Hotham family of Scorborough and South Dalton, East Riding of Yorkshire

There are a number of manuscript pedigrees of the Hotham family (DDHO/17/1-4; DDHO[3]/51/1). The earliest, drawn up in 1591 by William Dethick, Garter King of Arms, commences with a Robert de Trehouse of 1150. Later manuscript pedigrees trace the family back to one John de Trehouse, who is supposed to have served under William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings and who held the manor of Hotham in County York. Foster's Pedigrees of the County Families of Yorkshire follows in this tradition though Saltmarshe's History and Chartulary of the Hothams suggests that the de Trehouse ancestors are `mythical' and gives as the first known ancestor William de Hotham c.1100-1166.

The family resided at Scorborough until the house there burned down in 1705. In 1707 the family moved to South Dalton, inheriting a late 17th century house and enlarging it at the same time as building a townhouse in Beverley. In the 1730s the family abandoned the Beverley House and the present house, Dalton Hall, was built 1771-6. From 1814 the family began to expand their South Dalton estates, owning 97 per cent; of the village in 1870 with a total of over 18,000 acres in the East Riding (Pevsner & Neave, pp.703-5; Ward, East Yorkshire landed estates, pp.27-8).

The personal papers in DDHO begin with those of Sir John Hotham (b.1589) and his son, also John Hotham (b.circa 1610), and the second section comprises printed material of the civil wars and commonwealth of that generation. Most of the papers in the first section comprise letters from John Hotham and his son to the earl of Newcastle, collected along with other papers for the purposes of their trial in 1644. The second section of printed material falls into three basic categories. Firstly political pamphlets and broadsides of the early 1640s, largely relating to events in Hull, the legality of taking up arms and the Irish rebellion, the most notable anti-catholic propaganda being by William Prynne. Secondly there is a fairly comprehensive set of acts and ordinances of the Long Parliament and Interregnum Parliaments in the form of Edward Husband's Collection of all the publicke orders, ordinances and declarations of both houses of parliament, from the ninth of March 1642 until December 1646 and four bound volumes spanning the dates 1649-1657. Thirdly there are a number of loose and bound pamphlets from the late 1640s and early 1650s including Leveller tracts and relating to the Army and regicide, the Engagament controversy and criticism of the Cromwellian regime. Some of this printed material is rare and in some cases unique and there is a special list available which analyses it in relation to holdings in other libraries, the Thomason Tracts and in printed editions.

Sir John Hotham was the son of John Hotham, High Sheriff of Yorkshire, and his third wife, Jane Legard (d.1623). He came into the estates on his father's death in 1605 and pursued a successful military and parliamentary career, serving under Count Mansfield in the Thirty Years War and sitting as MP for Beverley in the five parliaments of the reign of Charles I. He was knighted in 1617 and became the 1st baronet on 14 January 1622. Sir John Hotham greatly increased the family's fortunes, possibly through being unfortunate enough to lose four wives, and therefore going through five marriage settlements, but also perhaps through successful speculation in the East India Company. The core of the family estates on the eve of the English Civil Wars lay between Beverley and Driffield, though the family also owned property in the North Riding (Foster, Pedigrees, iii; English, `Sir John Hotham', p.218; Roebuck, Yorkshire baronets, pp.63-4).

Family fortunes may have risen with Sir John Hotham, but they also fell with him (not recovering for several generations) and it can be said that the Hotham family suffered more than their fair share of grief during the seventeenth century. Sir John Hotham was Governor of Hull until 1639 when the commission was transferred to Captain Legge. He then became an opponent of Ship Money. Hull was very important to Charles I; it held the largest store of ammunition outside London. It was also a crucial port with links both to London and the continent. On 11 January 1642 Charles I appointed the earl of Newcastle as Governor on the same day parliament re-appointed Sir John Hotham. DDHO/1/71 contains the Resolution of both houses of parliament that trained bands be put in Hull for its defence under the command of Sir John Hotham. John Hotham sent his son ahead of him who, by `God's providence upon my son's vigilance and courage' (DDHO/1/34), was able to wrest the town off the already-incumbent earl of Newcastle. Sir John Hotham then arrived in Hull at the beginning of March, at the same time the King arrived in York (Roebuck, Yorkshire baronet, p.64; English `Sir John Hotham', p.219).

The Hotham papers are very enlightening about this pre-war skirmishing between King and parliament. In particular, they reveal the extent to which members of the English ruling classes, like Sir John Hotham and his son, were faced with a terrible confusion of authority before the King raised the standard in Nottingham in August 1642 and it became obvious to people that they had to choose sides. John Hotham's trial defence statements at DDHO/1/34-5 (DDHO/1/35 is reprinted in Reckitt, Charles the First and Hull, pp.119-28) makes clear that Sir John Hotham thought his instructions from parliament to be `very general, commanding me to keep the town and magazine there secure' and he believed that the sovereign authority in England came from King in parliament. He believed he held the town in the `king's authority signified by the Lords and Commons in parliament'. This only became problematic when the King himself demanded entry to Hull on 23 April 1642. He came with more than 200 attendants and, after several hours of difficult negotiation, Sir John Hotham refused him entry on the grounds that it would betray his commission to keep the town secure. He was promptly declared a traitor. However, although the King demanded of parliament that Sir John Hotham be punished, the latter's request for ratification of his actions was granted and is to be found at DDHO/1/74 (Reckitt, Charles the First and Hull, p.18; citing Tickell, p.335).

