Add MS 4167

This volume largely contains the chronological index compiled by the antiquary Thomas Birch of the first sixty-one volumes of the main series of the papers and letters of John Thurloe, Secretary of State, 1652-1658. These volumes cover the period from October 1638 (a powerful letter from Oliver Cromwell to his kinswoman Mrs St John) to November 1658. The index for the remaining six volumes in this series, covering the period to May 1660, does not appear in this volume. The sixty-seven volumes of original manuscripts (plus a further six volumes of transcripts and translations prepared for the press but not actually published) are now in the Bodleian Library, MSS Rawlinson A 1-73.

This main series of Thurloe's papers were hidden behind a false ceiling in a garret over his chambers, and upon their discovery were sold to John Somers, 1st Baron Somers (1651-1716), lawyer and politician. Somers bound the papers into their current sixty-seven volumes. From him they passed to Sir Joseph Jekyll, Master of the Rolls (bap. 1662, d. 1738), and after his death they were bought by Fletcher Gyles, bookseller. After Birch compiled this list, the volumes were bought by the antiquary and non-juring bishop Richard Rawlinson (1690-1755), who left them to the Bodleian Library. This volume is here because it is Birch's own list, and Birch left his manuscripts to the British Museum. These included a number of other Thurloe volumes which had come to him by a different route (Add MSS 4155-4159, 4166).

This volume also includes the a draft of Birch's prospectus for the publication of the series by subscription, 1739 (ff. 187r-188r). The volumes were published in 1742, A Collection of the State Papers of John Thurloe, ed. by Thomas Birch, 7 vols (London: Fletcher Gyles, 1742). The heart of the volumes lies in the papers later bequeathed to the Bodleian, but they also include other Thurloe papers that came to Birch's attention. Many of the letters now in the British Library appear in the volumes: letters from Add MSS 4155-4159 are noted as then in the possession of Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke, whilst Add MS 4176 was then owned by Joseph Jekyll, esquire.

The published Thurloe State Papers gives the volume and page references to what is now in the Rawlinson Manuscripts; other manuscript items in the Rawlinson series which did not make it into print are listed in Catalogi codicum manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Bodleianae partis quintae fasciculus primus viri munificentissimi Ricardi Rawlinson, J.C.D., codicum classes duas priores, ad rem historicam praecipue et topographicam spectantescomplectens, ed. by William D. Macray (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1862).

This manuscript has to have been written between Jekyll's death and publication (i.e. between 1738 and 1742), and, as an incomplete list of the contents of a work in progress, may well also belong to 1739. The draft prospectus offers a complete index.

Contents:

ff. 1r-185r: Chronological index of the first sixty-one volumes of the Thurloe State Papers (now Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MSS A 1-61), compiled by Thomas Birch.

ff. 186r-v: Notes and jottings.

ff. 187r-188r: Draft prospectus for publication of the Thurloe State papers by subscription, 1739.

ff. 189r-198v: Notes and jottings.