Amongst the many thousands of letters and papers at Renishaw, it was not my good fortune to discover any of real historical importance. This collection is not, of course, to be named in the same breath with the Paston letters, nor can it be compared, either in bulk or in interest, with the Rutland, the Talbot, or the Verney manuscripts. Yet even the correspondence of an undistinguished family may illustrate the history of earlier times. The letter of 1661 upon the causes of the Civil War, the account of the Whitehall plot to assassinate Oliver Cromwell, the printed summonses to appear before the Commonwealth Commissioners at York and Westminster, the series of Civil War fines, the Restoration letter-book, and the papers relating to Titus Oates and Sacheverell, supply some new facts, and are not without value. The order for the disbandment of the Derbyshire regiments in 1646, the bargain for supplying the sheriff’s table in 1652, the letter to the London Post Office authorities in 1664, the amusing description of a journey to Nottingham in a stage coach, the agreements between the gentlemen of Derbyshire in 1690 and 1736, the certified extract from the Hatfield Court Roll of 1337, and the account of a riot at Sheffield in 1756, have at least a local interest. One is glad to know what the country gentlemen of the time thought of the hypocrisy of Cromwell and the indolence of Charles the Second, of the Great Rebellion, the “Sickness,” the Popish Plot, the Revolution, the South Sea Bubble, and the invasions of 1715 and 1745; but, as would naturally be expected from a family correspondence extending over three hundred years, these letters are valuable rather as illustrating social life than as records of public events. Concerning housekeeping, education, methods of travelling, visits to London, and changes of fashion and manners, they have much to tell us; of battles and sieges, the fall of ministries, the prosaic virtues of the Georges, and the innate depravity of the Pretender, not too much.