Английский язык

TEST

FROM PARCHMENT ROLLS TO OPTICAL DISCS

Exercise 1

Read the text. Translate it (orally). Make use of the Notes and the Vocabulary.

1. A public record is any physical relic which conveys information about government transaction,

whether it is a notched stick recording a debt of a few shillings to the medieval Exchequer, a scribbled

note by a Tudor king or a formal Cabinet minute. The Public Record Office holds the records of the

central law courts as well as those of the business of direct ruling; in earlier times the functions were

inextricably linked.

2. Most public records are written on parchment or paper in manuscript or, equally in recent years,

typescript, but increasingly electrostatic copies are to be found and electronic records on tapes and discs

are also being transferred for preservation.

3. The records span 900 years, the earliest being that phenomenal survey of the kingdom

conducted by William the Conqueror which the Anglo-Saxons nicknamed “Domesday”. With no

revolutionaries or invaders to destroy them, the queen’s records have remained virtually intact from the

early middle ages. Until the mid-nineteenth century they were kept, by and large, in the office or courts

which created them. When the cupboards and shelves started to overflow, they might be sent off to be

stored somewhere else. Access was restricted in a rather haphazard way; there were as many record

keepers as there were repositories, and each guarded his charges jealously. Only the tenacious and the

relentlessly inquisitive could get to see them and use them for historical or legal purposes.

4. With the nineteenth century came stirrings of a scientific approach to history and a new

consciousness of the importance of original sources. Between 1800 and 1837 six royal Commissions

agonized over the problem of the state archives. In 1838 the Public Record Office was established by Act

of Parliament, to take care and control of the legal records, Exchequer and fourteen years later all

departmental records were brought under its auspices. From 60 different storehouses the sacks and

parcels of rolls and writs and files were brought into the repository in Chancery Lane; from the Tower,

Westminster Abbey and all the nooks and crannies where they had been hidden.

5. As soon as there was somewhere official for them to be stored, the records kept appearing, as it were,

from nowhere. By 1928 there were 35 miles of shelves’ full. Government now produces in one year

enough paperwork to fill 100 miles of shelves. A carefully devised system of inspection has evolved which

ensures that a proper selection is made whereby all that is necessary for practical purposes is retained

and enough of the rest to document the history of the nation and its people. In 1954 the following

principles of selection were laid down: files were to be reviewed after five years in the departments and

the reviewers were to ask themselves if the records were of any continuing use. It was reckoned that

anything of lasting historical value would survive that process. When the files were 25 years old, or the

oldest paper on them was of that age, then they would be looked at again by the department and the

Public Record Office together. The records selected after the second review should be transferred to the

Office unless the department still needed them for administrative use. About a shelf mile of records are

taken in every year.

Notes

the Exchequer - зд. государственная казна

the Cabinet - кабинет министров

the Public Record Office - Государственный архив Великобритании

William the Conqueror (William I) - Вильгельм Завоеватель (Вильгельм I); король Англии (1066-

1087); герцог Нормандский; после смерти английского короля Эдуарда Исповедника претендовал