Inventory of Henry VIII of England

The Inventory of Henry VIII of England compiled in 1547 is a list of the possessions of the crown, now in the British Library as Harley Ms. 1419.

The inventory was made following a commission of 14 September 1547 during the first year of the reign of Edward VI of England. The surviving manuscripts list the possessions of Henry VIII of England item by item, by their location in houses. The armaments of ships and forts are also recorded. Altogether there are 17,810 items listed, and some of these entries contain multiple objects. Despite this abundance, only a very small number of objects survive and can be identified. The monetary values of the objects were not recorded, though the weights of many gold and silver items were given.

The three original manuscripts of the Inventory are; Society of Antiquaries MS 129A & B, and a duplicate copy at British Library Additional MS 46348; and British Library Harley MS 1419A & B. BL Add. MS 46348 was used in the Tower of London after the inventory was compiled to track changes in the royal collections and contains later annotations.

These manuscripts were edited and published in full for the first time in 1998. The published transcription allotted each item an index number to facilitate further study. The team of editors provided a thematic index of generic headings in alphabetical order. Within the index many heading provide short glossaries. This indexing solution to the large number of royal possessions has itself a helpful introduction running to three and half pages.

Another manuscript lists the ships of Henry VIII's navy; the three Anthony Rolls are kept by Magdalene College, Cambridge, and the British Library, and were published in 2000. Partial details of the royal library and other separate inventories of the King's books were also published in 2000. The comparable and shorter inventories of James V of Scotland and Mary, Queen of Scots were published in 1815, 1844, 1863 and 2004, from manuscripts in the National Archives of Scotland and British Library.

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