The Downshire Papers

This collection relates to the estate and family papers of the Marquesses of Downshire, including the Hill, Trumbull, Alexander, Lee, Fleetwood, Sandys, Blundell and other related families. The estates are mainly in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, but extend to Yorkshire, Suffolk, Ely, Kent, Sussex, Ireland and elsewhere. Items of special interest include a very detailed indenture for laying out and planting (300 plants specified) the garden at Easthampstead Park, 1693; memoranda books of the Earl of Stirling, c. 1722 - 1738; the will of John Cowper, baker at Reading Abbey, 1407; papers on Windsor Forest, 1408 - 1814, and on the draining of the Fens, 1614 - 1700; military papers of Lord Robert Bertie (Royal Fusiliers and Horse Guards), 1741 - 1781; the papers of Dr William Trumbull, Admiralty lawyer and Chancellor of the Diocese of Rochester, 1554 - 1689; and a royal grant of surrendered land on feudal terms to an Irish chieftain, 1585.

<span class="wrapper"><p>The documents deposited by the Marquess of Downshire comprise, in addition to those catalogued here, a large and important group of papers accumulated by William Trumbull of Easthampstead (Clerk of the Privy Council and before that British agent in Brussels, ob.1635) and his grandson Sir William Trumbull, also of Easthampstead (Ambassador to France and to Turkey and Secretary of State, ob.1716), in the course of their official duties. When papers of this nature are found in family archives, the standard scheme of classification provides for their inclusion in section 'O' (documents deriving from the holding of public office). These Trumbull 'official' archives are, however, too extensive to be dealt with satisfactorily in this way. Moreover, they have for some time been regarded as a separate archive group. It has been decided, therefore, to catalogue them independently under the headings of 'The Trumbull Manuscripts' (the bound volumes) and 'The Trumbull Additional Manuscripts' (the unbound papers).</p> <p>Lord Downshire's ancestors in the male line, the Hills, have little place in the documents catalogued here. The main archives of the Hill family and of their Irish estates, formerly preserved at the ancestral home of Hillsborough, co. Down, are now at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast.</p></span>

• <famname>Hill family, Marquesses of Downshire</famname>
• <famname>Alexander family, Earls of Stirling</famname>
• <famname>Lee family of Binfield, Berkshire</famname>
• <famname>Trumbull family of Easthampstead, Berkshire</famname>

These documents relate almost entirely to the families whose estates (and consequently, to a great extent, their archives) were acquired by the Hill family in 1786 by marriage to a Sandys heiress. The Sandys family itself had but recently added to its estates those of the Trumbulls of Easthampstead by marriage to the Trumbull heiress.