Stanley, Edward George Villiers, 17th Earl of Derby

providing regular detailed updates on public and political life over a period of more than thirty years, with a regular stream of confidential information, from the time of his opposition to Lloyd George's "people's budget" and struggles for power within the Conservative Party, as well as gloomy prognostications on the likelihood of war with Germany (“...The German Emperor sent a message by [Sir John] French to Haldane to say that he had better not rely too much on the French as he would guarantee to be in Paris in 33 days – personally...”,  13 September 1911), news from within government during World War I including divisions within Cabinet (“It appears that K. has promised the French 70 Divisions – being 20 more than he told the cabinet...”, 5 September 1915), disagreements over conscription, news from the Front including Gallipoli and the Somme (“...we have lost nearly all the ground we took yesterday – and I am afraid the loses are very heavy – don’t say anything about this as it will I suppose not be put quite so crudely in the papers. I am rather low about the whole affair – we have only got half of what we hoped to get and I suppose have lost over 100,000 men in doing this...”, 8 July 1916), the Easter Rebellion in Ireland, then with news as Ambassador in Paris from negotiations preceding the Armistice (“...The President’s wretched 14 articles are likely to cause a certain amount of trouble...”, 6 November 1918) to the years after the Versailles Treaty, to political affairs in the inter-war years, the letters also discussing mutual friends and family, horse-racing, and personal affairs, the last few letters written during World War II (“...I am writing this during an air raid...” Knowsley, 12 Sept 1940), also including a small number of letters by other correspondents including the Dowager Countess of Dudley (Lady Wolverton's mother), various locations including Knowsley Hall, Derby House in London, the War Office, and the British Embassy in Paris, almost all letters with original envelopes, c.1907-1941

Lady Wolverton; her daughter, Marion (1900-1970), who married George, Lord Hyde (1906-1935); thence by descent

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 REMARKABLE CORESPONDENCE BY THE "UNCROWNED KING OF LANCASHIRE". Edward, 17th Earl of Derby (1865-1948) first entered the Commons in 1892 and eleven years later had a seat in Cabinet, but lost his seat in the 1906 Election. He became Earl of Derby - and one of the greatest landowners in the North West - on the death of his father in 1908. At the outbreak of World War I he was a keen promoter of the "pals" battalions in Lancashire, and in 1916 he re-joined the Government in the War Office. In the Spring of 1918 he was appointed Ambassador to Paris, where he remained until November 1920. He returned to the War Office under Bonar Law in 1922 but retired from ministerial life two years later. From 1907 until ill-health prevented him from writing in the early 1940s, he kept up a regular stream of letters to Edith Amelia Glyn, née Ward, (1872-1956), the wife of Frederick, 4th Baron Wolverton. She was a close  confidante who shared his relish for political life, and with whom he entrusted many matters that were not public knowledge - his letters are replete with requests that what was to follow was to remain "between ourselves". Derby trusted not only her discretion but her judgment: in November 1911, for example, he sent Lady Wolverton a copy of Arthur Balfour's confidential letter to him explaining his wish to resign as leader of the Conservative Party together with his own draft reply, asking her for comment and advice. He requested that she burn the enclosures but Balfour's letter remains in the correspondence (as do other papers that he similarly requested be destroyed).