The Blenheim Papers
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THE BLENHEIM PAPERS J. p. HUDSON THE papers of John, ist Duke of Marlborough, his wife, Sarah, and his son-in-law, Charles 3rd Earl of Sunderland, as well as of other members of the Spencer, Churchill, and related families, formerly kept at Blenheim Palace, were acquired by the British Library in 1978. They were originally offered to the Treasury in part payment of duty on the estate of the ioth Duke of Marlborough (d. 11 March 1972) late in 1973. The present writer spent two long week-ends inspecting the collection in the Muniment Room at Blenheim in January and March 1974, and made a list and valuations based on the original manuscript list, in three volumes, made at the end of the nineteenth century by J. Stuart Reid, which was itself based on the arrangement made by Archdeacon William Coxe at the beginning of the century. Staff of the Department of Manuscripts collected the papers from Blenheim in mid-November 1976, and the papers were stored in the Department pending their allocation to an institution. The Department of Education and Science advertised the collection in mid-March 1977, and the decision to allocate the papers to the British Library was announced in Parliament on 25 January 1978. Save in a single instance, the arrangement of the papers at Blenheim into lettered series, further subdivided into numbered bundles, bore little or no resemblance to any original arrangement which may have existed before Archdeacon Coxe arranged the collection early in the nineteenth century. Such little evidence as there is seems to indicate that Coxe disregarded any earlier arrangement that there may have been. At some point, many enclosures were removed from their original context, and several hundred enclosures have been replaced in their proper places in the course of the rearrangement. Letter-books and other bound items made up sixty-five volumes in the collection, but the bulk of the archive comprised loose papers which have been arranged into 545 volumes of some 200 folios, the standard size employed by the Department for the binding of loose papers. The process of arranging the collection has been described in greater detail elsewhere by the present writer.^ In the present arrangement, the papers of John, ist Duke of Marlborough, are placed first, as being the largest single part of the collection, as relating to the most important individual represented, and as being, with some inconsiderable exceptions, earliest in date. The British section of his correspondence (Add. MSS. 6iioi-66) begins with royalty, continues with Secretaries of State and other politicians, then diplomatists, and ends with naval and military commanders. To an extent, inevitably, some of these categories overlap. The foreign section (Add. MSS. 61167-263) begins with public bodies. Field Deputies, and commanders in the United Provinces, continues with similar categories for the Southern Netherlands, followed by Emperors and Imperial diplomats and generals, with similar correspondence for Prussia, Hanover, the Palatinate, other Allied or neutral German states, and Savoy and Lorraine. The papers which follow relating to the Camisards are the subject of a detailed article later in this issue by Mr. Peter Jones. The remaining section of this category of the papers relate to the Northern Powers and Portugal, and, lastly, to enemy powers. Correspondence and papers relating to prisoners of war, mostly French, are preceded by newsletters, with copies of intercepted correspondence, and treaties, and followed by requests for passports (Add. MSS. 61264-82). The last volume in an extensive series of petitions (Add. MSS. 61283-305) is an original file of sixty-seven petitions, about half of which have been restored to the file from elsewhere in the papers, with the aid of an original accompanying list and numbered endorsements in a single hand. At the time of writing, all save one have been found and returned to their proper places, and the detailed indexing which is in progress will in due course find the remaining stray, if it still survives in the collection. Military general correspondence, mainly operational, precedes military papers, which also include a collection of nineteen maps (Add. MSS. 61306-43). Amongst these military papers are receipts and accounts for Colonel John Hales's Regiment of Foot, which was raised in 1689, but lasted a mere eight years, being disbanded in 1697. The maps include a plan of the battle of Glenshiel on 10 June 1719 (Add. MS. 6i343G),^ when a force of 2,000 Dutch troops and part of the Inverness garrison under General Wightman, who appears on the plan, defeated a force of Spaniards and Highlanders under the Earl of Seaforth, Earl Marischal, and the Marquess of TuUibardine. The Highlanders included a party of MacGregors under the command of Rob Roy MacGregor. Then follow papers relating to the Duke's