RCEWA Case 11 (2014-15): The Archive

Expert adviser’s statement

Reviewing Committee Secretary’s note: Please note that any illustrations referred to have not been reproduced on the Arts Council England website

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1. Brief Description of item(s)

 Papers of Thomas Walpole (1727-1803), MP and banker, with some later Walpole family papers  Comprises about 700 letters with some related papers  Contained within 1 bound volume and 7 archive boxes [see photo]  The papers were created by Thomas Walpole and his descendants.  The archive dates from the mid-18th century to the early-20th century, about 70% relating to Thomas Walpole and dating from the 1760s to the 1790s, forming the core of the archive  The archive is generally in good condition, with some minor age and dust staining. The bound volume, an album of important letters, has been attacked by mice in the past. However, they have only eaten the edges of album pages, and have not damaged the original documents bound into the album.

2. Context

 Provenance: The archive was inherited by Spencer Horatio Walpole (1806-1898) from his father Thomas Walpole the younger (to whom some eighty-nine letters are here addressed); thence by descent to the present owner.  The papers have not, as far as I am aware, been extensively used for research, having been in private hands. There are one or two references to them in the article on Thomas Walpole in the History of Parliament (available online at http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/).

3. Waverley criteria

 Meets Waverley 3  The papers are of outstanding national importance for the history of the 18th century

DETAILED CASE

1. Detailed description of item(s) if more than in Executive summary, and any comments.

The key part of the archive is the c. 380 items of correspondence relating to Thomas Walpole (1727-1803), MP and banker, covering the period c. 1760- c.1795. The papers provide a detailed picture of the workings of finance, business and diplomacy from the unusual point of view of a man who, although not well-known himself, evidently had connections with the biggest names in politics, business and diplomacy of the latter half of the 18th century. The papers complement another archive of Thomas Walpole of a similar size now housed in Cambridge University Library (Add. MSS. 8708-12), purchased from Sir John Plumb in 1988, who presumably acquired them from a member of the family. These papers are closely related to the material now under review. For example there is a long run of letters from Thomas Walpole to his son Thomas junior (see Appendix 2.).

2. Detailed explanation of the outstanding significance of the item(s).

The correspondence illustrates the world in which Walpole moved, connecting politics, diplomacy, banking and business. Although not a well-known figure himself, his connections are the key to the interest of these papers.

Thomas was a member of the famous Walpole family: his father was Horatio [Horace], 1st of Wolterton (1678–1757), diplomat and politician, brother of Sir (1676-1745), Prime Minister under George I and George II. Both Thomas’s brothers, Horatio and Richard, were MPs, and the latter also became a banker. (1717–1797), author of the Memoirs, was his cousin. He married into the Vanneck family, rich merchants, which gave him a place in the London business world.

Elected as MP for Sudbury in 1754, Thomas continued to expand his business interests, developing interests in, among other concerns, the East India Company, the bank of Walpole and Ellison, the French tobacco monopoly, a banking house at Lisbon, and the contract for remitting money to Germany during the Seven Years War. By 1760 he was one of the leading men in the City.

As such, leading politicians relied on him as a source for the views of the City on political matters. These connections are reflected in the presence of correspondence with William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, and Thomas Pelham- Holles, Duke of Newcastle and other major political figures.

The connections between government, diplomacy and finance are reflected in the 49 letters from Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden. This correspondence contains important historical material relating to reactions to the American War of independence, and Walpole’s role in trying to negotiate peace between Britain and France in 1782. Walpole’s correspondence with Jacques Necker (1732-1804), Louis XVI’s finance minister, reveals further his connections with finance and diplomacy, touching on the American and French Revolutions. Letters from Charles James Fox and William Petty, Earl of Shelburne, further illustrate the central role that Walpole was playing in diplomacy through his connections which ‘give you means … of learning the practicability of this object [general peace]’ [letter from Charles James Fox, 18 Apr. 1782].

The political letters are supplemented by a good series of letters directly relating to finance and commerce. One aspect of the papers which makes them particularly interesting is that Walpole met with financial disaster during this period. He had formed the Vandalia Company or the Walpole Company in 1769 in partnership with Benjamin Franklin among others, to buy tracts of Virginia ceded by the Six Nations to the Crown. The war ruined the scheme, and then he lost his lucrative French tobacco contract. The collapse of the firm of William Alexander entailed the loss of Walpole’s West Indian estates, pledged to the Bank of England as security owing to the loss of money invested in that firm. The correspondence shows how his financial position informed his desire to bring about a reconciliation between Britain and the American Colonies. He used his business contacts with France to keep the Government agents informed on the progress of negotiations between the French and the Americans, and pursued his own claims in the French courts against the firm of William Alexander whose owners had fled to France. He was in France from 1780 to 1789, and there are 89 letters from Walpole to his son Thomas, many written during this period, and mainly concerning his financial affairs. This correspondence is supplemented by a notebook kept by Thomas junior containing notes on the family’s financial situation. There are 36 letters from the American double-agent, Edward Bancroft dated 1780-1789 providing sometimes coded intelligence on the progress of the American war, combined with discussion of his business interests and their relationship with British politics.

Taken overall then, the correspondence is exceptional for its insights into the complexity of the period from the American to the French Revolutions, and for the numbers of letters from major figures: Pitt, Newcastle, Camden, Fox, Necker, etc. These leaders discuss matters of great significance for eighteenth-century British history, especially regarding Anglo-American relations at this critical juncture. The correspondence provides a very personal angle on the workings of the military-fiscal state, a key aspect of 18th-century British history, linking family, business and high politics. The Walpole family connection is of prime importance, and the correspondence reveals how Thomas Walpole was able to build on the family’s eminence: the West Indian estates, the banking connection with the Alexanders of Edinburgh, the East India Company and the Bank of England, and the resulting diplomatic opportunities derive from this connection. The papers illustrate a Whig family’s political and mercantile network extending into Europe and America. The family's business connections illuminate the development of banking at this important stage in its history in the United Kingdom; the links across the Atlantic are of particular interest. It is also rare to have papers which provide the responses of London firms to the threat of bankruptcy, and again the candour of the letters provide unusual insight into the workings of both state and society.

It can be argued that the Walpoles were a pre-eminent national dynasty in the 18th century in variety of ways; Thomas Walpole’s archive is important not just in its own right, but as an illustration of the ways in which the Walpoles continued to be prominent after the fall of the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole.

As has been said, Cambridge University Library already holds a complementary archive of Thomas Walpole papers; that Library also holds the papers of the merchant family that Walpole married into, the Vanneck family (12th-20th cent: deeds, estate papers, family and personal papers, NRA 20581 Vanneck).