The survival of the New Year's gift exchange rolls,Footnote ¹ both Elizabethan and other Tudor/Stuart rolls,Footnote ² is closely linked to their sixteenth-century custodians as well as the subsequent custodians of the next four centuries. These gift roll manuscripts have been treasured as historical manuscripts by antiquaries and valued as investments by collectors. Many have recognised that the vellum rolls with the queen's or king's signatures have importance, although those antiquaries and collectors did not always value the rolls for their historical and cultural content. The New Year's gift rolls provide a unique source for the study of social conditions and personal relations at the court of Elizabeth and other Tudor sovereigns. Thanks to diligence and dilettantes, twenty-five of the Elizabethan gift rolls are extant, as are ten gift rolls from the combined reigns of Henry viii (1509–47), Edward vi (1547–53), Mary (1553–8), James i (1603–25) and Charles i (1625–49).Footnote ³

The court ceremony of exchanging New Year's gifts was well established in England before the sixteenth century, although this ceremony reached its zenith during the reign of Elizabeth i (1558–1603). John Nichols (1735–1826) noted that ‘during the Reigns of King Edward vi, Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth, the ceremony of giving and receiving New-year's Gifts at Court, which had long before been customary, was never omitted; and it was continued at least in the early years of King James; but I have never met with any Roll of those Gifts, similar to the several specimens of them in the Progresses of Queen Elizabeth'.Footnote ⁴ Due to the larger number of extant Elizabethan gift rolls, more attention has been afforded them; however, much cultural and historical information is to be gained from the study of all Tudor and Stuart existing rolls. Of the rolls known to be extant for the reigns before and after Elizabeth i, only three transcriptions have been published. In 1797 John Nichols published the one Marian, 1557 (4 Mary) roll, which was published again in 1989 by David Loades.Footnote ⁵ In 1828 John Nichols published a transcription of the 1606 (3 James i) roll.Footnote ⁶ In 2005 Maria Hayward published a transcription of the 1539 (30 Henry viii) roll.Footnote ⁷ No additional transcriptions of gift rolls pre- or post-Elizabethan era have been located.

On the first of January, servants of the peers and courtiers brought the New Year's gifts to the gift chamber, where clerks of the Jewel House recorded who brought what, its value, who took custody of the gift and what gift the courtier received from the sovereign. The servant transporting the gifts received a reward for their delivery and return of gifts. The recording process began with a paper booklet that drafted an outline of the previous year's participants, with space between entries for descriptions of the gifts and addition of participants new to the year's exchange. The spaces and margins of this draft were filled with rapidly scribbled notes of gift descriptions and weights of gilt plate measured to the eighth of an ounce. The energetic pace of the ceremony was evidenced by the scribbled notes, the changes in weights of gifts given and the variety of hands used on the draft. During the reign of Henry viii, the gift rolls were recorded only on one side of paper sheets, which were loosely rolled together. The reign of Edward vi marked a change in the preferred material to be used for official records from paper to vellum or parchment. All gift rolls from the reign of Edward vi onward were recorded on vellum rolls. This process continued under Mary i and Elizabeth i as well as under the Stuarts. The details from the paper draft were transferred to a vellum roll composed of four or five membranes glued together with writing on both sides in a professional secretary hand. The smooth side was used for the gifts received from courtiers in peerage order, the ‘By list', and the hair side for the gifts given by the sovereign to the courtiers, the ‘To list'. The Master of the Jewel House and the clerks reviewed and signed the final manuscript, which was then presented to the sovereign for the sign manuals in two or more places. These manuscripts were stored in the Jewel House next to Westminster Abbey. The use of parallel recordings on both sides of the rolls created a space at the end of the ‘To list' that, during the reign of Mary, began to include the section of ‘Sundry Gifts' given at various times, a practice that continued under Elizabeth and in a slightly different format under James i. Of the several thousand gifts presented to and received by the sovereign as described on these rolls, almost none have survived that can be certainly identified today.

These formal rolls served as an audit account of what came in to and went out from the Jewel House. The Jewel House, a stone tower near Westminster Abbey, was built in 1363 during the reign of Edward iii (1327–77) and is still standing today. The Jewel Tower was the repository for the sovereign's personal jewels and plate, along with the gift rolls, accounting records and inventories of these items. The Crown jewels belonging to the state, such as the coronation regalia, were not stored with these personal possessions of the sovereign. From the mid-seventeenth century until 1864, the tower served as a repository for parliamentary records, until the new Victoria Tower was constructed and the records were transferred there. Between 1869 and 1938 the Jewel Tower was used as the Office of the Standards, the repository of official weights and measures.Footnote ⁸

The Master of the Jewel House was the custodian of the gift rolls as well as the sovereign's jewels and plate.Footnote ⁹ The position was held by six people during Henry viii's reign: Sir Henry Wyatt (1460–1536), Robert Amadas (c 1500–32), Thomas Cromwell (1485–1540) Earl of Essex, John Williams (c 1500–59) Lord Williams of Thame, Sir Anthony Rous (c 1502–46) and Sir Anthony Aucher (d. 1558), who continued under Edward vi. Richard Wilbraham (1504–58) held the office from 1554–7 and Sir Francis Jobson (c 1509–73) was Master until the end of Mary's reign. During the reign of Elizabeth, this office was held by John Astley (c 1507–95) from her accession until his death. Sir Edward Carey (1540–1618) served as Master until 1603, sharing the office with his son, Sir Henry Carey (c 1575–1633), later Viscount Falkland. Upon the death of Sir Edward Carey, the office was granted to his cousin, Sir Henry Mildmay (c 1594–1664/5?), grandson of Sir Walter Mildmay (1520/1–89).

