Add MS 46454-46464

SHREWSBURY (TALBOT) PAPERS

Correspondence and family papers (together with copies and abstracts of some earlier documents ) of the second line of the Talbot Earls of Shrewsbury, dating from circ. 1400-1858. The collection opens with the papers of Sir Gilbert Talbot, K.G., Deputy Lieut. of Calais in the reigns of Henry VII and VIII. Before the succession of his great-great-grandson, George Talbot, as 9th Earl of Shrewsbury in 1618, Sir Gilbert's descendants lived at Grafton, co. Worc., and Albrighton, co. Salop, and many papers relate to their property there (see especially Add. MSS. 46457, 46458, 46461). Except for the Duke of Shrewsbury (Lord High Treasurer 1714) who turned Protestant, the members of this second line of Talbots were Roman Catholics, marrying into families of similar persuasion; thus the Catholic families of the West of England feature largely in the collection (e.g. the Windsors, Throckmortons, Lygons and Lyttletons), and the 'cousin Gage' whom Frances Talbot, wife of the 10th Earl of Shrewsbury, chose to carry her dying requests to her husband in 1652, is the Rev. George Gage, the Catholic political agent (see Add. MS. 46457, ff. 127, 129; and also Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1651-1652, pp. 1, 2, 10, 11). Included are two other collections of papers, viz:- (1) those of Jean de Blicquy de Houpplines, French secretary at Calais during Sir Gilbert Talbot's term of office there, Add. MSS. 46455, 46456; and (2) those of the Wellys al. Welles family of Hoar Cross, in Yoxall, co. Staff., mainly in Add. MS. 46460. 'The collection goes down to the death of Bertram Arthur Talbot, 17th Earl of Shrewsbury, in 1856 and the success of the claim of his Protestant kinsman, Henry John Chetwynd-Talbot to the title (see Add. MS. 46457, f. 164; 46464 B). While in the possession of the 17th Earl's executors, the MSS. (together with related deeds, now Add. Ch. 72121-74194 ) were briefly described in Hist . MSS. Comm., 1st Report, App., 1870, p. 50. Under the 17th Earl's will they were left to Lord Edmund Bernard FitzAlan-Howard (3rd son of the 14th Duke of Norfolk ), who from 1876 to 1921 took the name of Talbot, but resumed his original one on being created Viscount FitzAlan of Derwent in the latter year. In 1903 a fuller description of the MSS. was published in Hist. MSS. Comm., Various Collections, ii, pp. 289-336. Another, in typescript, by Miss Edith S. Scroggs is in the Dept. of MSS. See also E. A. Barnard, 'Worcestershire and the Shrewsbury (Talbot) MSS.', Worcestershire Arch. Soc. Trans. xiv, 1937, pp. 86-90. Eleven volumes. Paper and vellum. Various sizes. Presented, together with Add. Ch. 72121-74194 and Seals CXCII. 4 - 8, by the 1st Viscount FitzAlan of Derwent.