Wilmot-Horton family of Osmaston and Catton The ESTATE PAPERS include title deeds, rentals, accounts and plans for estates belonging to the Wilmot and Horton families in Catton, Walton on Trent, Rosliston, Coton, Weston on Trent, Aston on Trent, Shardlow, Stapenhill, Mickleover, Osmaston, Ockbrook/Derbyshire. Outcounty estates in Staffordshire (Barton under Needwood, Tatenhill, Rugeley and Audley), Nottinghamshire, Northamptonshire, Rutland, Leicestershire, Cheshire, Kent and Warwickshire and estates of related families such as the Eardleys and Buswell, are included. Including plans for the rebuilding of Osmaston Hall, with volumes of correspondence about the house and garden, 1739-1771 MANORIAL RECORDS include Barton under Needwood, Staffordshire 1414-1926 (including surveys, court books and other records); Audley, Staffordshire 1368-1576 and Birmingham, Warwickshire 1704-1734. CORRESPONDENCE with the steward at Osmaston 1739-1771 includes information on the rebuilding and redecoration of the house, planning and implementing the layout of gardens and parklands, and household administration including references to servants. Other HOUSEHOLD RECORDS include eighteenth and nineteenth century medical recipes. Both the Wilmot and the Horton families were involved to some degree in local politics and administration during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as shown by records of collecting taxes and other levies. The CORRESPONDENCE SERIES are of particular importance. SIR ROBERT WILMOT (1708-1772) The correspondence of (Sir) Robert Wilmot (1708-1772) is arranged chronologically in volumes of incoming letters covering his work as Resident Secretary to twelve successive viceroys of Ireland (1737-1772) and as Secretary to the Lord Chamberlain (1758-1772). These include references to well-known artists such as David Garrick and Sir Joshua Reynolds, surviving from his tenure as Secretary to the Lord Chamberlain. There is also correspondence 1756-1764 with the Dukes of Devonshire and Newcastle on political and other matters including the war in North America. Robert Wilmot's first post from 1729 onwards was with William Cavendish, 3rd Duke of Devonshire. When Cavendish was appointed Viceroy of Ireland in 1737, Wilmot become his Resident Secretary in England, a post he held until the year of his death. From 1737 virtually all Irish government business passed through Wilmot's hands and he also inherited files which predate his tenure of office. From 1746 his counterpart at Dublin Castle, Thomas Waite, was a frequent and increasingly frank correspondent. The series includes many of Wilmot's letters to Waite which were returned at Wilmot's request. The correspondence is particularly important owing to the loss of the Chief Secretary's papers for the period as a result of the Four Courts explosion in Dublin in 1922. SIR ROBERT JOHN WILMOT, LATER WILMOT-HORTON (1784-1841) Sir Robert John Wilmot, later Wilmot-Horton (1784-1841) was an assiduous correspondent and was in contact by letter with most of the important political figures of the day including George and Stratford Canning, the 14th Earl of Derby, Lord Grenville, John Gladstone, Lord Goderich, William Huskisson, Lord Palmerston and Sir Robert Peel. Wilmot-Horton's main interests were the problems of poverty and over-population and issues of political economy. Apparently much influenced by Malthus, he saw emigration as the main answer to these challenges. The relocation of surplus, chiefly pauper, populations from Britain and Ireland to the colonies of Australia and Canada was a considerable pre-occupation. Associated with this main interest were concern about reform of the poor law, taxes and currency. The management of Ireland, the Catholic question, slavery and the West Indies, and Ceylon [now Sri Lanka] also feature largely at different times in his correspondence. He received letters on: - emigration from Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo, Thomas Tooke, Robert Torrens, William Nassau Senior and Maria Edgeworth, - Australia from Sir Thomas Brisbane and Francis Forbes, - Canada from John Galt, - economics from James Mill and Robert Owen, and - the West Indies from Zachary Macaulay and William Wilberforce. Other correspondents include Sydney Smith. [late 13th cent]-1985