As each Master of the Jewel House transferred his position to his successor, an inventory of plate in his possession was prepared and any deficiencies had to be accounted for.Footnote ¹⁰ John Astley's widow, Margaret Grey Astley (d. 1601), was responsible for procuring a discharge from the Crown, based on her late husband's inventory.Footnote ¹¹ Following the death of Charles i, Sir Henry Mildmay turned over the royal jewels and plate to the government, as he was removed from his office by Parliament. In October 1649 officers carried off the remaining treasure and, in preparation for the Commonwealth Sale, several inventories of the plate were made. However, subsequent orders from Parliament as late as November 1652, addressed to both Mildmay and his cousin, Sir Carew Harvey Mildmay (1595–1676), Groom of the Jewels and Plate, indicate that many jewel-house books and papers remained in the custody of the Mildmays. Another possible extant gift roll, the 1640 (15 Charles i) roll also passed through the hands of the Mildmay family, as recorded by A Jefferies Collins in his listing of the New Year's gift rolls.Footnote ¹² Other papers, perhaps including some New Year's rolls, had been carried off. A memorandum among the Mildmay family papers states that ‘Many office books and papers are missing, for in these times the office was common to all sorts'.Footnote ¹³ The Jewel House, along with many other government offices, suffered the same fate as documents were destroyed and dispersed during the Interregnum between 1641 and 1660.Footnote ¹⁴

Movements of the gift rolls between 1649 and 1736 are not documented, but some suppositions can be made based on family ownership connections and the present-day archival locations of the rolls. The Mildmay family continued residing at Hazelgrove House, near Queen Camel, Somerset. The manor had been given to Sir Walter Mildmay in 1558 by Queen Mary and remained with the family until the 1920s. In May 1660, on the eve of the Restoration, Sir Walter's grandson, Sir Henry Mildmay, ignored an order from Parliament to investigate his stewardship of the royal jewels and attempted to escape to the continent. He was stripped of his knighthood, offices and estates, and ordered to be deported to Tangier, dying at Antwerp while in transit. His cousin, another Carew Harvey Mildmay (1690–1784), regained Hazelgrove and rebuilt it in 1730. The 1582 (24 Elizabeth) draft roll was probably in the custody of the Mildmay family not long after the removal of the rolls from the Jewel Tower. This paper booklet is the only surviving draft of a gift exchange ceremony and provides unique insight into the gift roll process. This document not only reveals the scribal mechanism that allowed the final rolls to be compiled in descending order of royal favour, social rank and office, but it also provides a view of the Jewel House clerks recording all this complicated data in the confused rush of the exchange ceremony at court.Footnote ¹⁵ The Mildmay family papers are now held at the Somerset Heritage Centre in Taunton.Footnote ¹⁶ Additional Mildmay papers relating to manorial records and estate accounts are held by the Hampshire Record Office in Winchester and Southampton.

The Herrick family was also connected to the early preservation of gift exchange manuscripts. Their manor of Beaumanor Park, near Woodhouse, Leicestershire, housed two gift exchange rolls, for 1557 and 1600 (42 Elizabeth), but when or how they were acquired is unrecorded. In 1595 Sir William Herrick (1562–1653), goldsmith and financier, purchased the manor of Beaumanor Park in Leicestershire from Robert Devereux (1565–1601) Earl of Essex. This William Herrick was knighted by James i in 1605, was appointed king's jeweller and served as teller of the Exchequer from 1616 to 1623. Sir William took no active part in the Civil War, although the royalists, who plundered Beaumanor, described him and his wife as parliamentarians.Footnote ¹⁷ Following Sir William there were three additional William Herricks, all in residence at Beaumanor Park, sometimes simultaneously: William [i] (1624–93), his son William [ii] (1650–1705) and grandson William [iii] (1689–1773). John Nichols (1735–1826) was a personal friend of the Herricks and visited Beaumanor Park regularly. He used this home as a base while he was researching and compiling his editions of the history of Leicestershire and the progresses of Queen Elizabeth. Nichols published his transcriptions of Herrick's 1557 and 1600 gift rolls.Footnote ¹⁸

In 1843 William Perry Herrick (1794–1876), third great grandson of Sir William Herrick, asked John Gough Nichols (1806–73), grandson of John Nichols, to arrange and conserve the collection, which remained at Beaumanor Park. Part of this collection was purchased by the Bodleian Library in 1968 and another part, on deposit at the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Record Office, was purchased by them in 1988.Footnote ¹⁹ Perry Herrick was succeeded by his closest living male relative, Assheton Montagu Curzon Howe Herrick (1898–1959), who authorised the sale of the two gift rolls. Both the 1557 and 1600 gift roll manuscripts were sold at Christie's in 1968 and were purchased by Harry Levenson (1904–95), a bookseller in Beverly Hills, California. Prior to their export to the United States, photocopies of both manuscripts were made for the British Library. In 1969 the 1557 roll was purchased from Levinson by the British Library. The 1600 roll was purchased by Martin Bodmer for the Fondation Martin Bodmer in Cologny, Switzerland.Footnote ²⁰

Another family manor also functioned as an early custodian of a New Year's gift roll. The Dukes of Buccleuch and Queensbury have custody of the 1571 (13 Elizabeth) gift roll, which has been with the family papers since the mid-seventeenth century with no details of how it was obtained. This manuscript was not known to Collins when he compiled his list of extant New Year's gift rolls.Footnote ²¹ In 1972 Walter Scott (1923–2007), 9th Duke of Buccleuch and Queensbury, placed the manuscript on temporary deposit with the British Museum's Department of Prints and Drawings, and in 1982 the Historical Manuscripts Commission (HMC) included a description of it in their guide.Footnote ²² The family has a long history of interest in archival materials, many of which were kept in Montague House, their London residence. In 1753 the British Museum was established under an act of Parliament, and in 1754 this Bloomsbury residence was sold to make way for the construction of the museum, which opened its doors to the public in 1759. The manuscripts and archives belonging to the Dukes of Buccleuch and Queensbury were moved to their present location at Boughton House near Kettering, Northamptonshire. Richard Scott (1954–), 10th Duke, is the current custodian of this gift roll at Boughton House.

We know that some of the gift rolls did circulate between 1649 and 1736, although it is impossible to determine which individuals were the first to recognise the importance of the New Year's gift rolls. The Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries began meeting in 1572Footnote ²³ until it was dissolved by James i in 1608. The revived Society of Antiquaries of London played a major role in the custodial chain. This Society began meeting informally in 1707 and received a formal charter in 1751. Its members met in various taverns, where they discussed renting a more permanent location. In 1754 the Fellows considered using space in Montagu House, along with the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Painting.Footnote ²⁴ The Fellows finally secured a permanent meeting place at Somerset House, where they remained until 1874, when they moved to their present bespoke location at Burlington House, Piccadilly.

