| Description | Diaries of Edward Bootle-Wilbraham, 1st Baron Skelmersdale (1771-1853) MP for Newcastle under Lyme 1796-1812, with two lists of election expenses at the end of the final volume, one dated 1795-1826 and the other 1834-1848. The diaries are in seven volumes and run from the death and funeral of William Pitt the younger in 1806 to the retreat to Corunna in January 1809. They are the detailed political diaries of an uncommitted backbench MP of the time, although he much admired George Canning (1770-1827), a conversation with whom in 1809 is minuted at the end of the final volume; other topics include the formation of the "Ministry of all the Talents", the death of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, debates over the Volunteer Forces, gossip about the Princess of Wales (Caroline of Brunswick), the death of Charles James Fox (1806) and the formation of a new government, details of electioneering at the 1807 election, the course of the war with France, the implementation of Napoleon's Continental System of blockade and the start of the Peninsular War (7)
pedigree compiled c1980. |