Autograph Collection.- Politics & Aristocracy

A collection of letters and signatures from various people of note, including a typed letter to W. Laird Cox, private secretary to the King, on an autographed letter of King William IV for Windsor Castle archive; Wilfred Seymour de Winton (36 letters & notes); Captain Sir William Peel VC KCB - British naval officer and recipient of the Victoria Cross; Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell; Stephen Blair esq.; Sidney Hubert, 1st Baron Herbert of Lea; Benjamin Jowett, tutor and administrative reformer in the University of Oxford (ALS, dated 29 March 1878, part reading “My dear Lucas, could you take Lord Herbrand Russell, second son of the Duke of Bedford, as a pupil in London for about a month during the Easter vacation – to begin at once”); Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin; General Long; Sir Ferrick Williams; Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, British diplomat; with a small group of legal documents in English and French (Paris registrar, legal act dated 1739; contracts from the region of D’Alençon dated 1789), 18^th century (large quantity)

***Wilfred Seymour de Winton (1856-1929) was one of the most active and influential lay members in the Anglican Church in Wales. A High Churchman, he was conservative in matters of doctrine, but sought to strengthen the Church through its reform. His other great passion was his collection of eighteenth-century European porcelain, and he was to give and bequeath around 4,000 pieces to the recently founded National Museum of Wales, Cardiff. Letters include type letter signed of Lord Phillimore (3^rd Dec 1925, part reading “I do not particularly like the word ‘constituted’, but taken as meaning that the Welsh Church obtained its civil existence as a civil corporation or entity…”); ALS of Palmour? (14^th Feb 1916, part reading “Let me thank you both personally, and as Chairman, for the great value of your assistance in taking Sir Hamant’s place”); ALS of ?Vaugham (23^rd Oct 1883, part reading “It is too late, I fear, to introduce such a Church Reform as would pacify enemies, and must do so, alienate and outrage friends … Those who are bent upon destination will not give ear to reformation, and those who are keen for conservation will not surrender the very thing they are fighting for”); ALS of Robert Lockhart Hobson, keeper of the Department of Ceramics and Ethnography at the British Museum and an authority on Far Eastern ceramics (24 Dec 1918, part reading “ I have been back at the Museum last 3 weeks and most of that time has been spent in helping to get ready for the public some of the most accessible galleries. I am afraid it will be some time yet before we can hope to be able to see the Franks continental in show. It is like most of the ceramics still packed away in the fitting of the New Wing are not yet complete”).