Many Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries and their colleagues held a fascination for the New Year's gift manuscripts. In the eighteenth century the Society acquired two manuscript rolls, and in the nineteenth-century transcriptions for four gift rolls would make their way into the collection. During their meetings, Fellows would display and discuss manuscripts in their possession or items of interest borrowed from a colleague. In the minutes of the Society some details of these discussions regarding the gift rolls were recorded. In 1736, during two different meetings of the Society, George Holmes (1661/2–1749) brought in four gift rolls for display. The 7 October minutes allowed two paragraphs to describe the 1539 and 1579 (21 Elizabeth) rolls. However, the minutes for 28 October allotted only two lines for the rolls, 1552 (5 Edward VI) and 1559 (1 Elizabeth).Footnote ²⁵ In the early eighteenth century, George Holmes,Footnote ²⁶ a founding Fellow of the Society, was record keeper of the Tower of London, where he began calendaring the tower records in 1707. He was an early proponent of the preservation and classification of manuscripts. Among Holmes's personal collection of manuscripts was the 1579 gift roll, which was sold at auction following his death. The three other rolls presented at these meetings were the property of George Harbin (c 1665–1744),Footnote ²⁷ another historian, but not a Fellow of the Society.

While not a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and unable to present at the meetings, Harbin certainly met all the qualifications of an antiquary. In 1688 he became chaplain to Francis Turner (1637–1700), Bishop of Ely, and in 1699 he became librarian to Thomas Thynne (1640–1714), Viscount Weymouth, at Longleat House. He had access to the manuscript collection at Longleat as well as those in the libraries of other gentlemen. His large personal collection of manuscripts and books included two Elizabethan gift rolls, for 1559 and 1588 (30 Elizabeth), plus gift rolls for 1539, 1552 and 1606. Perhaps Holmes intended to present Harbin's two other rolls, 1588 and 1606, at a later meeting. Some details of the 7 October 1736 display were recorded by Horace Walpole (1717–97), Earl of Orford, who published an extract of the 1539 roll.Footnote ²⁸ After the deaths of Holmes and Harbin, their manuscript collections were sold at auction. All five gift rolls belonging to Harbin (1539, 1552, 1559, 1588 and 1606) were purchased by Osmund Beauvoir (c 1722–89), while the Holmes 1579 roll was purchased by James West.

On 16 December 1765, Charles Lyttelton (1714–68),Footnote ²⁹ Bishop of Carlisle and custodian of the 1568 (10 Elizabeth) gift roll, had access to the 1585 (27 Elizabeth) roll, which he exhibited to the Society.Footnote ³⁰ This is the earliest reference to these two gift rolls and there are no details of their prior ownership or how Lyttelton had access to these gift rolls. No further mention of the 1585 roll has been found until it was acquired by the Folger Shakespeare Library in 1928. Following Lyttelton's death, his nephew and executor, Thomas Pitt (1737–93),Footnote ³¹ Baron Camelford, presented the 1568 roll to the Society. Lyttelton studied for the law, although he transferred to the church and was ordained in 1742. He was appointed Dean of Exeter in 1748 and was consecrated Bishop of Carlisle in 1762. He was elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1740, and served as president from 1765 to 1768. In 1738 Lyttelton purchased the papers of Thomas Habington (1560–1647),Footnote ³² a godson of Queen Elizabeth and himself a seventeenth-century antiquary. It is unlikely, however, that Habington was custodian of any gift roll as he died before the Interregnum.

Other Fellows of the Society shared this fascination with the New Year's gift exchange rolls, as they explored their antiquary pursuits. As noted above, Harbin's five New Year's gift rolls (1539, 1552, 1559, 1588 and 1606) were purchased in 1744 by Osmund Beauvoir,Footnote ³³ another Fellow of the Society as well as a collector of manuscripts. Following his education at St John's College, Cambridge, Beauvoir served as headmaster of the King's Grammar School at Canterbury Cathedral. He interacted with a circle of antiquaries in and around Canterbury, many of whom were subscribers to the first edition of Hasted's History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent.Footnote ³⁴ At his death his books and manuscripts were sold by William Flackton (1709–98),Footnote ³⁵ a Canterbury bookseller, although the records of who purchased the rolls have not been found.

The Society of Antiquaries in London provided a place for the Fellows to display and discuss manuscripts, but this network of antiquaries also collaborated among themselves in places away from the city. Craven Ord (1755–1832),Footnote ³⁶ an antiquary and collector of books and manuscripts, was elected to the Society in 1775. John Nichols offered his gratitude for Ord's loan of an original roll of New Year's gifts, for the editions of his Progresses.Footnote ³⁷ Ord assisted Nichols with his four volume, The History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester (1795–1815) and worked with Richard Gough (1735–1809) on his Anecdotes of British Topography (1768).Footnote ³⁸ In 1790 he presented to the Society an inventory of the Crown jewels of Edward iii, which was printed in Archaeologia.Footnote ³⁹ He transcribed selective sections of Henry vii's account books from 1492–5 and 1502–5, which recorded New Year's rewards paid by the king.Footnote ⁴⁰ He acquired the manuscript, ‘An Original Household Book of Henry VIII, 1509–18',Footnote ⁴¹ which included the records of nine years of New Year's gifts given by the king and their recipients, but does not record the gifts given to the king. This manuscript, along with many others, was purchased by Sir Thomas Phillipps in 1832 and is now held by the British Library. There are no details of how Ord acquired the 1578 (20 Elizabeth) roll, which he bequeathed to the Society in 1788, the presentation being made by John Nichols and received by Thomas Astle (1735–1803). Ord amassed a large collection of books, manuscripts, drawings and engravings, which were catalogued and sold in 655 lots during three sales in June 1829, January 1830 and May 1832.Footnote ⁴²

Another Society Fellow, Anthony Morris Storer (1746–99),Footnote ⁴³ was educated at Eton and pursued a political career. He was elected a Fellow in 1777, although he does not seem to have regular interactions with other Fellows of the Society. According to Nichols, his library was curious and eclectic. It was rich in old bindings, old plays and Caxton editions. Storer was addicted to collecting manuscripts. Many of his books were illustrated with prints by his own hand.Footnote ⁴⁴ Storer acquired the 1581 (23 Elizabeth) roll, although earlier custodians of this manuscript are unknown. Storer bequeathed this roll, along with his entire book and manuscript collection, to Eton College in 1799.