Answers about why Sir John Hotham thought Hull to be at risk when the King demanded entry can also be gleaned from both the manuscripts and printed pamphlets held in the Brynmor Jones Library. Several letters to Sir John Hotham from John Hampden and one from John Pym (DDHO/1/2-5, 7-8, 10) indicate that he shared with his parliamentary colleagues a fear that the King and his Kingdom were threatened by evil counsellors and by Arminianism. In addition, the printed material collected by John Hotham and his son and now catalogued as DDHO/2 suggests that they held strong anti-catholic sympathies.

The Hotham papers reveal that after the first civil war had begun, both Sir John Hotham and his son revised their opinions about where the main threat to king and kingdom lay. The letters at DDHO/1/12-29 contain evidence of their wavering and arranging meetings through 1642 and early 1643 with Royalists to discuss their return to the king's fold (sometimes under the pretence of exchanging prisoners) for fear that if reconciliation between king and parliament was not secured the country would collapse into chaos. Perhaps the younger John Hotham, in particular, feared the charge of treason, because he negotiated with the queen about his actions and all along both Hothams maintained that their intention was to serve the king, only not wishing to betray the public trust of their commission (e.g. DDHO/1/16). Ironically many of their letters to Royalists were exchanged with Sir John Hotham's rival to the governorship of Hull, the earl of Newcastle (DDHO/1/24; Reckitt, Charles the First and Hull, pp.76-9).

The actions taken of Sir John Hotham and his son may have influenced the outcome of events considerably. During May 1642, when John Hampden wrote to Sir John Hotham commenting that `God hath shewed himself wonderfull in his delivery of you from treachery' (DDHO/1/3), such was Sir John Hotham's continuing defence of Hull that parliament was able to shift the magazine out of the city on the earl of Warwick's ships bound for the Tower of London. A year later the bungled attempts at reconciliation with the king were discovered and they were both arrested on 29 June 1643. Sir John Hotham escaped as far as Beverley, but was then knocked from his horse with the butt of a musket `so that one side of his head and face was piteously bruised and black and another eyebrow cut'. At his trial he requested that he be allowed to sit at the bar because he was lame (DDHO/1/39; Reckitt, Charles the First and Hull, p.38, 78-81 citing A true relation of the discovery of a most desperate and dangerous plot for the delivering up and surprisall of the townes of Hull and Beverley, 1643).

The Hotham papers contain three copies of John Hotham's defence, and possibly also an earlier draft. The papers also contain the defence preparations of his younger son and lawyer Durand Hotham (DDHO/1/47-86). They contain evidence of Sir John Hotham's attempts to secure delays and reprieves (DDHO/1/45) but these were unsuccessful and he and his son were executed on consecutive days at the beginning of January 1645. In subsequent years, fairly successful attempts were made by Lady Isabel Hotham and the guardians of Captain Hotham's sons to have the seized goods of the family inventoried and returned (DDHO/1/34-6, 48, 52; English, `Sir John Hotham', passim; Saltmarshe, History and chartulary of the Hothams, p.178).

The 2nd, 3rd and 4th baronet are under-represented in the family papers held at the Brynmor Jones Library. The 2nd baronet was born in 1632. As MP for Beverley in 1678, he was embroiled in the Exclusion Crisis, sitting on committees drawn up to prevent catholics sitting in parliament and to prevent a catholic succession to the throne. Eventually he felt insecure enough to leave the country, returning with William of Orange on 5 November 1688. Upon his return he received professions of support for William III from eight leading citizens of Hull and the citizens of both Hull and Beverley were keen to secure him as their member of parliament (DDHO/13/2b-2c). However, soon after his return, he died and was buried at South Dalton on 29 September 1689. The letters held to and from the 2nd baronet and his wife are at DDHO/13/1-2 and they indicate that he left much of the management of the family and estates, including the slightly acrimonious marriage settlement of their eldest son, to Lady Elizabeth Hotham nee Beaumont (b.1633), whom he had married in the early 1650s (Saltmarshe, chpt.iv; Stirling, The Hothams, i, chpt.v).

Their eldest son, another John Hotham, born in 1655, succeeded his father as third baronet, but he and his wife Catherine did not conceive children and ultimately separated, his wife sueing for divorce in the consistory court in York in 1691 on the grounds of his impotence. After their separation, in 1687, Sir John Hotham transferred the reversion in fee to all the property included in his marriage settlement to his mother and she then arranged the reversion of the estates to his cousin, Charles Hotham, all three of his brothers having died in infancy. The various financial settlements between Elizabeth Hotham's son and his cousin are at DDHO/71/8-12 (Roebuck, Yorkshire baronets, pp.71-2).