principality of Mindelheim, together with a map of the principality, which are the subject of a fuller article in this issue by Mr. Peter Barber. The arrangement continues with papers relating to the Duke's personal finance, and partly also to his wife's, which include accounts of their son, John, Marquess of Blandford, (d. 20 March 1703), for battels and other expenses at King's College, Cambridge (Add. MS. 61349, fols. 153-69), as well as papers relating to a quarrel with Lord Cadogan over investments made by the Duke while Cadogan was Ambassador at The Hague (Add. MSS. 61346-52). There follow papers of the Duke and his wife relating to building works (Add. MSS. 61353-7) both at Blenheim Palace and at Marlborough House. Letters of Sir Christopher Wren relating to Marlborough House are discussed and published by Mr. Arthur Searle elsewhere in this issue. Miscellaneous literary and other papers precede the civil general correspondence, which is followed by letter-books of Madborough and his secretaries (Add. MSS. 61359-403). There follows a bound volume containing letters describing the Duke's campaign in 1705, from Francis Hare D.D., Chaplain-General to the Army, and later Bishop successively of St. Asaph and Chichester, to an unidentified correspondent, bound up with a campaign journal of 1704, and the Duke's papers conclude with his wills, epitaphs, and papers relating to his funeral (Add. MSS. 61408-10). The papers of the Duke include a good deal of material by or addressed to Adam de Cardonnel, M.P., in his capacity as the Duke's secretary, but a small collection of Cardonnel's personal papers has been separated out from the Duke's papers and placed separately at this point, between the Duke's and his wife's papers. The papers of Sarah Duchess of Marlborough comprise correspondence with Queen Anne, with accounts and correspondence as the Queen's Groom of the Stole and Mistress of the Robes (Add. MSS. 61414-20), and material relating to the Duchess's 'Vindication', which is the subject of a detailed study by Dr. Frances Harris. Next, there is correspondence with the Duke, her husband, with her family and their relations, with her mother and her mother's relations, followed by political and business correspondence (Add. MSS. 61427-67), of which the most important is that with her political confidant, Arthur Maynwaring, M.P. (Add. MSS. 61459-62). Lastly, there is legal and estates correspond- ence and accounts and political and legal papers, partly relating to Woodstock, and general correspondence (Add. MSS. 61468-80). Some smaller archives, earlier than the bulk of the collection, have been placed here, preceding the papers of Charles Spencer, 3rd Earl of Sunderland, as they in part lead up to Lord Sunderland's papers. The earliest of these is a small collection of the papers of-Thomas Brudenell, rst Earl of Cardigan, mostly relating to measures against recusants in Northamptonshire, and to the sequestration of Brudenell's estate. His papers were removed from his house at Deene in Northamptonshire, stored elsewhere, and recovered by Cardigan in 1660, but the present papers appear to be strays that were never regained by him, and may have passed into the hands of the Spencers at this time. With these have been placed a number of miscellaneous earlier political papers, poetical pieces, and literary and philosophical papers not certainly attributable to any particular archive. A small archive of papers of George Digby, 2nd Earl of Bristol, mostly relating to the court of Charles II in exile, evidently passed into Spencer custody through the marriage of Digby's daughter, Anne, to Robert Spencer, 2nd Earl of Sunderland, whose own archive comprises diplomatic papers, partly relating to his embassy to Madrid in company with Sir William Godolphin in 1671 and 1672, together with estate and private accounts. The papers of Robert's son Charles, 3rd Earl of Sunderland, begin with correspondence of Queen Anne with European rulers and pubhc bodies, also with Arab rulers. This is followed by political correspondence, parliamentary letters and papers. Cabinet Council minutes, treaties, and correspondence as Ambassador on a special mission to the Emperor Joseph I in 1705 (Add. MSS. 61491 502). His diplomatic correspondence as Secretary of State for the Southern Department from 1706 to 1710 (Add. MSS. 61503-46), with a little later material, includes some addressed to Sir Charles Hedges, his predecessor in office. Sunderland obtained quantities of newsletters through Etienne Caillaud, of Rotterdam, and Francois Jaupain, Postmaster-General at Brussels. The bulk of these newsletters are from Paris, and these include copies of contemporary ballads. Jaupain also provided copies of intercepted correspondence for Sunderland. Jaupain's letters forwarding this material are also in this section, with correspondence of the decipherers Edward Willis and William Blencowe, and cipher keys (Add. MSS.