INTRODUCTION I. THE LIBER RUBER . The Annals of the Venerable English College, Rome traditionally known as the Liber Ruber are here presented as the first of the many important documents preserved in the Archives of the College which is hoped in time to publish. The history of the English College cannot be adequately written until the mass of valuable material in the College Archives and in other collections has been made available for study¹ ; and this material will also throw much light on the history of English Catholicism in penal times , and on the biography and genealogy of the period. As A. O. Meyer has said in his England and the Catholics under Queen Elizabeth , the history of the College reflects in miniature events repeated on a large scale in the history of English catholicism as a whole ; and he shows elsewhere that the great importance and representative cha" racter of the Venerabile Collegium Anglorum de Urbe " arises from the a accurate understanding of the nature of the and fact that " for full catholic mission in England, as well as of English catholicism as a whole , it is necessary to go back to the source whence the vitality of the entire movement proceeded the missionary establishmentson the Continent. For no other English seminary have we such abundant and varied sources of information as for the college in Rome. " The greater part of these sources are, however , as yet unpublished. An incomplete translation of the Liber Ruber and other documents was indeed issued by Henry Foley, S.J .; but the present edition aims at giving, for the first time, a complete and exact reproduction of the Latin original of the College Annals. The manuscript of the Liber Ruber bears no general title. The two sections into which it falls are however each headed " Annales Collegii . " The first, further headed Pars Prima. Nomina Alumnorum, con" tains (fo. 4) the Register of Students under the dates 1579-1783, with is preceded (fo. 1) by the " Constituadditional details up to 1786. tiones Collegii Anglicani, which are substantially the same as those
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1 The outlines of the history of the College may be studied in the following works Gasquet: History of the Ven . Engl. College, London 1920 (to be used with caution as to details) ; H. Foley, S.J.: Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, vol. VI (Diary of the Engl. College), London 1880 (not always reliable) ; A. O. Meyer: England und die katholische Kirche unter Elisa-
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beth und den Stuarts, Bd . (Bibliothek des hgl. preuss . histor. Instituts in Rom Bd . 6) , Rom 1911 ; id., English translation by J. R. McKee: England and the Catholic Church under Queen Elizabeth , London 1916 (Meyer's work contains a valuable summary for the earlier period) ; T. F. Knox : Introductionto The First and Second Diaries of the English College, Douay (Records of the Engl. Catholics under the Penal Laws, vol . ), London 1878 (for the background and parallel storyof Douay) . There are useful studies in The Venerabile , a periodical conducted by students of the College , passim . 3 Meyer, op. cit. , p. 100. Meyer, op . cit., p. 110. Foley, op. cit. For the truncation of this version see below, pp . xiii, xv. 5 Foley's title for the Register- Diary of the English College not in general use.
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