Elizabeth was a powerful matriarchal figure in the family and there is evidence of her making the transfer of estates to Charles Hotham conditional on an arranged marriage with her grand-daughter, Bridget Gee. Her son escaped divorce proceedings by fleeing to Holland. However, he was in debt to his mother and other creditors, does not seem to have been very healthy, and died suddenly while sleeping at the age of 37 years in 1691. The small deposit at DDHO/13/3 is all that remains in the way of personal papers for this generation of the family (Roebuck, Yorkshire baronets, p.74; DDHO/74/13; Stirling, The Hothams, i, pp.113-14, 126-9; DDHO/13/3b).

In 1691 Charles Hotham (b.1663), the eldest son of one of Captain Hotham's younger brothers (Charles Hotham, rector of Wigan who migrated to Bermuda after ejection in 1662), became the 4th baronet, having married Bridget Gee and succeeded to much of the family's estates the year before. What survives for this generation is at DDHO/13/4 (Dictionary of National Biography).

Sir Charles Hotham, 4th baronet, was colonel of the royal regiment of dragoons and an order dated 1706 for him to encamp his regiment on the Isle of Wight is signed by Queen Anne. He was away on active service when his wife became ill with cancer and died, aged only 37 years. Her final letter to her husband, which betrays a mother's anxiety about how well her husband will look after their children when she is gone, is at DDHO/13/4 and is reprinted in Stirling's family history. He had also lost his house in a fire and decided to build an opulent one at Beverley. Therefore, he left behind him for his children only debts when he died in January 1723 (Stirling, The Hothams, i, pp.135-6; DDHO/20/23; accounts for the house are at DDHO/15/5).

The succession passed to his second son, Charles Hotham (b.1693), his first having died in infancy. Charles Hotham, 5th baronet had an even more distinguished career in the military as colonel of the horse Grenadier Guards. He was a friend of George II who made him Groom of the Bedchamber and in 1729 sent him as a special envoy to Berlin. Early letters of his to his father from the continent are to be found amongst the family papers, as is an arithmetic exercise book dated 1706 (DDHO/20/20). However, the value of the papers of Charles Hotham lies in what they tell us about the military and diplomatic affairs of England and Prussia in the 1720s and 1730s. DDHO/20/154-155 comprises an interesting collection of early printed pamphlets (bound) covering military and political affairs in England and on the continent 1674-1721, most of them clustered around 1689 or after 1700 and there are a number of interesting maps of Europe c.1730 at DDHO/16/32-39. Apart from this printed material, there is much of interest relating to the military and diplomatic commissions of Charles Hotham.

Charles Hotham received his first commission in 1706 (when only 13) travelling out to Hanover shortly after and meeting the future George II at that time DDHO/20/156 is an `Account of the Courts of Prussia and Hanover' dated 1714, the year the elector of Hanover ascended the English throne. Charles Hotham, thus, had a first-hand knowledge of the German principalities. One of the largest states after the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 was Brandenburg-Prussia. The elector of Brandenburg officially owed allegiance to the Austrian Emperor, but from 1713 Frederick William I was king of Prussia and elector of Brandenburg. Under his rule, Prussia grew dramatically in strength and in 1728 he came to an agreement with Austria by which he was guaranteed the succession of Berg. In the same year he established a foreign ministry and Charles Hotham was sent as ambassador to pick his way through the complicated, unpredictable and often ruthless diplomatic manoevrings at the Prussian court in order to maintain good relations between England and Brandenburg-Prussia at a time when Austria would have preferred to see their relations strained. DDHO/3/1-31 contains important correspondence (or copies of it) 1729-31 between Grumkow, the prime minister of Prussia and Reichenbach, the Prussian minister at the English court, letters between the English monarchy and the state of Prussia and Sir Charles Hotham's correspondence relating to his embassy. In addition, there are copies of important treaties, open and private instructions to Sir Charles on his embassy, minutes of Sir Charles's first speech with the king of Prussia and documents relating to the Polish succession and the double-dealing of the projected double marriage of Princess Wilhelmine to the prince of Wales and Frederick, Prussian prince royal to Princess Amelia of England. DDHO/3/32-40 contains some earlier correspondence 1721-9, including two letters to Sir Charles from Lord Chesterfield, as well some material relating to the army (including accounts of military reviews) and to elections in Beverley (Stirling, The Hothams, i, chpts. vii-ix).

Charles Hotham, the 5th baronet, succeeded in rebuilding the family's fortunes. He had, early on, deserted the house in Beverley and built up the estates at South Dalton, laying the first foundations for a new house there just before he died in 1738. By this time, his predecessor's debts had been discharged, the family estates had been put in order and the family's local reputation enhanced by investment in estate villages, schools in York and Beverley and local building projects and charities (Roebuck, pp.88-93; an account of his affairs after his death is at DDHO/71/48).

