Roger Vaughan Personal Collection (List 165)

Autograph Letters

Well I can't resist the look and feel of old letters....
The letters are from a scrapbook put together by Miss Roberts or by her father William Roberts (1767 - 1849). They refer to various publications, including William Roberts 'The Portraiture of a Christian Gentleman' 1929 and his 'Memoirs of Hannan More' 1834.

William Roberts, English barrister and author, was Tory in politics, evangelical in religious belief, and great admirer of Hannah More (1745-1835) whose widely-circulated religious tracts taught the poor `to rely on the virtues of content, sobriety, humility, industry, economy, reverence for the British Constitution, patriotism and trust in God and in the kindness of the gentry . . . that civilization depended on a large permanent body of poor, for whom the best education was that which reconciled them to their fate'--Ency. Brit. :

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Mr. Justice Park [Sir James Alan Park 1763 - 1838, knighted 1816] written in Court May 18. 1829.
[ He referers to: a book by William Roberts Esq. The Portraiture of a Christian Gentleman. 170pp, 1829, first English ed. The book echoes many of Miss More's sentiments. Interesting for thought of the time.]
letter

J.L. King, of Bath. Written: June 19, [18XX] at Hastings to Miss Roberts, Windsor Terrace
letter------letter

The Marchioness of Abercorn (MA wax seal), Thursday Morn, [Miss Roberts invited to tea] [Mentions J[ames] Hamilton who married Lady Louisa-Jane Russell, 2nd daughter of John, sixth Duke of Bedford in 1832]
letter

Maria Hamilton, Baron's Court, Tuesday Decr 7th [1813] (Paper watermarked 1805) [There was a Maria who was related to the Abercorn's who died unmarried 21 January 1814]
letter------letter

Frederick George Lee [1832-1902], All Saints Vicarage, Lambeth, 1875. [Theological writer, see DNB and Crockford's Clerical Directory] to The Rev. Arthur Roberts
letter------letter


Sir [H.] Montgomery (with broken spear crest - see Burke's Peerage] to My Dear Southey (there was an autograph of Robert Southey in this collection but sold before I got it - so this is possible]
letter------letter


A Poem:
Examine Life - try all its toys,
Its nominal, its real joys;
This appears to be an original worked up poem - by some late 18th century poet - judging from the style.
It mentions Brampton Park [Huntingdonshire] in the last line, Cowper was in Huntingdonshire after his illness, but I don't have a sample of his handwriting to check this.
In this scrapbook were once autograph letters to Hannah More from William Cowper, Zaccary Macaulay, Robert Southey, Poems by Thomas B. Macaulay (another possibility) and others, but all sold off before I got hold of these remains. I am told that this may be Hannah More's writing.
Anyone fancy checking for me? - Roger Vaughan.
Brampton Park Poem

[added 30 July 2004 - by email - The poem 'Examine Life - try all its toys' is by Hannah More. There is an autograph version, dated 1813, in the commonplace book of More's friend Lady Olivia Sparrow, who lived at Brampton Park (now at the Clark Library, Los Angeles). Looking at the copy you've scanned, the poem looks, on first inspection, to be in More's autograph.]

More letters to be added:

Kate Marsh's autograph
Lady S[usan] Bathurst 1834.
Christopher Newman Hall (1816-1902, Surrey Parsonage, Blackfriars - Evangelical Preacher - DNB]
Rev. Charles Bradley (1789 - 1871) [12 sides relates to Hannah More, St James, Clapham, 1850], Incumbent of St. James, Clapham, with Glasbury, Breconshire, whose published sermons ran through many editions, and were widely read in the first half of the nineteenth century
Several unident.

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