Add MS 72481-72620

E. SIR WILLIAM TRUMBULL

Correspondence and papers of Sir William Trumbull; 1646-1756, n.d., including a few items of the later 18th and early 19th centuries. Sir William Trumbull, eldest son of William Trumbull II and Elizabeth, daughter of Georg Rudolph Weckherlin, was a Fellow of All Souls (1657), became eminent as a civilian lawyer (D.C.L. 1667), and held the offices of chancellor of the diocese of Rochester (1671-1687), Clerk of the Signet (1682), Judge Advocate of the Fleet (1683), Envoy Extraordinary to Paris (1685-1686), Ambassador to Constantinople (1687-1691), a Lord of the Treasury (1694-1695) and Secretary of State (1695-1698). He received a knighthood in 1684, was a Privy Councillor (1695), an M.P. (1685-1687 and 1695-1698) and a governor of the Levant Company (1696-1710). After 1698 he retired from public life to live at Easthampstead Park, co. Berks., acquired by his grandfather William Trumbull, where he had renovated the house and gardens. He retained his interest in politics, built up a substantial library and became the friend and mentor of the young Alexander Pope. His archive reflects all of these activities.

Trumbull married firstly (1670) Elizabeth (not Katherine as is usually stated), daughter of Sir Charles Cottrell (d. 1704), and secondly (1706), Judith, daughter of Henry Alexander, 4th Earl of Stirling), who survived him by many years. In addition to its official content, his archive contains extensive family correspondence, particularly with his brothers and sisters and their children, and with his first wife's family. Trumbull had one surviving child by his second wife, William Trumbull junior (1708-1760). Some correspondence of Trumbull's widow and son and the latter's tutor Elijah Fenton are also included in the archive.

Estate papers and some family correspondence, of which some details are given in the relevant places below, remain at the Berkshire Record Office; see also Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, Principal Family and Estate Collections, I, no. 52. Sales of manuscript volumes by or collected by Sir William Trumbull, including his series of personal writings and commonplace books, were held at Sotheby's, 30 July 1963, lots 560-601, 26 Oct. 1971, lots 445-449, 18 July 1991, lots 394-396, and 21-22 July 1992, lot 257. Some of this material has since been acquired by the British Library, either as originals or as microfilms under export license regulations. Legal and diplomatic volumes are noted in the descriptions of related material below. Other personal or general volumes include: an autobiographical narrative to 1687, All Souls' College, Oxford (see also Gentleman's Magazine, LX (1790), pp. 4-5); academic exercises, BL Add. MS 70590 and Yale University Library, Osborn Collection (BL RP 708/1); travel diary, 1664-1665, Brotherton Library, Leeds; general and literary commonplace books, Osborn Collection, Yale University Library (BL RP 690, 691 and 708/3 and unlocated (see Sotheby's 26 Oct. 1971, lot 449). See also Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, Annual Review 1989-1990, pp. 23-29. The archive is selectively calendared in the Historical Manuscripts Commission report Downshire, pts 1 and 2 (1924), though the family letters and the period after 1698 in particular are only thinly covered.

When acquired by the British Library the papers of Sir William Trumbull were partly in the 'Alphabetical', but chiefly in the 'Miscellaneous' and 'Additional' sequences (see the description of Add. 72242-72245 above). The first two sequences were bound in 1829; the 'Additional MSS' contained a variety of related loose papers and volumes in no systematic order. The arrangement of the 'Miscellaneous' sequence was chiefly chronological, but with some family and personal letters grouped separately by correspondent. These groupings have been retained in the present arrangement, but the chronological order has been revised to remove obvious inaccuracies such as the misfiling of letters written between January and March of a given year, and related items from the Additional sequence have been assigned to their appropriate places. The original manuscript numbers have been pencilled on to the versos of the documents themselves and where practicable have also been noted in the descriptions below. Also included are a number of volumes originally part of the archive, dispersed chiefly at the 1963 and later sales noted above, and acquired while the main archives was in the course of arrangement; their separate provenance is noted in the descriptions below.

One hundred and thirty-nine volumes, arranged as follows:

I Correspondence: 72481-72542

II Legal papers: 72543-72545

III Papers as Envoy in Paris: 72546-72549

IV Papers as Ambassador to Constantinople: 72550-72562

V Papers as Lord of the Treasury: 72563-72564

VI. Papers as Secretary of State, etc.: 72565-72577

VII Letterbooks: 72578-72594

VIII Newsletters: 72595-72601

IX Papers relating to Parliament: 72602-72606

X General Collections of Tracts and Papers: 72607-72620