Additional Hardwick Manuscripts

HMS/5

Additional Hardwick Manuscripts

1540-1873

These items are different in nature to rest of the Hardwick Manuscripts, firstly in that they are largely papers, such as settlements and letters patent, whilst most of the items in this collection are manuscript volumes. These records probably more closely resemble the Hardwick Drawers collection which contains largely indentures and deeds. However the indentures in this series were clearly identified at some point in their history as all specifically relating to family members and the establishment of the Cavendish inheritance, rather than related to tenants, neighbours or the estates more generally.

The muniment register is the item that links the Hardwick Drawers collection to this one, as it lists the places and locations of deeds that were in the Hardwick Drawers in the early 17th century.

This Additional Hardwick Manuscripts series also contains inventories, which are also present in HMS/2 and are records which were created as another way for Cavendish family members to keep record of their property. The settlements here also relate to many of the copies written into HMS/2/15.

HMS/5/3 and HMS/5/1, both purchased for the 11th Duke of Devonshire, are an account book of William St Loe and an Inventory of Sir William Cavendish's house at Northaw.

This series has been left in the original arrangement as listed in c.2000 largely due to the material already being arranged chronologically. No other arrangement would have made the relation of these items to each other any clearer. They reflect a small selection of all the deeds at Chatsworth across various collections, as well as inventories and transcripts. The very original location of all these different records is likely lost and they are probably best highlighted to future researchers in detailed item-level descriptions in series that preserves the later custodial link to the main Hardwick Manuscripts collection.

The Hardwick Drawers listed above are of a very similar type to the material in this additional series and provide greater detail about the compiling of the family estates and the their management during this period.

H/143/31 "Inventory of goods of the Countess Dowager [Elizabeth nee Cecil] at Chatsworth", 27 February 1684.

Other estate deeds, indentures, inventories, accounts and letters patent can be found in the Hardwick drawers GB 2495 H/143, H/144, H/145, and H/146.

H/143/30 "An inventory of plate taken at Chatsworth", 26 August 1682.

H/143 contains the following inventories:

H/143/2 "Inventory of the goods of Sir William Cavendish" and a deed to continue the same in the family, 1559.

H/143/25 "A collection of hangings of tapestry at Roehampton and Southampton House and formerly at Devonshire House and Bishopsgate".

H/143/8 Inventory of the plate sent from London to the country, 21 August 1587.

Other deeds relating to the estate can be found in the Hardwick charters (GB 2495 HC).

HM/ADD

2 boxes

These items were, prior to December 2016, kept in two boxes labelled "Bess and Earls' Miscellanea." The majority of the papers evidently have a similar custodial history to those found in the Hardwick Manuscript and Hardwick Drawers collections, but as of December 2016 they remained uncatalogued and thus without a reference number.