The Lisle Papers are the correspondence received in Calais between 1533 and 1540 by

Arthur Plantagenet, 1st Viscount Lisle Arthur Plantagenet, 1st Viscount Lisle, KG (died 3 March 1542) was an illegitimate son of the English king Edward IV, half-brother-in-law of Henry VII, and an uncle of Henry VIII, at whose court he was a prominent figure and by whom he was appoi ...

(c.1480-1542),

Lord Deputy of Calais The town of Calais, now part of France, was in English hands from 1347 to 1558, and this page lists the commanders of Calais, holding office from the English Crown, called at different times Captain of Calais, King's Lieutenant of Calais (Castle ...

, an illegitimate son of

King Edward IV Edward IV (28 April 1442 – 9 April 1483) was King of England from 4 March 1461 to 3 October 1470, then again from 11 April 1471 until his death in 1483. He was a central figure in the Wars of the Roses, a series of civil wars in Englan ...

and an uncle of

King Henry VIII Henry VIII (28 June 149128 January 1547) was King of England from 22 April 1509 until his death in 1547. Henry is best known for his six marriages, and for his efforts to have his first marriage (to Catherine of Aragon) annulled. His disag ...

, and by his wife,

Honor Plantagenet, Viscountess Lisle Honor Grenville, Viscountess Lisle (c. 1493–1495Byrne, vol.1, p. 305, Honor's birthyear was estimated at 1493–95 – 1566) was a Cornwall, Cornish lady whose domestic life from 1533 to 1540 during the reign of King Henry VIII is exc ...

(born Honor Grenville and formerly the wife of

Sir John Bassett ''Sir'' is a formal honorific address in English for men, derived from Sire in the High Middle Ages. Both are derived from the old French "Sieur" (Lord), brought to England by the French-speaking Normans, and which now exist in French only as p ...

(d.1529) of

Umberleigh Umberleigh is a former large manor within the historic hundred of (North) Tawton, but today a small village in North Devon in England. It used to be an ecclesiastical parish, but following the building of the church at Atherington it becam ...

in Devon), from several servants,

courtier A courtier () is a person who attends the royal court of a monarch or other royalty. The earliest historical examples of courtiers were part of the retinues of rulers. Historically the court was the centre of government as well as the official r ...

s, royal officials, friends, children and other relatives. They are an important source of information on domestic life in the Tudor age and of life at the court of Henry VIII. Although long available as transcriptions in the Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, they were first published as an annotated collection in 1981 as a six-volume edition, titled "The Lisle Letters", and an abridged selection in one volume was published in 1983, both edited by Muriel St. Clare Byrne.

Description

The entire collection, now housed within the State Papers of the United Kingdom at the National Archives at Kew, comprises about 3,000 documents, ranging in date from 1 January 1533 to 31 December 1540. During this time Lord Lisle was based at Calais whilst performing his office of

. The correspondence is between Lord and Lady Lisle and their family, acquaintances at court, retainers, and servants. The main correspondent was

John Husee John Husee (died November 1548) (''alias'' Hussey) was a London merchant, and the business agent in England of Arthur Plantagenet, 1st Viscount Lisle (d.1542), during Lisle's absence abroad whilst serving as Governor of Calais during the years 15 ...

, Lord Lisle's London agent.

Physical location

Following Lisle's arrest for alleged treason in 1540, as was usual in such cases, all his papers in the Staple Inn in Calais, his official residence, were confiscated and placed in the

Tower of London The Tower of London, officially His Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress of the Tower of London, is a historic castle on the north bank of the River Thames in central London. It lies within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, which is separa ...

. It is one of only three such collections to have survived, and it's the only one still largely intact and not amalgamated with similar documents, the others being the papers of

Thomas Cromwell Thomas Cromwell (; 1485 – 28 July 1540), briefly Earl of Essex, was an English lawyer and statesman who served as chief minister to King Henry VIII from 1534 to 1540, when he was beheaded on orders of the king, who later blamed false charge ...

(State Papers, Henry VIII, SP 1) and the small collection of Lord Darcy's papers. A few further documents from the correspondence of the Lisles survived outside the collection originally deposited in the Tower and are contained in the Cotton, Harleian and Royal Manuscripts in the

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British ...

. Some also were transferred to the Thomas Cromwell collection. The papers deposited in the Tower were subsequently transferred to the

Chapter House A chapter house or chapterhouse is a building or room that is part of a cathedral, monastery or collegiate church in which meetings are held. When attached to a cathedral, the cathedral chapter meets there. In monasteries, the whole communi ...

Westminster Abbey Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster, is an historic, mainly Gothic church in the City of Westminster, London, England, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is one of the United ...

, in the category "Treasury of the Receipt of the Exchequer", and remained there until 1832 when the Home Office ordered their removal to the care of the State Paper Commission at the State Paper Office, amalgamated with the

Public Record Office The Public Record Office (abbreviated as PRO, pronounced as three letters and referred to as ''the'' PRO), Chancery Lane in the City of London, was the guardian of the national archives of the United Kingdom from 1838 until 2003, when it was m ...

in 1852, which was recently re-founded as the National Archives. They are held today at the National Archives in the category "State Papers Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, SP3, Lisle Papers"

Editions

Summaries of The Lisle Letters were published between 1862 and 1930 scattered within the 33 volumes of the "Calendar of Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of Henry VIII" edited by J. S. Brewer, J. Gairdner and R H Brodie (London 1862-1930). In the early 1930s, Muriel St. Clare Byrne, then a young student of Tudor England, started an exhaustive study of the approximately 3,000 original documents then at the

comprising the Lisle Papers. Her work in transcribing, annotating and arranging the letters lasted several decades and was not published until 1981.Elton Two editions have been published as follows: *Byrne, Muriel St. Clare (Ed.), The Lisle Letters, 6 Vols., University of Chicago Press, 1981, . (Transcripts of 1,677 documents). *Byrne, Muriel St. Clare & Boland, Bridget (Eds.), The Lisle Letters: an Abridgement, with foreword by

Hugh Trevor-Roper Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper, Baron Dacre of Glanton (15 January 1914 – 26 January 2003) was an English historian. He was Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford. Trevor-Roper was a polemicist and essayist on a range of ...

, University of Chicago Press, 1983, {{ISBN, 9780226088006

Sources

National Archives, State Papers Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, SP3, Lisle Papers
*Slavin, Arthur J., The Lisle Letters and the Tudor State, published in The Sewanee Review (University of the South), Vol. 90, No. 1, Winter, 1982, pp. 135 et se
Elton, G.R., Viscount Lisle at Calais, London Review of Books, Vol.3, No. 13, 16 July 1981

External links

*
The Lisle Letters: an Abridgement
' online at books.google.com

References

Correspondences 16th century in England 16th-century documents