To get an overview regarding the use of documents in the study of history, visit

How to read a 200-year old Document  

The following are just a few of the many historical documents that are available on the web.

Collections

United Kingdom -- Primary Documents
Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts
Documents that Built a Nation
Medieval Sourcebook
Modern History Sourcebook
Sex In Medieval Literature (including the Cantebury Tales)
Early Modern English Materials
Sixteenth-Century Renaissance Literature
The Public Record Office
Institute of Historical Research
Renascence Editions
UK Archival Repositories on the Internet
EuroDocs
Avalon Project
World War I Documents
World War I Document Archive
Access to Archives
 

Individual Documents

Prehistory through Anglo-Saxon Times

Charter of St. Patrick (early 5th century)
The Anglo-Saxon Dooms (560-975)
Anglo-Saxon Poetry
Sutton Hoo (599-624)
Bede: Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation (673­735)
The Anglo Saxon Chronicle (890)
Beowulf (8th century)

Enter the Normans

Bayeux Tapestry   (This site actually allows you to view the entire tapestry.)
Domesday Book (1086)
The Domesday Book (1086)
Laws of William the Conqueror

Medieval Times

Charter of Liberties of Henry I (1100)
Constitutions of Clarendon (1164)
Constitutions of Clarendon (1164)
Assize of Clarendon (1166)
Assize of Clarendon (1166)
Peter of Blois to Queen Eleanor (1173)
John I: Concession Of England To The Pope (1213)
The Magna Carta (1215)
The Magna Carta Again (1215)
Magna Carta Once More (1215 )
Roger of Wendover - Runnymede (1215)
Description of Manor House at Chingford, Essex, (1265)
Matthew of Westminster: Simon de Montfort's Rebellion (1265)
Manumission of a Villein (1278)
Statute of Mortmain (1279)
Alwalton Manor (1279)
Quia Emptores (1290)
Three Summonses to the Parliament of 1295
Confirmation of the Charters (1297)
ConfirmatioCartarum (1297)
Flores Historiarum: On William Wallace and Robert the Bruce (1307)
The Declaration of Arbroath (1320)
William Langand. Piers Plowman (1332-1400)
Ordinance of Laborers (1349 )
Statute of Laborers (1351)
English Peasants' Revolt (1381)
Margery Kempe: The Birth of her First Child and Her First Vision (late 14th century)
The Canterbury Tales (1387-1400)
Dialogue Concerning the Exchequer (late 12th century)
Froissart's Chronicles of the 100 Years War
Jean Froissart: On The Hundred Years War (1337-1453)
Hundred Years War: Treaty of Troyes, 1420 and Conditions in France in 1422  
Paston Family Letters
Witchcraft Documents (15th Century)
Early Modern Europe: The Witch Hunts

Early Modern England

Letter of Thomas Cranmer (1533)
The Suppression of Glastonbury Abbey (1539) 
Wedding Ceremony -- From Prayerbook of Edward VI
The Chronicle of Queen Jane
The Works of Elizabeth I (1533-1603)
In Her Own Words: Elizabeth I
Elizabeth: On the Armada (1588)
Hakluyt: Discourse of Western Planting (1584)
Daemonologie (1597)
The Trial of Guy Fawkes (1605)
A Collection of Documents Related to the Colonies in North America

The Eighteenth Century and Victorian England

Adam Smith: From The Wealth of Nations: Of Colonies (1776)
Adam Smith: From The Wealth of Nations: The Cost of Empire (1776)
Macaulay on Empire and Education (1830s)
Chartism: The People's Petition (1838)
Edwin Chadwick: Report on Sanitary Conditions (1842)
Constitution Act of Canada (1867)
Dadabhai Naoroji: The Benefits of British Rule (1871)
Alfred Lord Tennyson: The Charge of the Light Brigade (c.1880)
Samuel Smiles: Self Help (1882)
The White Man's Burden (1899)
The Victorian Women Writers' Letters Project

The Twentieth Century

Emmeline Pankhurst: My Own Story (1914)
Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916)
The Balfour Declaration (1917)
Statute of Westminster (1931)
Sino-British Joint Declaration (1984)

Other Kinds of "Documents"

Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Recipes
Anglo-Saxon Cemetaries
Anglo-Saxon Weapons and Arms
Tudor Portraits
British Patriotic Songs
British Patriotic Songs, part II
Bodlein Library: Ballads
The National Portrait Gallery
National Gallery
French World War I Posters
More French World War I Posters
British World War I Posters
World War II Posters
Historical British Maps
Medieval Maps of Great Britain

Page last modified June 2004