ABSTRACT
The institutions which were of the greatest importance for historical scholarship in the seventeenth century were not the universities themselves, but the libraries, record offices, and learned societies of England. By informal ties, through friendship and patronage, the antiquaries and historians were associated with librarians and record keepers. The Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries did much to further co-operation between those who kept official historical records, those who collected them, and those who used them. Although this involved no clear-cut division of labour, it is nevertheless obvious that the interests of the record-keeper, the collector, and the antiquary were not identical. Historians and other scholars had to gain access to libraries and record offices as best they could; institutional arrangements affected the study and writing of history at the very outset of research.
