| Custodial History | The forty-three letters dating from 1568 to 1746 which comprise the Royal Letters, the earliest being from Mary, Queen of Scots, and the latest from Princess Amelia, daughter of King George II, are now loosely interleaved in one volume. However, they have not always been found together, and they have seen various different locations. Originally, being part of the correspondence of members of the Gordon family, the letters were kept at Gordon Castle in Banffshire, but when the 5th Duke of Gordon died in 1836, the Castle estate and its archives were inherited by his sister, Charlotte, and her son, the 5th Duke of Richmond.
Between 1841 and 1852, John Stuart edited a five volume miscellany for the Spalding Club at Aberdeen, in volume III of which he published complete transcripts of thirty-six letters from the Gordon Castle Muniments, which he called the Gordon Papers. (John Stuart (ed.), The Miscellany of the Spalding Club, vol. III (1846), pp. xix-xxi, 211-236.) Of these thirty-six letters, twenty-seven now form part of the Royal Letters. In 1836, the Royal Letters were inherited by the 5th Duke of Richmond, and they were at Goodwood by 1853. (Receipt from Albert Way, 11 February 1857 (Goodwood MS. 1431)) Later, they were returned to the Castle, where John Stuart inspected them on behalf of the Scottish Historical Manuscripts Commission, in order to report on the records of the Gordon family preserved at the Castle. This report was published in the 1st Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission (First Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts (1874). pp. 114-116.) The letters were then loaned to the Scottish Historical Manuscripts Commission until 1870, when John Stuart returned them from the General Register House at Edinburgh to Gordon Castle (Goodwood MS. 1431)
J. M. Bulloch printed the majority of the letters from James, Duke of York, later King James II, and Mary of Modena to the 1st Duke of Gordon and his wife, in his study of the 1st Duke, which was published in 1908. (J. M. Bulloch, The First Duke of Gordon (1908).) In 1912, the Royal Letters went back to Register House, Edinburgh, and a schedule was prepared. (The schedule is now part of Goodwood MS. 1431.) This schedule describes forty-two letters, thirty-nine of which are now among the Royal Letters. The other three letters from King Charles II to the Duchess of Portsmouth, were removed from the volume by the 7th Duke of Richmond, and are now to be found elsewhere in the collection. (Goodwood MS. 3.) These have been replaced by four unpublished letters from King Charles II to Dr. Fraser, Mrs. Fraser and Sir Joseph Williamson, and from Ann Hyde, Duchess of York, to the 4th Marquis of Huntly. In 1947, the letters were returned to Goodwood and finally, they were deposited, together with the Goodwood Estate Archives, in the County Record Office at Chichester.
The letters in this volume do not comprise all the royal letters among the Goodwood Archives. Letters from the British Royal Family from King Charles II to Queen Elizabeth II, and from European Monarchs such as King Louis XIV of France and King Frederick William I of Prussia will be found among the Gordon letters and the correspondence of the nine Dukes of Richmond.
Eighteen of the Royal Letters were published by the Trustees of the Goodwood Collections in 1977, in a booklet to celebrate the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. (Timothy J. McCann (ed.), Goodwood Royal Letters: Mary Queen of Scots to Queen Elizabeth II (1977).) Only half a dozen of the letters now remain unpublished.
Because of their historical importance and the interest they inspire, the Royal Letters have been catalogued in a way that is different from that usually adopted for Record Office catalogues. Each letter has been listed separately, together with details of its publication, where they are known |