In the second half of the eighteenth century several gift rolls entered the archival collections, where they reside today. Robert Harley (1661–1724),Footnote ⁴⁵ later first Earl of Oxford, began his collection in 1705, when he purchased the manuscript and book collection of the antiquary Sir Simonds D'Ewes (1602–50). This outstanding collection was rich in historical documents; however, no gift rolls were included in D'Ewes' holdings. Robert's son, Edward Harley (1689–1741),Footnote ⁴⁶ second Earl of Oxford, resolved to create the finest private library of all time, and continued to add to his father's collection until his death in 1741. The Harley collection passed to Edward Harley's widow, Henrietta Cavendish Holles Harley (1694–1755), Countess of Oxford, and then to his daughter, Margaret Cavendish Harley Bentinck (1715–85), Duchess of Portland, who agreed to sell the manuscripts to the newly established British Museum for a fraction of their worth. The Harley manuscript collection included the 1562 (4 Elizabeth), 1582 and 1638 (13 Charles I) gift rolls.Footnote ⁴⁷ Humfrey Wanley (1672–1726) served as librarian to both Earls of Oxford and as agent in the purchase of books and manuscripts for this collection. No details have survived regarding the acquisition of the three New Year's gift rolls. In 1706 Wanley was elected a member of the Royal Society, and in 1708 was one of the three antiquaries who organised the Society of Antiquaries.

Another acquisition of the British Museum was made in 1765 when Richard Pococke (1704–65),Footnote ⁴⁸ Bishop of Meath, bequeathed his books and manuscripts, including the 1576 (18 Elizabeth) roll to the museum. His journals do not mention the acquisition of this gift roll and his donation of it to the museum is the first record of its survival. After graduating from Corpus Christi College, Oxford, he held positions in the church as archdeacon and chaplain, although he was more interested in travel rather than church affairs. He began with travels in Europe, and then ventured into Egypt and the Near East in areas virtually unknown to westerners. He published his Descriptions of the East in 1743 and 1745. He was consecrated Bishop of Ossory in 1756 and was translated to Meath in 1765. After his death, his collections of coins, medals, antiquities and fossils were sold at auction. Although he left his other manuscripts to the British Museum, they were not acquired after his death, but were later purchased in two batches in 1843 and 1859.

Connections of the gift rolls to the Society of Antiquaries continued with James West (1703–72),Footnote ⁴⁹ who was elected a Fellow of both the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries on the same day, 23 November 1726, later serving as president of the Royal Society. He collected books, manuscripts, coins and medals, and reputedly revived the love of black-letter lore and of Caxtonian typography. As trustee of the Oxford estates, he completed the sale of the Harleian manuscripts to the British Museum in 1753. When the manuscripts of George Holmes were sold at auction, West purchased the 1579 roll. He also purchased the manuscript collection of White Kennett (1660–1728) Bishop of Peterborough. In 1773, West's collections were purchased by William Petty (1737–1805) Marquess of Lansdowne, forming the basis of the British Library's Lansdowne Collection.

William Petty [formerly Fitzmaurice]Footnote ⁵⁰ held the title Lord Shelburne from 1761 to 1784 and thereafter Marquess of Lansdowne. His entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography provides extensive coverage of his military and political career, but is silent on his keen interest in books, state papers and manuscripts. His collection also included historical papers from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries as well as his own parliamentary papers from his service as prime minister from 1782–3 during the final months of the American War of Independence. Lansdowne had acquired the 1589 roll prior to 1788, as John Nichols transcribed this manuscript and printed it in his first edition of the Progresses. Lansdowne's purchase of West's library included the 1589 (31 Elizabeth) roll, as well as the papers of William Cecil (1520–98) Lord Burghley. He acquired Bishop Kennett's topographical collections, heraldic manuscripts from the library of Peter Le Neve (1661–1729) and the papers of Sir Julius Caesar (1558–1636).Footnote ⁵¹ After his death, his books were sold at auction, and his manuscripts were purchased by the British Museum in 1807.

Another Fellow of the Society, Gustavus Brander (1719/20–87),Footnote ⁵² was a London merchant and a director of the Bank of England. He acquired the 1579 gift roll from the sale of James West's Museum of Curiosities on 3 March 1773. John Ratcliffe (1707–76), book collector, handled the sale and noted in his copy of the sale catalogue, Bibliotheca Ratcliffiana (1776) that lot 738 was ‘Perfect'.Footnote ⁵³ Another manuscript acquisition was King Henry viii's 1547 inventory,Footnote ⁵⁴ which was purchased by the Society of Antiquaries in 1790. Brander lived in Somerford Grange, a converted priory in Christchurch, Hampshire, which had hosted Edward vi on his 1552 progress. He collected fossils found in the cliffs along the Hampshire coast, and proposed that the survival of these shells was evidence of the earlier existence of a warmer climate along this southern coast (a major scientific idea in the eighteenth century). Brander's fossil collection is now held by the British Museum, but this 1579 gift roll was acquired by John Nichols.

