Stowe MS 200-217

ESSEX PAPERS: Royal warrants, official and private letters and other papers addressed to Arthur Capell, Earl of Essex, while Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, followed by a register of his own letters; 1672-1677. Eighteen volumes. Paper. Folio. The correspondence chiefly relates to appointments to offices in Ireland, grants of lands under the Acts of Settlement and Explanation, pensions, the farming of the revenues, the irregularities in the payment of the forces in Ireland, the disabilities of the Roman Catholics, ani other public matters. A few of the letters (vol. i. ff. 3-103 passim ) are addressed to the retiring Viceroy, John, Lord Berkeley of Stratton; and a few later letters addressed to Essex in 1679 are included in vol. xiii. ff. 351-368. The names of the writers are given in the index, together with references to the subject-matter. Among the letters those of Francis Godolphin, William Harbord and Sir Cyril Wich, who successively acted as Secretaries in England for Lord Essex, together with those of Lords Aungier, Annesley and Conway, are very full of Court news and intrigues. Other letters are from Lords Orrery and Ranelagh, the Duke of Ormonde, Sir Arthur Forbes [er. Viscount Granard in 1675], Sir William and Sir John Temple, Sir Henry Capell, Lord Essex's brother, Father Patrick Maginn, Chaplain to the Queen, Colonel Richard Talbot [cr. Earl of Tyrconnel in 1685], and the several Secretaries of State. A selection has been printed by the Camden Society, Essex Papers, ed. O. Airy, 1890.