Charles Hotham, the 5th baronet, was married to Gertrude Stanhope and they had one son and three daughters at the time of his premature death. He was succeeded by another Charles Hotham (b.circa 1736), who became the 6th baronet at the age of only two. His mother and uncle, Beaumont Hotham, acted as guardians of the estate. He attained his inheritance in 1755 and married Clara Anne Clutterbuck in 1757, but she died in 1759 at the age of only 24 years. He lived another eight years, but did not remarry. His health was poor and he died at the age of 32 in 1767. There are no personal papers from this generation in the collection (Roebuck, Yorkshire baronets, pp.102-4).

The baronetcy passed back a generation to Beaumont Hotham (b.1698), younger brother of the 5th baronet. However, he died only four years later in 1771 and the small number of personal letters to be found in the family papers relating to the 6th and 7th baronetcy are to be found at DDHO/13/5. These contain material about the ongoing building project at South Dalton as well as some information on the holding of Jacobite prisoners in 1746, following the Jacobite rising of 1745-6 and the building of an alum works at Whitby in 1768 (there are more papers relating to the detention of Jacobite prisoners at DDHO/4/135). However, many letters of Beaumont Hotham are to be found in the correspondence of his son, who succeeded him as 8th baronet.

In 1771 the title passed to Beaumont Hotham's eldest son, another Charles Hotham (b.1729). The deposits relating to Charles Hotham, 8th baronet, are more extensive than any other in the collection. As a consequence, volume ii of A M W Stirling's family history, The Hothams, is almost entirely taken up with this one member of the family and she reprinted many of the letters to and from him; she had over 3000 to choose from. DDHO/4/1 is a bundle of early correspondence (1738-47) including letters from his father, mother and brothers and Lady Gertrude Hotham, widow of his uncle, the 5th baronet, with whom he sometimes stayed in London. These letters cover Charles's time at school in Westminster and make an interesting study in eighteenth-century family relations. Other early items include exercise books, a military notebook of 1740, a translated `Oration to Caesar' and his clothing and pocket money account books as a teenager (DDHO/4/132, 277-282, 294-309). Sir Charles remained a fastidious keeper of his own personal accounts (e.g. the period 1749-59 is covered by DDHO/4/310-311).

Apart from their interest to family historians, the papers of the 8th baronet have a threefold importance to researchers. Firstly, the massive correspondence of Charles Hotham, his friends, patrons and clients, lend an enormous insight into the social relations and informal as well as formal politics of the eighteenth-century ruling classes. Secondly, Charles Hotham's lengthy and successful military career means that his papers offer up huge amounts of material on English foreign policy in the eighteenth century as it swung constantly between warfare balanced with diplomacy and treaty-making. Thirdly, the papers contain much on the organisation and discipline of the English army.

Charles Hotham's first commission was as ensign in 1746 and in 1748 Lord Albemarle, Charles Hotham's most important patron, was appointed commander-in-chief of the English forces in Flanders and Charles Hotham went with him as his aide-de-camp. The treaty of Aix-la-Chappelle was signed soon after and Charles Hotham continued in the employ of Lord Albemarle without being involved in active engagement until Albemarle died in 1754 (there is a bundle of correspondence to and from Lord Albemarle 1748-9 at DDHO/4/29). Through these years Charles divided his time between London and Paris, finding time to marry Lady Dorothy Hobart in 1752. A daughter, Henrietta, was born to them a year later. Charles kept all letters sent to him and those dating from 1748-54 are to be found at DDHO/4/2-5. These are letters taken up with society gossip and informal politics with mention at times of European affairs. For example, the devastating earthquake in Lisbon of 1755 is reported in a letter of William Hotham to Charles, who also passed on to his brother details of English financial aid being sent (DDHO/4/6; reprinted by Stirling, The Hothams, ii, p.68; Capern & Pyle, `Charles Hotham', pp.3-6).

In 1754 tension between France and England over their respective American colonies began in earnest and undeclared war between them started in 1755. Charles Hotham began active service again, this time as aide-de-camp of Sir John Ligonier. England became allied with Prussia just at the outbreak of the Seven Years War. In 1757 Pitt took office in coalition with the duke of Newcastle and he sent English soldiers under the duke of Marlborough to join the Hanoverian army commanded by Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick. Correspondence related to this is at DDHO/4/30. Charles Hotham was promoted to adjutant general with the rank of lieutenant colonel and he went with the expedition to St Malo to join Prince Ferdinand - papers relating to this amongst other things are at DDHO/4/7, 68 and his account of the expedition is at DDHO/4/172. Charles Hotham remained in Germany until the Peace of Paris brought the Seven Years War to a close. Correspondence to Sir Charles related to the military campaigns in Germany is extensive and is to be found at DDHO/4/7-14, 29-34, 312-313 along with family letters, including letters from his wife and daughter. A list of Charles Hotham's correspondence is being compiled.

