Catalogue description Additional Wharncliffe papers

A large number of the letters are family letters, from Lady Wharncliffe's children, especially her youngest son James from her husband and from close relations and friends. James Stuart Wortley's letters are nearly all undated and their arrangement is very tentative. Addressed to 'Mamma', it is not even possible, unless a cover survives, to know whether the recipient should be called Lady Caroline Stuart Wortley or Lady Wharncliffe. A number of them have been wrongly dated by the original editors.

It is important to note that watermarks can only establish the earliest possible date. Many letters were written on paper bearing a watermark several years' old. Probably the most politically interesting are those written during the reform bill crisis, including a number from politicians of the day, among them the Duke of Wellington. Letters of Lord and Lady Liverpool, Canning and Lord Binning, relate to politics of an earlier period and a small bundle of letters from Sir Robert Peel spans the period from 1834 to 1845.

Lord Wharncliffe's eldest son was already active in politics during his father's later life and there are some letters to him from politicians at this period. These, however, form part of the (not very extensive) correspondence of the second Baron Wharncliffe and are not included here. A number of schoolboy letters from the sons to Lady Wharncliffe have also been excluded.

A bundle of letters to William Dundas (Lord Clerk Register) who married a sister of Lord Wharncliffe, includes three letters from Sir Walter Scott.

Many of the letters are undated. Tentative dating had been done in many cases by Lord Stuart of Wortley and this has been followed as far as possible.

Received 1 September 1953

In August 1954 a series of typed transcripts of some of the letters, and of some from another source, which had been prepared for Lord Stuart of Wortley, were given to the Library by the Hon. Mrs. Beatrice Cecil. A handlist of these transcripts has already been prepared.

James Archibald Stuart Wortley (subsequently first Baron Wharncliffe) was born in 1776 and was the eldest surviving son of James Archibald Stuart, second son of the third Earl of Bute. He took the name of Mackenzie in addition in 1826, as his father had done in 1803. James Archibald Stuart, the father, assumed the surname of Wortley on succeeding to the estates of his mother Mary, only daughter and heiress of Edward Wortley Montagu. James Archibald Stuart Wortley, the son, was M.P. (Tory) for Bossiney in Cornwall 1802-18 and for the county of York 1818-26. He was elevated to the peerage as Baron Wharncliffe of Wortley in 1826. He played a considerable part in the debates on the Reform Bill of 1832 and served in Peel's administrations 1834-35 (Lord Privy Seal) and 1841 to his death in 1845 (Lord President of the Council).

Wortley married, in 1799, Lady Caroline Creighton. She was the only daughter of the first Earl Erne. Her mother, Lady Erne (née Mary Hervey) was the eldest daughter of Frederick Augustus, fourth Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry. One of her sisters, Lady Elizabeth Foster, became the second wife of the fifth Duke of Devonshire, and another, Louisa, married Robert Banks Jenkinson, Lord Hawkesbury, subsequently second Earl of Liverpool and Prime Minister.

Of Lord and Lady Wharncliffe's children, the eldest son John (subsequently second baron) and the third son James (many of whose letters are listed) entered politics; their daughter Caroline married, in 1830, John Chetwynd Talbot who had a distinguished career at the bar.

The Wharncliffe muniments were deposited at Sheffield Central Library in several instalments. Two instalments consisted mainly of family letters. Those received on 1 September, 1953, included correspondence addressed to the first Baron Wharncliffe. These letters were not very numerous and a considerable number of them concerned money matters of limited interest. There were also several small packets of political letters arranged under correspondents by 'C S S W' (unidentified) in 1855, including some from Canning, Wellington and Peel.

On 18 May, 1954, a further large deposit was received, consisting of the first Baroness Wharncliffe's correspondence, and these form the bulk of the letters listed in detail. Not all the letters were addressed to her for they included some addressed to her mother Lady Erne, going back to the early days of the latter's marriage, but they had clearly been kept together by Lady Wharncliffe. This series of correspondence continues up to the death of Lady Wharncliffe in 1856 but only those received before the death of her husband on 19 December 1845 have been listed in detail.

Lady Wharncliffe's correspondence was received at the Library in a box arranged in bundles as left by Lord Stuart of Wortley and Caroline Grosvenor when preparing their biography: 'The First Lady Wharncliffe', published in 1927. This work makes fairly extensive use of the letters. The bundles have been left virtually as they were.