Catalogue description Hertslet Papers

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Details of FO 351
Reference: FO 351
Title: Hertslet Papers
Description:

This series contains the collection of accounts, vouchers, registers, regulations and other papers relating to Foreign Service Messengers which was formed by Foreign Office librarian Lewis Hertslet in his capacity first as private agent and then as superintendent of messengers.

Date: 1730-1854
Related material:

For further records relating to messengers see FO 850

Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English
Creator:

Lewis Hertslet, 1787-1870

Physical description: 51 volume(s)
Administrative / biographical background:

Lewis Hertslet was born in November 1787. He entered the civil service and on 5th February 1801 was appointed as sub-librarian at the Foreign Office. On 6th January 1810 he became librarian and Keeper of the Papers. He was one of the two secretaries of the Lord Justices in England, while George IV was absent in Hanover in 1821.

He married Hannah Harriet Cooke, daughter of George Cooke of Westminster, and it was their youngest son (Sir) Edward Hertslet (1824-1902) who succeeded his father as Foreign Office librarian on 20th November 1857. Lewis Hertslet initiated and his son continued the two series of publications Hertslet's Commercial Treaties (from 1820) and British and Foreign State Papers which eventually, in 1922, became a single series published officially by the Foreign Office. Lewis Hertslet died on 16th March 1870.

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