Add MS 78189-78263

PAPERS OF SIR RICHARD BROWNE, BART.

78189-78263. EVELYN PAPERS. Vols. XXII-XCVI. Correspondence and papers, official and personal, of Sir Richard Browne, Bart. (1605-1683); circa 1620-1682, n.d. Partly drafts and copies. Partly Latin, Greek, French, Italian and Spanish. Richard, son of Christopher Browne (d. 1646) and Thomasine Gonson, was entered at Christ Church, Oxford, in Michaelmas Term 1620 but did not matriculate in the university until 23 June 1623, the day on which he graduated B.A. from St. Alban Hall. In the following year he was elected to a fellowship at Merton College, and in February 1627 enrolled at Gray’s Inn (Add. MS 34702, f. 9). Through the influence of Dudley Carleton, Viscount Dorchester, he entered the diplomatic service, acting as secretary to Sir Isaac Wake during his embassies in Venice and Savoy (Oct. 1628-circa March 1631) and in Paris (March 1631-May 1632), and subsequently to John, 1st Viscount Scudamore, there (April 1635- March 1639). In 1635 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Pretyman of Dryfield, co. Glouc., whom he had admired since July 1628 (Add. MS 34702, f. 8). From 1641-1657 he served successively Charles I and II as their resident at the French Court, when his private chapel became a focus for exiled Anglicans. Much of the period from late 1652 to spring 1656 was passed in Brittany, raising funds from captured English ships. He remained in France until June 1660, after which he took up the clerkship of the Privy Council which had been been granted to him 27 Jan. 1641 and which he retained until 1672. Though he failed to obtain the Wardenship of his old college (see Add. MS 34702, ff. 199 et seq.), he was called to the bar at Gray’s Inn, 9 Nov. 1660, and elected Elder Brother of Trinity House, Deptford, in Oct. 1669 and Master on 3 June 1672. His daughter Mary was married in his chapel in Paris on 27 June 1647 to John Evelyn, who from Deptford on 6 Oct. 1652 reported the death of Browne’s wife (Add. MS 78221). His only son, Richard, died in June 1661. The present papers, while largely relating to his activities in the diplomatic service and Privy Council, include a quantity of family correspondence, accounts and legal documents, some academic exercises, etc., from his years at Oxford, circa 1623-1628 and a miscellaneous collection of verse in various languages. They supplement other items already in the Library’s collections (acquired partly from the collections of William Upcott, who removed them from the Evelyn archive in the early 19^th century), including Browne’s despatches to Secretaries of State, 1641-1651, now in Add. MSS 12184-12186; a selection of his correspondence, 1621-1683, in Add. MS 34702; and letters from various correspondents, 1624-[1712?], in Add. MSS 15857, 15858. Further items, also removed by William Upcott but later bought back by the Evelyn family, are to be found in Add. MS 78690 below. A limited number of Browne’s letters is printed in the Diary and Correspondence of John Evelyn, ed. William Bray, rev. by John Forster (1854), pp. 327-353.

Forty-four volumes, arranged as follows:

78189-78200: Official Correspondence

78201-78209: Papers relating to Diplomatic Service

78210-78219: Privy Council Papers.

78220-78224: Family and Personal Correspondence

78225-78227: Accounts and Legal Papers

78228-78234: Academic and Literary Papers

78235-78254: Political and Diplomatic Tracts

78255-78262: Papers of the Council of State.

78263: Outsize papers.