Three Fellows of the Society, John Nichols, his son John Bowyer Nichols (1779–1863) and his grandson John Gough Nichols (1806–73), contributed much toward antiquary studies, especially early texts promoting the knowledge of national and local history.Footnote ⁵⁵ John Nichols published the first edition of The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth in 1788, followed by a second edition in 1823.Footnote ⁵⁶ In both editions, he included transcriptions of five gift rolls: 1562, 1578, 1579, 1589 and 1600, which were the first publications of any gift roll transcriptions. In the 1788 edition the gift roll transcriptions were placed toward the ends of the volumes with their own pagination. In the 1823 edition these transcriptions were placed chronologically with other events of those years, while an index of New Year's gifts was added to the end of the third volume. John Nichols had acquired the 1579 roll from Gustavus Brander, who had acquired it from the sale of West's collection. The 1539 and 1552 gift rolls had belonged to Osmund Beauvoir and were probably acquired from Flackton's sale of Beauvoir's collection. John Nichols acquired the 1559 and 1594 (36 Elizabeth) gift rolls from unknown sources, apparently not in time to include these two manuscripts in the Progresses. Nichols did include transcriptions of gift rolls not in his custody, relying on his friendships with Craven Ord for the 1578 gift roll, William Herrick for the 1557Footnote ⁵⁷ and 1600 rolls and with William Petty, Marquess of Lansdowne, for the 1589 roll.Footnote ⁵⁸ He consulted the 1562 roll at the British Museum and the 1578 roll at the Society of Antiquaries. Nichols did publish his transcription of the 1557 roll, but he apparently did not transcribe the 1552 roll. He loaned the 1539 roll to John Sherren Brewer (1809–79),Footnote ⁵⁹ who transcribed it but did not publish the transcription. Brewer's transcription made its way into the collection of the Society of Antiquaries and was catalogued with three Elizabethan transcriptions of the 1564 (6 Elizabeth), 1565 (7 Elizabeth) and 1598 (40 Elizabeth) rolls, although how and when this occurred is not recorded (Fig. 1).Footnote ⁶⁰ John Nichol's son, J B Nichols, and grandson, J G Nichols, both antiquaries and printers, continued as custodians of the five gift rolls after John Nichols' death, but did not add any additional rolls to this collection.

Fig 1. Transcription of New Year's gift roll written on a torn piece of a manuscript wrapper, SAL, PEC/03 (formerly SAL/ms/997). Photo: author.

John S Brewer, an editor and historian, had been engaged by the Historical Manuscripts Commission to draw up catalogues for University of Oxford libraries, and continued similar work at the British Museum. In 1856, he was selected for the major editorial project, the Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, a project he described: ‘The correspondence of this reign came into my hands in the greatest confusion. It had never been collected into one place.'Footnote ⁶¹ His thorough knowledge of Henry viii's reign was put to good use with his transcription of the 1539 roll.

Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792–1872),Footnote ⁶² an obsessive collector of books and manuscripts throughout his life, acquired the record of New Year's gifts for the first nine years of the reign of Henry viii and the 1627 (3 Charles i) roll. In 1829 the first mention of the 1627 roll appeared in a sale catalogue, with no details of how the seller, John Cochrane, acquired the manuscript. Moreover, about 1836 he acquired two membranes of the 1575 (17 Elizabeth) roll from the bookseller Thomas Thorpe (1792–1852), and an additional membrane from Thorpe at a later date. Both booksellers, John Cochrane and Thomas Thorpe, were avid bidders at the sales of many distinguished libraries and issued descriptive catalogues of the books and manuscripts being offered.Footnote ⁶³ In 1841 Cochrane was the first librarian of the London Library. Thorpe was one of the main London booksellers of the nineteenth century who went far to cornering the market in historical, genealogical and topographical manuscripts, and issued a number of catalogues devoted entirely to such material.Footnote ⁶⁴ The gift rolls were included in the 1896 sale of Phillipps' collection. The 1627 roll and the Henry viii household book were both purchased by the British Library. The two sections of the 1575 roll were acquired in separate sales by Maggs Brothers, who sold the partial manuscript to Henry Folger in 1918 and another membrane to the Folger Shakespeare Library in 1937, where the pieces were reunited.

During the nineteenth century, Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries continued to influence the preservation and collection of the New Year's gift rolls. On 6 February 1879, Frederick Haines (1852–1904) exhibited before the Society three gift rolls: 1564, 1565 and 1599 (41 Elizabeth).Footnote ⁶⁵ Haines was elected to the Society in 1864. The records do not specify if these manuscripts were Haines' property or if he borrowed them for the presentation. These three manuscripts were not added to the Society Library collection, but transcriptions of them were prepared by Charles S Perceval (1829–89), a barrister and Fellow, and remained in the collection. The three gift rolls remained as a unit as they were exhibited by Haines and transcribed by Perceval in 1879. The Fellows' interest in these manuscripts led to a discussion: ‘The idea was to get a certain number collected together for publication in whole or in part in Archaeologia'.Footnote ⁶⁶ This thought was written on a torn piece of a manuscript wrapper, which was filed with the unpublished transcripts of the gift rolls along with some editorial ideas about how the information should be presented and how some of the participants on the rolls could be identified. Along with the pencil transcriptions is this intriguing, undated note: ‘The originals were then in the possession of a Mr. Watts found about forty years previously in a drawer in a piece of furniture in Serle's Coffee House, Lincoln's Inn Fields.'Footnote ⁶⁷ In the eighteenth century, Serle's Coffee House served as a ‘center of news, lounge of the idler, and rendezvous for appointments',Footnote ⁶⁸ as well as the possible unintended custodian of three Elizabethan New Year's gift rolls: 1564, 1565 and 1599. Just around the corner from Serles was the print shop of John Watts (d. 1763), located in what had been the Lady Chapel of St Bartholomew the Great. John Nichols said of Watts: ‘The fame of Master John Watts for excellently good printing will endure as long as any public library shall exist.'Footnote ⁶⁹ An American printer, Benjamin Franklin (1706–90), learnt the trade from Watts between 1757 and 1762, after which he returned to Philadelphia. At some point in the eighteenth century, Watts acquired three gift rolls, 1564, 1565 and 1599. There is no earlier record of the movements of these three manuscripts. Apparently, Watts kept them at Serle's, his home away from home, where they resided, forgotten, in a drawer into the nineteenth century. Importantly, Perceval's text of the 1565 roll preserved a section of the roll now missing in the manuscript: the gifts given to Elizabeth by nine lords and Elizabeth's gifts to the six maids of honour and the mother of the maids.Footnote ⁷⁰ In 1905, the 1599 roll was sold in a Sotheby's auction to Henry and Emily Folger, and in 1910 the 1564 roll was sold by Maggs Brothers to the Folgers. The 1565 roll was purchased by George Dunn of Maidenhead, Berkshire, at an unknown date, and in 1912, following his death, it was sold by Sotheby's and acquired by the Folgers. Many other items of Dunn's collection were purchased by The John Rylands University Library.

