There is an old tradition that King Henry VIII first caused a particular room in his Palace to be assigned for the preservation of State Papers, and himself fixed on that room over the ancient or “Holbein” gateway of Whitehall, in which part of the contents of the “Paper Office” continued to be kept, until the gateway was pulled down in the middle of the last century; the tradition, however, at present, lacks distinct and sufficient evidence. But the official statement, hazarded (without any sort of reference) in the preface to the first volume of the Collection of State Papers of Henry VIII, printed in 1830, that “in 1578, an Office for keeping papers and records concerning matters of State and Council was established” is directly in the teeth of evidence which is precise and irrefragable.

Thomas Wilson, fourth in succession of the recorded Keepers of the Paper Office, was the nephew of the first Thomas Wilson, Master of Requests, Master of St. Katherine's Hospital, Keeper of the Papers, and ultimately Secretary of State to Queen Elizabeth, and Dean of Durham. He had been bred to the public service, under his uncle's eye, from his boyhood.