Allen, Ralph

fair copy manuscript signed and dated by Ralph Allen, with four appendices (improvements in Post Office revenue from 1720-1761; "Advantages to the National Commerce by the safe and speedy Conveyance of Letters"; petition of Ralph Allen to the Commissioners of the Treasury; report of Robert Hampden, Postmaster General, to the Lords of the Treasury, 1760), red ruled margins, altogether 65 numbered pages, 4to (275 x 220mm), Prior Park, Somerset, dated 2 December 1761, contemporary marbled boards, binding stained, worn at spine

This is one of 22 lots that have been removed from Holywell House, Hampshire, the home of the Villiers family, Earls of Clarendon. They chiefly relate to the life and careers of two contemporaries: Henry Hyde, Viscount Cornbury (1710-53), and Thomas Villiers (1709-86), created successively Baron Hyde of Hindon (1756) and Earl of Clarendon (1776).

Cornbury was the last heir to the Earldom of Clarendon that had been created for the statesman and historian Edward Hyde (1609-1674). Cornbury had Jacobite sympathies but was MP for the University of Oxford – with which his family had powerful connections – from 1732 until 1751. He became disillusioned with politics in the later 1740s and spent his final years in France. Cornbury counted Pope and Swift amongst his friends, and was himself the author of pamphlets and at least two plays (see lots 6 and 7). He died, unmarried, in Paris in 1753. Most of Cornbury’s property was inherited by his niece, Charlotte (née Capel). Thomas Villiers, second son of the Earl of Jersey, was her husband. Villiers had spent the 1730s and ‘40s as a diplomat mostly in the German-speaking world (none of his diplomatic papers are included in this offering) and, following his retirement from the diplomatic service, he entered government in the 1760s. As Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (1771-82 and 1783-86), Clarendon was in Cabinet during the American War of Independence (see lots 14-19).

A RECORD OF MAJOR INNOVATIONS IN THE POSTAL SYSTEM IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Ralph Allen (1693-1764) made a considerable fortune by improving the English provincial postal system. "Bye" posts used the major postal routes but did not pass through or to London, whilst "cross" posts were services between major towns not on the principal postal routes (which all converged on London). He improved the checking of letters, thus increasing revenues, and introduced many new "cross" routes. Allen was a well-known figure in Bath and was a friend of Alexander Pope, Henry Fielding, who is said to have modelled for Squire Allworthy in Tom Jones on Allen, and the elder Pitt. This manuscript was undoubtedly presented to Thomas Villiers, then Lord Hyde, who was Postmaster General from 1761 to 1763.