Four Elizabethan gift rolls, 1563 5 Elizabeth), 1577 (19 Elizabeth), 1598 and 1603 (45 Elizabeth), as well as three Henrician rolls, 1528 (19 Henry VIII), 1532 (23 Henry VIII) and 1534 (25 Henry VIII), are in the custody of the Public Record Office (PRO).Footnote ⁷¹ This institution was established in 1838 by order of Parliament under the Public Records Office Act ‘for keeping safely the Public Records', bringing together under a single custody the various rolls, records, books, warrants, papers and documents held by the central government. The seven New Year's rolls are classified as Chancery and Exchequer documents. It is difficult to state when these seven manuscripts found their way into the collection. The preservation of these rolls was probably through the commitment of the keeper of the records of the Tower of London. Two holders of this office, George Holmes and Thomas Astle,Footnote ⁷² were Fellows of the Society and antiquaries continuing the tradition of William Lambarde (1526–1601),Footnote ⁷³ who prepared his ‘Pandect of Records in the Tower', a catalogue of the extant rolls and other manuscripts, which he presented to Queen Elizabeth in 1601. Unfortunately, Lambarde's pandect has not survived, but succeeding keepers of the records remained committed to cataloguing and preserving these records. Holmes' contribution as a Fellow is mentioned above. Astle's extensive collection of manuscripts, partly acquired from his father-in-law, Philip Morant (1700–70), became part of the Stowe collection of the British Library.

The British Museum added to its holdings of gift rolls during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The 1589 roll was acquired in 1807 as part of the purchase of the Lansdowne collection that had been amassed by the Marquess of Lansdowne. In 1876 the 1588 roll resurfaced at the British Museum with no further acquisition details. The roll had formerly belonged to George Harbin and Osmund Beauvoir. In 1830 this roll had been presented to Henry Cory (1798–1875),Footnote ⁷⁴ an antiquary, who was solicitor to William Bentinck (1708/9–62) Duke of PortlandFootnote ⁷⁵ and son-in-law of Edward Harley Earl of Oxford. In 1834 Thomas Thorpe purchased the 1567 (9 Elizabeth) gift rollFootnote ⁷⁶ from a Christie's auction and sold it to the British Museum. No further details have been found of this roll's previous ownership. This acquisition brought the New Year's gift roll holdings at the British Museum up to a total of six gift rolls by the end of the nineteenth century.

Upon the death of John Gough Nichols in 1873, his printing business continued to be operated by his son and other family members, but his extensive library of books and manuscripts, inherited from his father and grandfather, was sold over an eight-day period in 1874. The five gift rolls, 1539, 1552, 1559, 1579 and 1594, were purchased by John Waller, bookseller.Footnote ⁷⁷ Waller, as his father and grandfather before him, operated a bookshop in Fleet Street at Fetter Lane, near or in the Mitre and Crown tavern. In 1878, when the lease on this location expired, he relinquished his book trade and devoted his time to autographs and manuscripts, operating out of his home.Footnote ⁷⁸ The signatures of three Tudor sovereigns on the gift rolls would have attracted his attention. Records of the purchasers of these five rolls have not been found, although they were not sold as a package.

Two gift rolls from the Nichols' sale, the 1539 and 1579, were purchased from John Waller by Francis Hopkinson (1810–98), a Church of England clergyman. On 19 June 1879, Hopkinson exhibited the Henry viii roll to the Society of Antiquaries and loaned both manuscripts to the Exhibition of the Royal House of Tudor in London in 1890.Footnote ⁷⁹ After Hopkinson's death, both rolls were purchased from Sotheby's in 1905. Henry and Emily Folger acquired the 1539 roll. John Eliot Hodgkin (1829–1912)Footnote ⁸⁰ purchased the 1579 gift roll, which in 1914 was sold by Bernard Quaritch to the Folgers. Hodgkin, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and a collector of books and manuscripts, transcribed this roll plus two Henry viii rolls, 1532 and 1534; all are preserved with his papers.Footnote ⁸¹ Both the HMC report and the published catalogue of his collection were printed before his acquisition of the 1579 roll and do not include details of this manuscript.Footnote ⁸² The locations of the 1552 and 1594 rolls purchased by Waller were unknown between Waller's acquisition and their reappearances in the early twentieth century.

The fifth roll formerly in Nichols' custody, the 1559 roll, was acquired by Frederick W Joy (c 1853–c 1911), who, in 1884, published a partial transcription in Notes and Queries.Footnote ⁸³ After completing his studies at Oxford, Joy was ordained deacon, then priest at Ely Cathedral. He served as librarian of the cathedral, and published a catalogue of the cathedral library in 1884. He published multiple articles in Notes and Queries, and was elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1882. The 1559 gift roll was sold at Sotheby's in 1887 and was again sold in the 1890s by the booksellers and cousins, Gilbert Ifold Ellis (1858–1902) and Robert Victor Elvey (1858–1934).Footnote ⁸⁴ Ellis and Elvey sold the manuscript to Percy Mordaunt Barnard (1868–1961), who sold it to the John Rylands Research Institute and Library in Manchester in 1913.Footnote ⁸⁵

At the beginning of the twentieth century some gift rolls began to be exported from England to the United States. Henry Clay Folger (1857–1930) and his wife, Emily Jordan Folger (1858–1936),Footnote ⁸⁶ began their book and manuscript collection with the purchase of a Shakespeare first folio in 1889. The Folgers were partners in collecting all things related to Shakespeare and his age, broadly defined. Regarding their collection of manuscripts, Henry Folger stated: ‘Our collection is very rich in manuscripts as I felt that they are of really greater interest than printed books.'Footnote ⁸⁷ In 1896 they purchased their first gift roll, a part of the 1575 roll. In 1905 they purchased the 1599 and 1539 rolls from Sotheby's and Quaritch sales, both formerly belonging to Nichols. They acquired two sections of the 1564 roll in 1910 and 1912. The 1579 roll was acquired in 1917, and the 1575 roll was acquired in 1918. By 1928, with the acquisition of the 1585 roll, the Folgers had acquired six Elizabethan gift rolls plus one Henrician roll. Between August 1936 and September 1937 an interesting correspondence exchange concerning the 1575 roll occurred between Joseph Q Adams, the Folger librarian, and Maggs Brothers, which resulted in two sections of this Elizabethan roll being reunited. Maggs Brothers located another membrane, which was identified as part of this roll by the description of Lady Howard of Effingham's New Year's gift to the queen found in BL, Sloane ms 814.Footnote ⁸⁸ After a year of correspondence and price-haggling, Maggs sold the piece to the Folger library for £10.Footnote ⁸⁹ With six gift rolls, the Folger Shakespeare Library, which formally opened in 1932 in Washington, DC, is the present-day custodian of the second largest collection of Elizabethan gift rolls and is tied with The National Archives (TNA) for total number of extant gift rolls held.