Charles Hotham also kept a war diary from his first commission as ensign in 1746 to the concluding period of the Seven Years War and this is at DDHO/4/77-122. A whole set of maps of Flanders and the German principalities as well as the `Theatre...of the Present [Seven Years] War' in four sheets is to be found at DDHO/16/40-46. Papers relating to army organisation and discipline in the collection largely cover the period from the late 1740s to the end of the Seven Years War. Charles's fastidious personal account-keeping turned into careful administration of army affairs. For example, in his war diaries he listed officers. DDHO/4/35-76, 138, 164 comprise army returns, recruits, drafts, discharges, numbers of the dead and invalided, details of supplies, hay, wagons, horses, equipment. DDHO/4/118-122 comprise order books, and regimental and general army account books are at DDHO/4/123-124, 128. Also to be found amongst Charles Hotham's military papers are orders (including the order of the day for the Battle of Minden 1759), route marches, standing signals, details of field days, instructions for muster rolls, details of guards and regiments stationed at the Isle of Wight through 1758, prisoner returns, forage arrangements, details of parades, embarkations, troop movements and quartering. Perhaps of particular interest are documents relating to matters of discipline - there are documents relating to deserters, court martials, murder enquiries, enquiries into brawls, various arrests and charges brought, reports on enemy agents etc. There are also papers about the setting up of British hospitals in Germany at DDHO/4/227. Of the same period is Voltaire's account of the king of Prussia and the king of Prussia's reply dated 1754 at DDHO/4/146-147 (Capern & Pyle, `Charles Hotham', pp.3-6).

In 1763 Charles Hotham was able to return home after being separated from his wife and daughter for several years. He was rewarded for his service by being made Groom of the Bedchamber of George III (DDHO/4/253). At home, Charles Hotham paid court to George III and continued to be involved in military affairs (e.g. DDHO/4/254-255). He began writing his autobiography in 1765, not finishing it until 1788; it is to be found at DDHO/4/293. In 1767 his elderly father succeeded to the Hotham title and suggested that Charles spend part of his year in South Dalton, in preparation, perhaps for becoming the 8th baronet. Meanwhile friction with the American colonies was still intense and he seems to have been involved in recruiting in England (DDHO/4/256). In 1771 his father died and he succeeded to the Hotham estates and in the same year was promoted to lieutenant general. In 1772 he requested and was granted the order of Knight Companion of the Bath (DDHO/4/27, 267; the tenders for a ball and supper at the opera house on this occasion are at DDHO/20/38) and he came into the estates of his mother's brother, William Thompson, of Humbleton in Holderness. He took the name Thompson as a condition of the inheritance (the Thompson family papers are at DDHO/12 and include the papers of William Thompson, MP for Scarborough, and his mother Arabella Howard).

After 1772 Sir Charles Hotham Thompson divided his time between the court at St James, his military duties at home (from which he retired in 1775) and managing his two estates which he largely left in the hands of a manager, William Hall (papers 1769-76, including some relating to the building of the new Dalton Hall, are at DDHO[3]/48). He was responsible for completing the family house at South Dalton. His surviving correspondence at DDHO/4/16-21 contains much about American and Irish affairs in the 1770s from people in the army and closely connected with the court (for example, his younger brother, George Hotham, who was a colonel of the 14th regiment of foot, and who was also connected with the royal circle). However, during the 1780s Sir Charles Hotham Thompson withdrew from the service of the king because of difficulties encountered by his brother during royal service (Stirling, The Hothams, ii, pp.86, 150-65; Capern & Pyle, `Charles Hotham', pp.3-6).

The papers left by Sir Charles Hotham Thompson, 8th baronet, provide valuable insights into many aspects of life in the mid-eighteenth century. His extensive correspondence allows us entry into a complex set of family relations in an extended kin network. His military papers are invaluable for study of war and diplomacy, particularly for the researcher interested in the Seven Years War. His correspondence reveals the informal politics and patronage system of an England that was stilll very much an ancien regime. The only correspondence in the collection from George III is at DDHO/4/17. The collection has one other area of interest for researchers. In his later life, Sir Charles Hotham Thompson became attached to the theatre and items relating to eighteenth-century theatre are at DDHO/4/21-24, 270; 13/23; 20/46, 127, 147-148 and include letters to him from actors such as Sarah Siddons (Capern & Pyle, `Charles Hotham', pp.3-6; Johnson & Pyle, `Sweeping the dust from the boards', pp.7-10).

