State Papers Online 1509 -1714

Gale/Cengage Learning has released State Papers Online 1509 – 1714, a digital resource for all historians and students of Early Modern Britain and Europe. These historic papers are said to be the most valuable and reliable records available for understanding Tudor and Stuart government and society.

This new resources brings them together online and links them to the calendars of the papers themselves. This is said to simplify the process of research and interpretation of these historical materials. Users can carry out basic and advanced searches with limiters, view illustrations and maps, magnify or rotate images and view two manuscripts or calendar entries side-by-side to draw comparisons.

When completed, State Papers Online will contain almost three million pages of correspondence, reports, memoranda and parliamentary drafts from civil servants and provincial administrators, and intelligence reports from foreign ambassadors.

Part II is due for release in early 2009 and will include the Tudor State Papers Foreign, Ireland, Scotland, Borders and Registers of the Privy Council as well as State Papers in the British Library’s Cotton, Harley and Yelverton Collections.

Parts III and IV, which will contain the 17th century State Papers Domestic, Foreign, Ireland, Registers of the Privy Council as well as those in the Harley Collection, will follow in 2010 and 2011.