Booksellers and auction houses assisted greatly in the preservation of the New Year's gift rolls. Many of their sale catalogues provided details of the gift exchange process and stressed the unique cultural value of these manuscripts, while other catalogues provided little to no details of the manuscript provenance and transmission. In 1919 Sotheby's handled the sale of the 1597 (39 Elizabeth) roll. This is the first mention of the survival of this manuscript. Before it was exported to the United States, a photocopy facsimile was made, which is now in the British Library as Facs 692. The manuscript remained in the custody of its purchaser, Elsie Tully (Mrs E Dudley) Smith (1873–1966) and her husband until 1967,Footnote ⁹⁰ when it was sold at Sotheby's.Footnote ⁹¹ Ernest P Goldschmidt (1888–1954),Footnote ⁹² bookseller, purchased this roll from Sotheby's on 14 March 1967, and sold it soon afterwards to Dorothy Dear Metzger (Mrs Edward F) Hutton (1908–2002),Footnote ⁹³ socialite and second wife of the financier, who in 1972 donated it to the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. In 1974 Sotheby's handled the sale of a manuscript piece of the 1563 roll, which had been cut from it. The sale catalogue listed it as two signatures ‘Elizabeth R' on vellum, cut from the New Year's gift roll. On the recto this piece records two lines of text with portions of Lady Mary Gray's gift to the queen and on the verso it records the christening gift from Queen Elizabeth to Thomas Astley (c 1516–95). Maggs Brothers purchased it for a client who died in 1975.Footnote ⁹⁴ The present location of this piece is unknown.

Another instance of the important role of auction houses can be seen in the first notice of the 1584 (26 Elizabeth) gift roll. The Sotheby's sale catalogue of December 1931 describes it as having two nineteenth-century notations: ‘Lot 715' and ‘Fraseres, lord Lovat'. This manuscript was offered for sale by Alice Mary (née Weld-Blundell) Fraser (1846–1938), Lady Lovat, widow of Simon Fraser (1828–87) Lord Lovat. The roll was probably purchased by William Augustus Fraser (1826–98)Footnote ⁹⁵ Baronet of Ledclune, a politician and author, whose father had served at Waterloo. His collection of relics included Byron's sofa, Nelson's sword and the manuscript of Thomas Gray's ‘Elegy in a Country Churchyard'. The British Museum then purchased the 1584 roll. One of the gifts given to the queen by Christopher Barker that year was a Bible, now known at ‘The Douce Bible' in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.Footnote ⁹⁶ In 1975, J L Nevinson (1904–85)Footnote ⁹⁷ published a partial transcription of this gift roll in Costume.Footnote ⁹⁸

The Herrick 1557 and 1600 rolls were sold through Christie's in 1968 and were purchased by a California bookdealer, Harry A Levinson (1904–95). The departure from England of these two rolls and the 1597 roll led to the creation of photocopies that are in the custody of the British Library. Levinson sold the Mary roll to the British Library and the Elizabeth roll to Martin Bodmer (1899–1971).Footnote ⁹⁹ Bodmer was a bibliophile and collector who assembled an important private collection of books, manuscripts and artifacts. During the Second World War, he was responsible for the scheme that distributed books to prisoners of war. The Fondation Martin Bodmer Museum and Library in Coligny, Switzerland, was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2015. The 1600 roll is part of the museum collection, where it is catalogued as ‘the signature of Queen Elizabeth on a New Year's gift roll'.Footnote ¹⁰⁰

Following its purchase by Waller from the Nichols sale in 1874, the location of the 1594 roll was unknown for some years. Stella Pickett Hardy (1877–1963) purchased the manuscript possibly in the 1920s when she purchased a collection of genealogical documents from A H Stephens, a London genealogist.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Hardy was a distinguished Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) genealogist who did extensive research on Virginia families and lived in Washington, DC, until her death. Her estate passed to her nearest relative, Charles Farrell Hamilton (1914–97), who with his wife, Sibel Mae Cooke Hamilton (1920–2000) donated it to the Dallas Public Library in 1984. The librarian, Marvin Stone, sought advice from the Folger Shakespeare Library and Harry Levinson for an estimate of the manuscript's value as a donation.Footnote ¹⁰² However, its location remained a mystery for another thirty years, while a rumour circulated that there was a New Year's gift roll somewhere in Texas.

Sometime between the Nichols sale, when this manuscript was purchased by Waller, and before it was donated to the Dallas Public Library, someone added an adornment to this roll. The embroidered, quilted cushion was possibly intended as a protective padding over the signature of Queen Elizabeth. It was attached to the roll via a leather thong that was punched through the vellum manuscript. This attachment is composed of an embroidered piece probably cut from a larger work, then backed with a machine woven, quilted fabric filled with stuffing material and edged with an early twentieth-century cording.Footnote ¹⁰³ While totally anachronistic to the sixteenth-century gift exchange, it does exist as an example of the reverence and respect afforded to these gift exchange rolls and, although inappropriate, cannot easily be separated from the manuscript.