Sir Charles Hotham Thompson died in 1794, leaving only his daughter, Henrietta, who had chosen never to marry. As a consequence, the title now passed to his younger brother, John Hotham (b.1733), who was Bishop of Clogher and already 61 years of age. He died only a year later in 1795. His son, another Charles Hotham (b.1766), then succeeded to the title, as 10th baronet, but he seems not to have resided at South Dalton, little is known about him and he died, aged 45, in Gloucestershire in 1811. He and his wife had no children. Letters of the 9th and 10th baronets are amongst the papers of Sir Charles Hotham Thompson, 8th baronet and here are some papers about the management of the estates during their tenure at DDHO/13/11 (Stirling, The Hothams, ii, pp. 111-22 and chpt.xx).

In 1811 the title passed, somewhat precariously, back a generation again, to William Hotham (b.circa 1736), younger brother of the 8th and 9th baronets and some of his correspondence is in that of the 8th baronet. William Hotham had already been made part of the Irish peerage in March 1797 (DDHO/13/12). He was, thus, 1st Baron Hotham and 11th baronet. He had had a very distinguished naval career, beginning in 1748 when he entered the Royal Naval Academy (in other words in the same year his older brother Charles had gone to Flanders with Lord Albemarle). During his early career, he served in North America, the West Indies and in the Mediterranean. A map of North America and the West Indies dated 1763 at DDHO/16/50 probably belonged to him. From 1776 he served as commodore in North America under Lord Howe and Howe's letters to him are to be found at DDHO/5/1-2. In 1790 William Hotham became vice-admiral of the blue and in 1793 formed part of the English blockade against the French. He was promoted in 1794 to admiral but was relieved of service only a year later after two disastrous engagements with the French navy. The only other papers surviving are from 1796 and 1797, including a sketch of his naval life at DDHO/5/3-7 (Stirling, The Hothams, ii, chapt.xxi; Foster, Pedigrees, iii).

William Hotham never married and he died without issue two years after inheriting the family estates in 1813. They passed to yet another younger brother of the 8th baronet's generation, Beaumont Hotham (b.1737), one of the barons of the exchequer, who only enjoyed the position of 2nd baron and 12th baronet until 1815. Beaumont Hotham was a lawyer who spent some of the 1760s and 1770s as MP for Wigan, was commissioner for the custody of the great seal in 1783 and sat in the exchequer court for 30 years until 1805. Letters from him to his older brother are scattered through the correspondence of the 8th baronet. No separate deposit exists for Lord Beaumont Hotham, though the letter appointing him as commissioner of the great seal in April 1783 is at DDHO/73/12 (Stirling, The Hothams, ii, chpt.xxii).

Upon the death of Lord Beaumont Hotham in 1815, the succession skipped a generation to his grandson (see below). His son, another Beaumont Hotham (b.1768), predeceased him at the age of 31 in 1799 after a brief military career. The only items in the collection relating to him are three commissions to the Coldstream Guards in the first part of the 1790s at DDHO/6. DDHO/7 contains the papers of Lord Beaumont Hotham's younger son, Henry Hotham (b.1777), and the papers for this line of the family in this generation are quite extensive (Foster, Pedigrees, iii).

Henry Hotham was rear-admiral and second in command on the American station in 1814 and commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean during 1815. The official correspondence of Sir Henry Hotham is at DDHO/7/1-35, 50-51, 114, 116-120 and covers the period 1805-33. This includes information about the navy's stations in America and the West Indies (Bermuda port orders and standing orders for the American station 1808-14 are at DDHO/7/44-45, 96) and the blockade of the American coast from Nantucket to Delaware. His papers include Nantucket's petition for neutrality. His papers for 1815 include information about supplying the French monarchist forces during the La Vendee uprising and the progress of the war against Napoleon Bonaparte. There are orders and secret instructions from the Admiralty about Napoleon during his attempted escape from France. One of Henry Hotham's ships (the Bellerephon) ultimately received the surrender of Napoleon and letters about his transfer from the French to the English fleet are at DDHO/7/13. There are also details of Admiralty's contingency plans in the event of the American fleet putting to sea and North American invasion plans (DDHO/7/71, 99).

In 1815 Sir Henry Hotham retired on half-pay (DDHO/7/14) and the official letters begin again in the early 1830s when he returned to the Mediterranean as commander-in-chief of the fleet protecting and escorting the king of Greece. For researchers interested in the affairs of the region 1830-33, the letters contain much information on Greece, Egypt, Turkey, Tripoli and Constantinople. Sir Henry Hotham also kept journals and diaries which are at DDHO/7/52-62, 121. The journals are of interest for the concluding period of the Napoleonic wars as they span the period April 1814 to August 1815, as well as covering one year from April 1831 to April 1832. The diary is sporadic covering the years 1810-11 and the final two years of his life, concluding March 1833 just before he died. DDHO/7/116-126 contain more letters and orders from the final period of his career 1831-33. Sir Henry Hotham's private correspondence is at DDHO/7/37-41 and includes correspondents such as the dukes of Clarence and Sussex. DDHO/7/76 contains information about the death (and burial) of Sir Henry Hotham, while still on active service in 1833 in Malta. A copy of his will is at DDHO(3)/55/3.

