ADAM'S Country House Collections Day II - 28th April 2026

75 522 A COLLECTION OF THREE VELLUM BOUND DOCUMENT/RECORD BOOKS, LATE 17TH /EARLY 18TH CENTURY MAINTAINED BY THE ENGLISH DIPLOMATIC SERVICE DURING THE REIGN KING WILLIAM III (1689 - 1702) containing handwritten transcriptions of diplomatic letters, treaties and military correspondence be- tween King William III and the Electorate and King- dom of Hanover, focused on two successive English Envoys Extraordinary of Sir William Dutton Colt (1649 - 1693) and James Cresset (c.1655 - 1710). With French, English and Latin transcriptions and cipher notation. These three volumes appear to be official work- ing record books maintained by the English dip- lomatic service during the reign of King William III (1689–1702), most likely compiled and used by the envoys themselves or a senior secretary within the diplomatic mission network operating in Northern Germany and the Baltic states for the Kingdom of Hanover which included the Duke of Celle, The Elec- tress Sophia and the Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüt- tel. They are transcribed diplomatic registers — carefully organised, indexed copies of outgoing and incoming correspondence, treaty texts, and royal instructions. The presence of tables of contents, trilingual tran- scriptions (English, French, Latin), cipher notation indicate documents designed for active official ref- erence rather than as archived material. With this in mind the books can be viewed as field reference copies, of the type that an envoy would keep with him to consult prior instructions, verify treaty terms, and maintain continuity across a long posting. The primary users appear to have been two successive English envoys extraordinary to the electorate and Kingdom of Hanover. Sir William Dutton Colt (1649–1693) is the central fig- ure in Books one who served with a British embas- sy to Germany (Brunswick-Luneburg) and Denmark between 1689-1691. The Colt family descended from Thomas Colt, of Essex and Suffolk, Keeper of the Rolls of Chancery in Ireland and a member of Edward IV’s Privy Council. George Colt, great-grand- father of the first Baronet, was High Sheriff of Suffolk in 1586. Sir William Dutton Colt, brother of the first Baronet, was Master of the Horse to Prince Rupert of the Rhine and Envoy to the courts of Hanover and Saxony. Colt was dispatched to the courts of Hanover, Celle, Wolfenbüttel, and Hesse-Cassel at a critical moment — 1689 was the year William III acceded to the En- glish throne and immediately began building the Grand Alliance against Louis XIV of France. Colt’s mis- sion was essentially to secure and maintain German princely support for William’s war effort. The ciphers noted in Book 1 are a strong indicator that these were live intelligence and negotiation documents, not merely ceremonial records. Many transcriptions are signed ‘Your most Humble Servant Nottingham’, which almost certainly relates to the Tory politician and peer Daniel Finch, 2nd Earl of Nottingham (1647 - 1730), who served as Secretary of State (1689–1693 and again 1702–1704). This strongly suggests these volumes passed through, or were directed by, the office of the Secretary of State for the Northern Department, which had jurisdiction over diplomat- ic relations with precisely these German and Baltic states. The second book dates from 1693 onwards marking the handover between Colt and Cressett. It contains a remarkable letter to Sir Josiah Childs, the English economist, and the governor of the East India Com- pany. It details the Scottish East India Company (the Darien Scheme) sending commissioners to Hamburg to negotiate a free port - a fascinating outlier, as it reveals that the diplomatic network was also being used for commercial and domestic political intelli- gence, with the writer (likely Cressett) actively trying to obstruct the Scottish venture, possibly on behalf of the English East India Company. The request not to be named strongly implies this channel was being used for semi-covert lobbying. In the third book James Cressett (c.1655–1710) takes central focus, serving as envoy from 1693 – 1703 and is presented with credentials to the Court of Bran- denburg in 1700. His correspondence with Admiral Sir George Rooke places him directly in the context of the opening phases of the Great Northern War, coordinating naval and diplomatic efforts in the Bal- tic. Rooke hoisted his flag in the second-rate HMS Shrewsbury in Spring 1700 and took command of an Anglo-Dutch Squadron, which while working in co-operation with a Swedish fleet under Admi- ral-General Hans Wachtmeister, attacked Copenha- gen so facilitating the landing of King Charles XII of Sweden and his army in Denmark in August 1700. This was extraordinarily sensitive work — the An- glo-Dutch intervention at Copenhagen in 1700 was a major strategic operation. Taken together, these three books document the diplomatic scaffolding of William III’s grand strategy: assembling and maintaining a coalition of German princes, Baltic powers, and the Dutch States General to contain French expansion in the War of the Grand Alliance (1688–1697) and its aftermath. The treaties recorded — Bavaria, Saxony, Holland, Denmark, Brunswick, the Emperor — are exactly the agree- ments that constituted the League of Augsburg / Grand Alliance. These books are exceptionally rare survivals — not state papers filed at Whitehall, but the envoys’ own copies, which may suggest why they entered private hands rather than the Public Record Office. Their combination of treaty texts, royal in- structions, military coordination, and intelligence re- porting makes them a remarkably complete picture of English foreign policy in action during one of the most consequential decades in European history.​ € 7,000 - 10,000