Public 

 Records in 1838, a post which he held up to his death. Previous 

 to his appointment, the national muniments were scattered over 

 fifty-six different repositories, many of them but little fitted for the 

 safe custody of the public archives. A different system of manage- 

 ment, a different scale of charges for searches and copies, prevailed 

 in each. By the exertion of great activity and perseverance he 

 brought these various establishments under one system, and finally 

 united their contents at the Rolls Estate. His ' Annual Reports/ 

 twenty-two in number, afford ample proof of the extent of his official 

 labours. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1821. 



The dates of Palgrave's writings are as follows : He brought out 

 in 1831 a short history of English affairs from the acquisition of 

 Britain by the Romans until the Norman Conquest ; and in the 

 year following, the 'Rise and Progress of the English Common- 

 wealth/ The * Merchant and Friar' was his next publication. In 

 1841, after the labour of several years, he furnished Murray with 

 the first edition of the ' Handbook to Northern Italy.' The first 

 two volumes of the ' History of England and Normandy ' appeared 

 in 1851 and 1857. These volumes treat of the Carlovingian empire, 

 the rise of the Capetian dynasty, and the foundation of the Duchy 

 of Normandy. Materials are left that carry the narrative to the 

 time of Henry I. He also contributed, principally between the years 

 1815-21 and 1840-45, upwards of forty articles to the ' Edinburgh ' 

 and ' Quarterly Reviews.' 



"With the exception of the handbook, one purpose, the elucida- 

 tion of our national history, runs through his works. The ( Com- 

 monwealth ' represents the national life of England before the Con- 

 quest. The character of the people and general aspect of the realm 

 is exhibited by an examination of those legal and social institutions 

 which regulated the daily life of the community, as he felt that the 

 attention of historians had hitherto been too exclusively confined to 

 the political action of the times. The little history of the Anglo- 

 Saxons was designed to supply that biographical portraiture and 

 narrative detail necessarily excluded from a constitutional history. 



