Add MS 78168-78271

GONSON AND BROWNE

78168-78271. EVELYN PAPERS. Vols. I-CIV. Papers which accrued to the Evelyn archive as the family papers of Mary, wife of John Evelyn (1620-1706) and only surviving child of Sir Richard Browne, Bart (1605-1683). They consist of papers (78168-78171) which descended to Browne through his mother Thomasine (d. 1638) from her father Benjamin Gonson the elder (d. 1577) and grandfather William Gonson (d. 1545), both of whom had been in turn Treasurers of the Navy; further papers (78172-78185) of Browne’s paternal grandfather, Sir Richard Browne (d. 1604), M.P., of Horsley, co. Essex, and later of Sayes Court, Deptford, reflecting his service in the household of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (78172-78178), and later in that of Elizabeth I (78179-78175); papers of his father Christopher Browne (d. 1646) (78186-78188); and papers of Sir Richard Browne, Bart. (78189-78263). For a pedigree of the Gonson and Browne families, 1634, see The Visitation of Essex, ed. W. C. Metcalfe, Harleian Society, vol. XIII, 1878, II, pp. 359-61; and family notes of Sir Richard Browne among the Pepys papers in the Bodleian Library, MSS Rawl. A 183 and 308, and Add. MS 15857, f. 153. The central part of the collection (78189-78209) consists of diplomatic correspondence and papers of Browne relating to his duties as resident to Charles I and II in France, 1641-1660, and (78210-78219) as clerk of the Privy Council after the Restoration. By virtue of his clerkship Browne came into possession at the Restoration of a series of informations and petitions, etc. (78256-78260), that had been submitted to the Council of State between 1649 and 1652. Also included (78220-78254) are personal and family correspondence, household accounts, early academic exercises and manuscripts owned by or presented to Browne. A extra dimension is added by the survival of papers relating to Charles II, including a minute-book (78255) kept by Sir Richard Fanshawe as secretary to Prince Charles’s council of war at Bristol in 1645 and official papers (78256, 78257) of Sir Robert Long, private secretary to Charles in Paris in 1648 and 1649. These are complemented by a series of papers (78264-78271) of Charles’s secretary of state, Sir Edward Nicholas, that were acquired by Evelyn’s grandson, Sir John Evelyn, 1^st Bart., in the mid-18^th century from the archive that was formerly in the possession of Nicholas’s descendants at West Horsley, co. Surrey.

One hundred and four volumes, arranged as follows:

78168-78171: William and Benjamin Gonson

78172-78185: Sir Richard Browne, Kt. (d. 1604)

78186-78188: Christopher Browne (1577-1646)

78189-78263: Sir Richard Browne, Bart (1605-1683)

78264-78271: Sir Edward Nicholas (1593-1669)