In addition to the papers of Sir Henry Hotham, the largest collection of papers of a female member of the Hotham family are those of his wife, Lady Frances Ann Juliana Hotham nee Rous, daughter of John Rous, the 1st earl of Stradbroke. About 50 of her letters from Admiralty House in Malta to her husband while he was at sea in the early 1830s are embedded amongst his papers at DDHO/7/42. However, the rest of her papers are scattered through the Hotham collection in the following places. Lady Frances Hotham kept a notebook and book of poems belonging to her mother, Frances Juliana Warter Wilson and these are at DDHO/20/39-40, both dating from 1779. DDHO/20/53 is a `Book of Conundrums' kept by herself in 1814, two years before she married Henry Hotham upon his return from the Napoleon Wars. Sir Henry Hotham did very well out of his marriage to Lady Frances; her marriage settlement documents are at DDHO(3)/53/4 and they indicate that she brought to the marriage 53,333 6s 8d plus 10,000 through the money settled on her mother's marriage to her father in 1788. Lady Frances Hotham began her marriage in 1816 by keeping recipe and medicinal books and these are at DDHO/19/3-4 and she also seems to have inherited her mother's cookery and nursing collection (DDHO/19/5). She also kept scrap books while in Malta containing water colours of Maltese scenes and pictures of Maltese costumes (DDHO/20/56-7). DDHO/18/6 is a pocket book belonging to her and dated a year after her husband's death. 1837 to 1848 she kept a journal of the travels of herself, her family and her friends (DDHO/18/12) and shortly after she seems to have started a diary and this survives for the years 1852-7 (DDHO/18/7-11). Apart from the letters to her husband, others from her to various correspondents are at DDHO/13/7, 10, 14 and span the years 1826-56. Letters to her from her husband through 1832 number 20 and are at DDHO/13/8. Henry and Frances Hotham had three children, Henry John Hotham (b.1822), Frederick Harry Hotham (b.1824) and Beaumont William Hotham (b.1825). The eldest was only 11 when Admiral Hotham died with the result that correspondence from him at Eton went to his mother (DDHO/13/9). Henry John Hotham, like his mother, received letters from Admiral Hotham from sea through 1832 and these survive at DDHO/13/15. The same bundle also contains later correspondence to Henry John Hotham, and includes a letter from W E Gladstone offering him a post as his private secretary in 1845. Lady Frances Hotham died in 1859 and the inventories of her personal effects and furniture at Silverlands, her house in Surrey, and at her house in Berkeley Square survive at DDHO(3)/50/1-4 (Foster, Pedigrees, iii).

Papers from other members of this line of the Hotham family are deposited in the Brynmor Jones Library and they offer a fascinating insight into the effects of overseas expansion on Victorian families. Henry John Hotham's brother, Frederick Harry Hotham, became the rector of Rushbury and he and his wife Eleanor had 11 children. His eldest son, Henry Edward (b.1855), was another Hotham to pursue a military career. His papers are at DDHO/11 and they include reports from Eton and Oxford as well as documents relating to his training at Sandhurst. He kept pocket books and a diary related to his military service and, taken together with his letters home, they provide much of interest on South Africa during the Zulu Wars and on India (DDHO/11/15-17; 13/18). The second son, Beaumont George Hotham (b.1859) travelled out to New Zealand and three letters of his from 1878 are at DDHO/13/19. In the same year a younger son, Algernon John Hotham (b.1863), was writing from ships as they pulled into port at San Francisco and numerous other places (DDHO/13/20). Two other sons had died prior to this in infancy with the result that in the one year, 1878, three sons from the same family wrote to parents and sisters at home in England from a ship, from a colony and from a bitter war (Foster, Pedigrees, iii).

Returning to the inheriting branch of the family, the papers of Lord Beaumont Hotham's grandson, also Beaumont Hotham (b.1794), who became 3rd baron and 13th baronet, are at DDHO/8 and are interesting for what they yield on estate management, local history, the nineteenth century railway building mania, parliamentary elections and the organisation of the Indian army in the 1850s and 1860s. Beaumont Hotham had been a lieutenant-general and was present at Waterloo. Between 1821-41 he was MP for Leominster and between 1841-68 he was MP for the East Riding. He became a general in 1865 and a list of his commissions is to be found at DDHO/8/10. His correspondence ranges from 1814 to 1870 and it shows him to have been a man very much involved in local affairs, more so than any of his predecessors since Sir John Hotham, the 1st baronet, prior to the civil wars, and Lady Elizabeth Hotham, through the second half of the seventeenth century. These letters contain details of building and maintenance of local churches such as Leominster, South Dalton and Beswick, as well as details about church livings and rectories and the maintenance of schools such as at Hutton Cranswick, Lockington and South Dalton.

