| Administrative History | George Treby (1643-1700) of Plympton, Devon, was educated at Plympton Grammar School and Exeter College, Oxford. He trained as a lawyer in the Middle Temple and was called to the Bar in 1671. In March 1677 he was elected Member of Parliament for the Rotton Borough of Plympton Erle, where he served as MP until 1685 and between 1689 and 1692. He acted as chairman of the Committee of Secrecy dedicated to investigating the supposed Popish Plot revealed in November 1678 by Titus Oates. He was appointed Recorder of London around 1680 and was knighted in 1681.
Treby was a member of the Green Ribbon Club, which was hostile to the king's court, and as a result, in 1683, he lost his recordership. Partly as a result of this, in 1685 he lost the parliamentary election to Richard Strode. In 1688, following the Glorious Revolution, he was reappointed as Recorder of London and returned to parliament as MP for Plympton in 1689, where he became Solicitor General and Attorney General, and helped to draft the Bill of Rights (1689). In 1692, he resigned his seat and Recordership when he was appointed Chief Justice of the Common Pleas.
Treby's eldest son was George Treby II (c1684-1742) who was elected MP for Plympton Erle (1708-1727) and Dartmouth (1727-1742). Between 1718 and 1724 he was Secretary at War, and from 1730 to 1740 he was Master of the Household.
George Treby II's eldest son, George Treby III (c1726-1763) also became MP for Plympton Erle in 1747, and remained MP until his death, when he was replaced by his younger brother George Hele Treby (c1727-1763). Both George Treby III and George Hele Treby died unmarried, and Plympton House and its estates were inherited by Paul Henry Ourry (1719-1783), the husband of their sister, Charity Treby. |
| Custodial History | It is not clear why the Treby papers are in the Fitzherbert archive, but the Historical Manuscripts Commision thirteenth report appendix part VI, 'The Manuscripts of Sir William Fitzherbert, Bart., and Others' (1893) states that the papers were originally in three portfolios, with 'a great quantity of correspondence of much later date' and a note in one portfolio, in the handwriting of Sir William Fitzherbert (1748-1791) states that Mr Marsh, whose letters and papers were found with Treby's, was a well known London attorney who died around 1765-1770 when he was around 80 years old. The author of the HMC report suggests that he may have been the son of Sir George Treby's clerk, and that when Sir William Fitzherbert was a barrister in London, he found and preserved the papers. |