Add MS 37663

LETTER-BOOK of Sir Paul Rycaut, Resident at Hamburg, containing copies of his letters to [Daniel Finch] Earl of Nottingham, Secretary of State, Sir Charles Hedges, Judge of the Court of Admiralty, William Blathwayt, Secretary at War, and other officials in England, to various British Consuls and Agents at foreign Courts, and to a few members of his own family; 25 Oct. 1692-31 Mar. 1694. The letters, while discussing the movements of the Allied Army against France in the Netherlands, etc., and the general military situation of Europe, have special reference to the interests of British merchants in northern waters. Sir Paul filled the post of Resident in Hamburg and the Hanse Towns from July, 1689, to June, 1700, and the present MS. forms part of a set of his letter-books in the Lansdowne collection, viz. 1153 A-E (of which, however, A and B are prior to his appointment abroad). In date it follows Lansd. MS. 1153 D. At the begining (f. 1) there has been pasted in the first leaf of an original letter dated Hanover, 5 May, 1693, from a Minister at the Electoral Court of Hanover, probably Ernest Augustus, Count Platen (cf. letter to him from Rycaut, dat. 3 May, f. 163 b). According to a note (f. 2) in the same hand as similar notes in the Lansdowne volumes, there was originally an index of matters at the end. The letters on ff. 3-13 b have been printed as one of Sir Thomas Phillipps Tracts. Paper; ff. i. + 408. Folio. Russia leather binding with blind tooling. Phillilps MS. 3073 (sale-cat. 1908, lot 648).

Sir Paul Rycaut, diplomatist: Letter-book: 1692-1694.