Catalogue description ABRAHAM FARLEY, DEPUTY CHAMBERLAIN OF THE EXCHEQUER

The Farley papers: an accumulation of private and semi-official papers of successive deputy chamberlains and keepers of the records in the Chapter House (that is, of the official custodians of the records housed in the Treasury of the Receipt); with some earlier, and unrelated strays from records in that custody.

The papers of John Lawton and of Abraham Farley, who appears to have been related to Lawton by marriage, include both personal papers and private office papers relating to searches in the records. As such, the latter include some evidence concerning Farley's interest in Domesday Book, of which he was, eventually, to be the editor in the edition produced for Parliament in 1783; as well as of his searches, for a fee, in other records in his care (for his work on Domesday, see M M Condon and E M Hallam,"Government printing of the Public Records in the eighteenth century", Journal of the Society of Archivists, vii (1984), pp 376-382).

Private papers include a collection relating to the election of the mayor of Orford, Suffolk, 1734-1736; accounts, including household and trademens' bills, and correspondence of the Revd John Whittington, for whom Farley acted as executor; correspondence, legal papers, and estate records of Farley, Lawton, and Anne Lawton, but including also rents paid for houses in Downing Street, leased for official purposes; building accounts, including works for Lawton at Upminster and Stanford le Hope, Essex (a map of stanford and Hornden, formerly among these papers, is now MPB 3) and papers concerning the office of clerk to the supreme court in St Iago, Jamaica, granted to Lawton, Farley, and one Nicholas Paxton, and the longest liver of them; receipts and other papers concerning the payment of land tax and pew rents; and papers concerning seditious literature.

Unrelated papers include a drapers account book, 1638 (E 192/25, pt 1) records both of the Court of Wards and of Star Chamber, and also a few early common law strays, all of which were deposited in the Treasury of the Receipt; and various shipping papers, which may or may not be related to the main collection, including an account book for the frigate King George in 1714.

Further papers of Farley and Lawton have been distributed through several pieces of SP 46, especially

SP 46/143