DDHO/8 also contains papers related to enclosures and problems with poaching. Papers related to the building of the Hull to Bridlington and the Beverley to Market Weighton railway lines in the 1840s and 1850s are at DDHO/8/1, 54, 56-58. Circa one hundred letters and many newspaper cuttings related to the elections for the East Riding 1839-68 survive (DDHO/8/2, 5, 17-20). Some interesting material on the revival of the Beverley races in the late 1840s appears at DDHO/8/21-24 and on the building of defences for the city of Hull in the 1850s at DDHO/8/25-28. The material on the Indian army at DDHO/8/29-53 contains much on recruitment and staffing structures as well as several documents relating to the court martials of Paymaster Smales and Colonel Crawley 1862-4. A researcher interested in Indian history will find the fragment of a nineteenth-century diary of a game hunt at DDHO/18/13. The final item in the papers of Beaumont, 3rd Lord Hotham, is his own funeral sermon at DDHO/8/64. He died unmarried in 1870 and without issue and once again the succession became complicated. His will and a large number of codicils and resettlements related to it are at DDHO(3)/55/7-21. Succession accounts are at DDHO(3)/47/7-15.

Beaumont Hotham's younger brother, George Frederick Hotham (b.1799), rear admiral of the Royal Navy, predeceased him in 1856, but his papers are at DDHO/9 and are interesting for what they contain on the naval history of the early nineteenth century. His commissions 1819-28 are at DDHO/9/3 and this is followed by the logs and journals of seven ships from 1805-22. There is also a journal of a tour through post-Napoleonic Europe (DDHO/9/7). George Frederick Hotham was married to Susan Maria O'Brien and their first three sons all tragically died as young men, two in the year 1848, and one in 1854. After he, himself, died in 1856, his fourth son, Charles Hotham (b.1836) was left to inherit the Hotham title and estates upon the death of his uncle in 1870, but he also then died unmarried at a fairly young age in 1872. The only papers in the collection for Charles, 4th Lord Hotham are a collection of letters dated May-June 1871 at DDHO/13/16 (Foster, Pedigrees, iii).

The title passed to a fifth son, John Hotham (b.1838), who had served in the Royal Navy on the West coast of Africa and during the Crimean War, and he became the 5th baron and 15th baronet. Letters to him dated 1878-99 are at DDHO/13/17, but they are very few in number. John Hotham also died unmarried and without issue in 1907 and, on this occasion, the succession moved colaterally, to his cousin Frederick William Hotham (b.1863), who became 6th baron and 16th baronet until his death in 1923. There are no personal papers of the 6th Lord Hotham in the collection or for his successors (Foster, Pedigrees, iii).

The collection at the Brynmor Jones Library has much valuable material about the continued successful management and improvement of the Hotham estate from 1870. Inward and outward estate correspondence as well as accounts, ledgers, works, wages, rentals, surveys, leases and so on are all in DDHO(2). In 1870 the 3rd Lord Hotham left behind him 20,352 acres in the North and East Riding but by 1907 the Hotham estates amounted to about 30,000 acres centred on South Dalton and documents such as sales and leases, especially of this later period from about 1870, relating to estate villages and holdings are to be found in DDHO(3). Improvements in the house and estate were fairly rapid as is indicated by a series of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century catalogues which are at DDHO(2)/3 and dozens of estate papers at DDHO(3)/49. The catalogues are for sanitary appliances, fire-fighting equipment, engineers' tools, iron castings, buildings and fittings, tiles and grates and one from Liberty of London for oak panelling. Dalton Hall was enlarged in 1874 and the family poured money into local schools, churches and the beautiful South Dalton almshouses. DDHO/16/61 contains the plans for a hydraulic lift to be installed at Dalton Hall in 1875 (Ward, East Yorkshire landed estates, pp.27-8).

The Hotham collection also includes the papers of Sir Charles Hotham (1806-55), governor of Victoria in Australia, at DDHO/10. Sir Charles Hotham was the nephew of Admiral Henry Hotham and he spent most of his life, like his uncle, in the navy, joining in 1818. He became a commander in 1825 and a captain in 1833. The papers held begin after this date. His general correspondence is at DDHO/10/1; it includes letters from W E Gladstone and the duke of Newcastle and spans the period from 1846 until his death. All the other papers in the collection relate to the same period and are of interest for three things: English involvement in the affairs of South America in the 1840s; naval policing of the West Coast of Africa in the 1840s and Charles Hotham's brief tenure as governor of Victoria 1854-5. Some interesting material on his attempt to reorganize this colony's finances can also be found as well as material on the legislative council (DDHO/10/17, 22-24, 26, 30, 41). Other interesting items include a memorandum on the poor state of the governor's residence (DDHO/10/29) and papers relating to his untimely death at the end of 1855 including condolence letters to his wife, Jane Sarah Bridport, and her preparations for his monument (DDHO/10/39, 42-43, 48; Foster, Pedigrees, iii; see Roberts, Charles Hotham).

From the guide to the Papers of the Hotham Family of Scorborough and South Dalton, 1311-1965, (Hull University, Brynmor Jones Library)