In 1964 one more gift roll, the only extant Edward vi roll, was added to the PRO holdings from the estate of a London solicitor, Wilfred Godden. His family had offered the 1552 roll to the HMC, which felt that a better custodian of this roll would be the PRO.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Details of where the manuscript resided between the Nichols' sale to Waller in 1874 and Godden's acquisition are not known. Collins' listing of the gift rolls describes rolls of 1552 and 1553,Footnote ¹⁰⁵ although this is a matter of confusing regnal years. The path of ownership from Holmes to Beauvoir to Nichols verifies that only one roll from the reign of Edward vi existed then and is known to be extant today.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ Although Nichols had possession of this roll, he did not transcribe it, and no transcription has been located among his fellow antiquaries.

Interest in the New Year's gift rolls was shared by many Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries, who displayed rolls from time to time at meetings. Studies of the value and contributions of the New Year's gift rolls were continued with John Nichols' transcriptions in the Progresses. In 1955 Collins was the first scholar to undertake a comprehensive analysis of the rolls. He lamented how little use had been made of them by professional historians: ‘The neglect is the more to be deplored in that the rolls afford guidance of a kind unobtainable from any other source.'Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Publication of transcriptions of the Elizabethan gift rolls after Nichols' Progresses was limited to two journal articles, Frederick Joy in 1884 and John Nevinson in 1975, and Maria Hayward's 1539 transcription in 2005.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Two transcriptions of the one extant Marian roll were published, first in 1797 by John Nichols and then in 1989 by David Loades.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ The 2013 edition of The Elizabethan New Year's Gift Exchanges found that little work had been done since Collins in providing access to the mass of information in these manuscripts.Footnote ¹¹⁰ This edition included additional rolls that have not heretofore been subject to scholarly analysis, the 1571 roll in the collection of the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry, the 1594 roll at the Dallas Public Library and the 1597 roll at the Morgan Library, as well as the single surviving paper draft from 1582 at Somerset Archives and Record Service.Footnote ¹¹¹ Current research continues in the search for extant gift rolls and the transcription and publication of the early Tudor rolls from the reigns of Edward vi and Mary. The three extant rolls, 1672 (23 Charles II), 1675 (26 Charles II) and 1676 (27 Charles II), of the later Stuarts offer another area for future research.Footnote ¹¹²

A few later studies have drawn on a number of these manuscripts for their specialised research interests. Janet Arnold regularly used the rolls' descriptions of articles of clothing and jewels in her contributions to the history of costume during the period, notably in her monumental Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe Unlock'd.Footnote ¹¹³ In Records of English Court Music and A Biographical Dictionary of English Church Musicians, Andrew Ashbee and David Lasocki combed the rolls to identify court musicians and cited representative examples of the gifts presented by and to them.Footnote ¹¹⁴ Steven May found the New Year's gift rolls among the most useful criteria for identifying courtiers in his study of The Elizabethan Courtier Poets and analysed the personnel involved in twenty-three Elizabethan New Year's exchanges, describing them as ‘persons who were, with a few exceptions, actually known to the Queen'.Footnote ¹¹⁵ Otherwise, before 2013 Elizabethan studies rarely cited the substantial and varied information found in these documents, and even that use has been almost wholly restricted to the seven New Year's rolls edited in whole or part to date. Lawson's edition has been cited with some frequency since then.Footnote ¹¹⁶

In 2014 the massive project to publish a new critical edition of John Nichols' Progresses was completed in five volumes, expanded from his original three volumes. This included the five New Year's gift rolls published in the original edition. However, per an editorial decision, only the lists of gifts presented to Elizabeth were included, omitting the lists of gifts given by the queen.Footnote ¹¹⁷ Also omitted was an ‘Index of New Year's Gifts given to and by the Queen', which had been a part of the 1823 edition.Footnote ¹¹⁸ The new edition does refer the reader to Lawson's edition in the header for each roll, although there is no entry for this in the bibliography. Additionally, the general index does not include separate entries for new year or gift exchanges, instead entering the information under ‘Elizabeth I: chronology [year]' and ‘New year gifts'.

The New Year's gift exchange manuscripts have been witness to or participants in some of the major library/archival events of the past 500 years. The former custodians of the gift rolls valued them for their content and their connections to the monarch. The present-day custodians have acquired them as jewels among their collections. The seventeenth century endured the regicide of Charles i, the Restoration and the return to the monarchy. The eighteenth century welcomed the British Museum, and the nineteenth century saw the establishment of the PRO. In 1998 the British Library was separated from the British Museum with its new London facility. In 2003 TNA was formed from four separate organisations, the Public Record Office, the Historical Manuscripts Commission, His Majesty's Stationery Office and the Office of Public Sector Information, with a new facility constructed at Kew, where PRO documents had been housed since 1997. In the twentieth century the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Morgan Library and Museum and the Fondation Martin Bodmer were established by ardent bibliophiles who intended their collections to be preserved and to be shared with the public. It should be noted that the New Year's gift rolls and many other manuscripts relating to court and state were manifestly official government documents. The unregulated circulation of government documents through private hands occurred prior to the establishment of the official record repositories. These documents were often considered the property of the office holder and were passed down through the family muniments. Their movements among antiquaries, clergymen, peers and successful businessmen reflected the consequences created by the destruction of government depositories during the Commonwealth. Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries, among others, were responsible for preserving and transmitting many of the gift rolls from one custodian to another, increasingly with the intervention of professional booksellers.

The New Year's gift exchange rolls have occupied places of honour in exhibitions such as the 1890 Exhibition of the Royal House of Tudor, the 2003 exhibitions at the National Maritime Museum and the Folger Shakespeare Library (celebrating the 400th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth's death) and, most recently, in 2022–3 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.Footnote ¹¹⁹ They were held and exhibited as curiosities and treasures in the collections of a roll of preeminent antiquaries and bibliophiles, including John Nichols, two Earls of Oxford, the Marquess of Lansdowne and Sir Thomas Phillipps. They have passed through the hands of multiple Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries and major booksellers. For the ease of use by scholars, it would be optimal to have all the New Year's gift rolls united together in a single archive; they are, after all, official English historical documents. Instead, we have access to them scattered among the eleven present-day custodians. In addition, the texts of twenty-five Elizabethan rolls plus three rolls from other reigns are accessible through published transcriptions. Scholarship would benefit greatly from editions of the remaining Tudor and Stuart gift rolls. They provide valuable evidence for more detailed understanding of the Tudor and Stuart courts and society.