Add MS 56239-56247*

correspondence and papers of William Blathwayt, Secretary at War 1683-1704; 1663-1712, n.d. Partly copies and drafts. Latin, English, Dutch, French, German, Italian and Spanish. Blathwayt was a clerk at the English embassy at The Hague, 1668-1672, and secretary to the Earl of Conway, Secretary of State for the Northern Office, 1681-1683. The documents supplement numerous other papers relating to Blathwayt among the collections, including Add. 9719-9768, 37979-37992 and 38694-38713. For a biography of Blathwayt, see G. A. Jacobsen, William Blathwayt A late seventeenth century English administrator, Yale Historical Publications, Miscellany xxi (1932). The presence of material relating to Sir Robert Southwell (d.1702) and his son Edward (d.1730), who married Blathwayt's daughter, suggests that some of these papers, like Add. 38694-38713, may have belonged to the Southwell family. Some of the items were subsequently owned by Sir Thomas Phillipps, Phillipps MSS. 9997, 34499. 9997 was purchased by Phillipps from Thomas Thorpe in 1836 with a collection of over 1500 MSS: see Phillipps Studies, iii (1954), pp. 80-86, 164. For the Middle Hill Boards for Phillipps 9997, see Add. 56247*. For a wrapper marked '9997', 'Lot 463' in a 19th cent. hand, see Add. 56247, f. 150. Owned by Justin Robert Wynter Blathwayt, of Dyrham Park, Chipping Sodbury, Wilts., by whom they were deposited in the Gloucestershire County Record Office in 1968. Purchased at Sotheby's, 10 Feb. 1970, lots 336, 338, 341, 342, 345-347, 349, 350, 355, 368: the papers were rearranged on arrival at the British Museum.

Paper. Ten volumes. British Library arrangement. The Middle Hill boards for Phillipps MS. 9997, vols. 2-5, are now Add. 56247*.