Add MS 78908-78909

TOWNSHEND PAPERS. VOL. I, II. Correspondence of Townshend with George II; 1728-1730. Consisting of informal messages and covering notes to diplomatic documents from Townshend to George II, chiefly about foreign affairs, in the hand of an amanuensis (probably because his handwriting was not clear enough to be read easily) and signed by him, with the King’s autograph responses added to them. When acquired most of the documents were in five bundles, sewn through the top left-hand corner with pink thread. The use of a similar pink thread to sew some of the larger diplomatic documents into gatherings suggests that these bundles may be contemporary. Since a number of the notes and responses are undated and not all are readily dateable by other means, the order of the documents in the bundles has been retained for what evidential value it may have, though where the documents are dated they do not indicate that the order within or between the bundles is strictly chronological. The collection is mentioned in H.M.C. Townshend MSS (11^th Report, App. IV), p. 120, where it is described as being `in a card board cover’ which no longer survives. About thirty of the exchanges are printed by William Coxe in his Memoirs of the Life and Administration of Sir Robert Walpole (1798), III, pp. 520-543. For Coxe’s transcripts of this period, see Add. MSS 9148-9197.

Two volumes.