It is now nearly fifty years since the Oxford University Press published A Lecture on the History of the University Archives, based on one which R. L. Poole, at that time keeper of the archives in the university of Oxford, had given in the Ashmolean Museum. No corresponding account of the archives of Cambridge university has hitherto been published, and this volume is in part an attempt to supply that deficiency. An account of the growth of, and vicissitudes of fortune suffered by, the university muniments in the six centuries of their recorded history, given as a lecture to the Cambridge Antiquarian Society in 1951 by Mrs C. P. Hall, forms the genesis of Part I.

Part II has its origin in a summary guide to the university archives, planned by Miss H. E. Peek, which should set each of the main groups of records within its context of the ancient practice, policies, and traditional ceremonies of the university. The present survey attempts to show the development of the more important classes of archives and their place in the workings of the administration which produced them. It is supplemented by a brief conspectus of the classes mentioned and their covering dates and by a list of muniments of title to landed property, arranged topographically. Finally, a bibliography indicates which records have already been printed in extenso or in calendar form, and gives a selection, mainly of modern works, which have drawn upon them for source material.