Creating access to Archbishop John Swayne’s register through interdisciplinary collaboration, conservation, and digital advances

The Register of Archbishop John Swayne, Primate of All-Ireland (1418–1439), is a rare amalgamation of contemporary documents transcribed when Swayne was at the Papal Curia in Rome and the administrative record of his time as Archbishop. Following the fire which destroyed the Public Record Office of Ireland (PROI) in 1922, original medieval records within Ireland are particularly scarce, enhancing this register’s historical significance. Unfortunately, by 1630, the register had sustained significant water damage causing the paper to soften and deteriorate. The friable edges made the original manuscript inaccessible. The successful partnership of the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland (VRTI) and the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) has provided the opportunity to repair the register for the first time since it was bound in the early seventeenth century. Conservators at PRONI were able to design a treatment for the register which would consolidate the weakened paper folios, whilst retaining the characteristic idiosyncratic nature of its production and evidence of its use over the last 600 years. Support from the VRTI team and integration of a digital version of the manuscript into the Treasury has maximized accessibility by linking the records with a translated summary and contextual interpretation.