A collection of 24 proof plates for The English spy, all proofs before letters and all but one before aquatint.
Folio 75 C9 824
Acquired April 2016
53 L896 738
Acquired April 2016
Kept by the accountant William Pickin, this volume records a full year’s accounts for the estates of Charles Pierrepont, 1st Earl Manvers. This includes the income and expenditure for 31 estates from Burgh, Hemingby and Asterly in Lincolnshire, Old Cotes, Beighton and Adwick upon Dearne in Yorkshire, and Perlethorpe, Budby and Edwinston in Nottinghamshire. The final 20 leaves are the extensive accounts for Thoresby Hall, the Nottinghamshire residence of Charles Pierrepont. They record monthly expenditure for the running of the house and lands including: housekeeping bills, taxes and parish dues, gardens and nursery, out work repairs, servants wages, stables, husbandry and miscellaneous payments. Evidently a philanthropic man, Pierrepont paid for the children’s shoes, meat, bread and teachers’ salary at nearby Budby school. The table of summary records February as the month of lowest expenditure (£195.2.1) and December as the highest (£4923.5.1); the total expenditure for the year being £7928.19.0.
LWL Mss vol. 220
Acquired April 2016
Sir William Lee, 1688-1754. An inventory of Sir William’s Bloomsbury residence (taken 24 years after his death in 1788), is a remarkable document recording every item in all 30 rooms from the bed chambers to the coachman’s room, the servant’s hall and the kitchen. Every table, clock, candlestick, painting, pillow, bed, pot, pan, knife and fork are recorded with an additional list of linen, china and glass. The inventory ends with a 43 page listing of books located in ‘the front room’ and other rooms within the house. The collection, of approximately 1450 books, covers a broad spectrum of works including philosophy (Locke, Hobbes, &c.), politics, classics, lexicography, law, and literature (Fielding, Swift, Johnson, &c.). There are an additional eight manuscript receipts relating to Sir William senior. One is a remarkably dense 6pp receipt from Phillmore & Co. for building work ‘done at his.
LWL MSS 18
Acquired April 2016
“Satire on Bute’s alleged sale of public positions paralleled with Earl Talbot’s introduction of economies into the royal household. An auction is taking place in a large kitchen where, in the centre, Talbot, Lord Steward of the Household, instructs the auctioneer’s clerk at a table beneath the podium. On the left, three cooks, one a Frenchman planning to leave for Calais to work for “Monsr. Grandsire”, are mocked by a Scot for not being able to make haggis; another cook brandishing a gridiron and two ladles stands in front of the fireplace in which stands only a cracked pot filled with thistles. On the right, a poor man plans to bid for “old rags or broken glass”, and a stout middle-class woman plans to purchase a ladle to beat her husband, while Princess Augusta and Lord Bute converse intimately; the Princess points suggestively to a large pot resting with other utensils on the floor. In the background, a chaplain laments the lack both “of victuals and of grace”.”–British Museum online catalogue.
Catalog Record & Digital Collection
762.00.00.153
Acquired April 2016
A collection of 24 items including 11 letters from the coal merchant Frederick Miller invoicing Sir William for coal, five orders of ale from James Musgrave, and a beautiful printed receipt (completed in manuscript) for the use of one four-wheel carriage. Also included is an estimate by H. Gurney, dated December 8th, 1798 for ‘a roof to a new house at Hartwell’. Illustrated with a plan, the proposed cost was £122.6.0. Sir William died in 1799 and it is unknown whether the roof was ever constructed. A superb and rare archive providing both an invaluable record of the construction trade in Georgian England and, in the inventory of Sir William Lee’s London residence, a detailed picture of how an eighteenth century home was furnished room by room.
LWL MSS 18
Acquired April 2016
Kept by the accountant William Pickin, this volume records a full year’s accounts for the estates of Charles Pierrepont, 1st Earl Manvers. This includes the income and expenditure for 31 estates from Burgh, Hemingby and Asterly in Lincolnshire, Old Cotes, Beighton and Adwick upon Dearne in Yorkshire, and Perlethorpe, Budby and Edwinston in Nottinghamshire. The final 20 leaves are the extensive accounts for Thoresby Hall, the Nottinghamshire residence of Charles Pierrepont. They record monthly expenditure for the running of the house and lands including: housekeeping bills, taxes and parish dues, gardens and nursery, out work repairs, servants wages, stables, husbandry and miscellaneous payments. Evidently a philanthropic man, Pierrepont paid for the children’s shoes, meat, bread and teachers’ salary at nearby Budby school. The table of summary records February as the month of lowest expenditure (£195.2.1) and December as the highest (£4923.5.1); the total expenditure for the year being £7928.19.0.
Folio LWL Mss Vol. 220
Acquired April 2016
File 523 B824 M822
Acquired April 2016
53 L896 738a
Acquired April 2016
