Letters from Redgrave Hall

About this book

"This edition includes all surviving letters from the muniment room of a long-vanished Suffolk mansion, an important part of the correspondence of one of Tudor and Stuart England's most powerful families." "The Bacon family fortunes were founded by Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal to Elizabeth I. He was father to the philosopher Francis Bacon, hut this correspondence centres on Francis's half-brother Nicholas, Premier Baronet of England, one of the Puritan gentry who ran the government of Elizabethan and Jacobean Suffolk." "One important component is a fascinating run of letters describing a failed marriage negotiation for young Nicholas's sister between the Protestant Lord Keeper and the wily guardians of a young Catholic, William Yaxley, in the fragile opening years of Elizabeth I's Protestant religious settlement." "Also included are papers of the flamboyant courtier and diplomat Sir Robert Drury, a Bacon relative by marriage (and original inhabitant of 'Dmry Lane' in London): he was friend and patron to John Donne, who features in the correspondence. Later letters touch on the Civil War in East Anglia." "The letters reveal a wealth of detail about the lives and preoccupations of English provincial magnates and their often uneasy relationship to the great political figures of the realm."--Jacket.