L29

Lady Lucas' Collection: Family Papers re Public Office

1550s - 1800

From: 1550 To: 1800

The estate accumulation for Wrest Park deposited by the late Lady Lucas is the best of its kind in the County Record Office. Considered however as a family collection it was like Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. The gap has been amply filled by the 1959 deposit (sections 29-32). Many members of the family have become clear as individuals, in their circles of friends, their home, their park, and in the public offices they held. The scope is so wide that this introduction, unless it were to be of great length, can touch on only a few points. As individuals there emerges first the shadowy but arresting figure of Amabel, Countess Dowager of Kent (d.1698), whose few scraps of writing suggest a woman of action; then her grandson the Duke (d.1740), buying peach-coloured waistcoats, holding office as Lord Chamberlain, embellishing Wrest Park, and in his mature age suffering bereavement and material loss. Most of all however there comes to life his heiress and granddaughter, Jemima, Marchioness Grey (d.1797), round whom in her 57 years' sway at Wrest are grouped her husband, Philip Yorke, 2nd Earl of Hardwicke, her two daughters, Amabel and Mary (both left early widows), and her large circle of York and Campbell relatives and friends; and for another 36 years much the same group continues with Amabel who became Countess de Grey (d.1833). Meanwhile another, the Robinson group emerges with the relatives of Mary's husband, Thomas Robinson, 2nd Baron Grantham, nearly all whose political career as Commissioner for Trade, Ambassador to Spain, and Foreign Secretary is laid bare. Of their home there are inventories from 1573 onwards. Late C17 and early C18 accounts reveal their household supplies and staff; while account- books for the same period give details, not always easy to interpret precisely, of the great days of the laying out of Wrest gardens; while the house is partly reconstructed c. 1676; and a great new house (before 1720) planned, but owing to the South Sea collapse planned in vain. The light dims again for the son of Thomas and Mary Robinson, Thomas Philip, 3rd Baron Grantham, who took the name of de Grey when he succeeded his aunt of Earl de Grey (d. 1859). For the life of a noble family in the 18th century it is a splendid collection

sub-fonds