1.1. The Letters

In 1957 a collection of Drake family papers was deposited in the Devon Record Office, now the Devon Heritage Centre (DHC), and catalogued as 346M. Most of these papers pertain to collateral descendants of the famous Sir Francis Drake, circumnavigator of the globe, who died without issue in 1596. The DHC introduction to 346M notes that the papers were deposited much as they had been assembled by the last member of this branch of the family, Elizabeth Douglas Fuller-Eliott-Drake, by marriage Baroness Seaton, in the early twentieth century. Lady Fuller-Eliott-Drake wrote a family history that draws extensively on the papers. It has been a useful source of information for the current edition.

The edition comprises letters written during the period 1740–1778, and enclosed, perhaps since the late eighteenth century, in four neatly labelled folders. The time span falls within the reigns of two kings: George II (1727–1760) and his grandson George III (1760–1820). It includes the War of Austrian Succession (1742–1748), the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), and the beginning of the American War of Independence (1775–1783).

The letters were written from the environs of Buckland Abbey on the River Tavy, Nutwell Court on the River Exe, or London. Buckland and Nutwell were the Devon seats of Sir Francis Henry Drake, 5th Baronet, known as Sir Francis (see frontispiece). Of these letters, 282 were written to Sir Francis by Nicholas Rowe, a good friend of the Drake family who became the baronet's gentleman-overseer at Nutwell. A single letter to Rowe written by Sir Francis in 1740 has survived. Twenty-nine of the letters were written to Sir Francis by William Hudson, his London business agent, friend, and medical and scientific adviser. Hudson was a well-known London apothecary and botanist, and author of the acclaimed Flora Anglica (1762).

It is hoped that the publication of these letters will help to fill out the picture of the chief letter-writers and their addressee, of eighteenth-century electoral procedures, of Buckland and Nutwell, and of health and wellbeing in both London and Devon. They may also provide material for further specialist studies of topics ranging from parliamentary, social, and naval history to commerce and trade in native and exotic flora.