Autograph letters signed from Mary Helsby to various recipients [manuscript], 1651-1668.

ArchivalResource

Helsby, Mary, 17th cent. Autograph letters signed from Mary Helsby to various recipients [manuscript], 1651-1668.

Autograph letters signed from Mary Helsby to various recipients [manuscript], 1651-1668.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/438927737

Includes ten letters (1-10) and thirteen ca. 1900 clippings (11-23). The letters include 4 autograph letters signed to Randolph Helsby, 1653-1668 (3-7), and 2 autograph letters signed from him to her, 1653-1654 (9-10), nearly all written before their marriage in 1655. Other correspondents include her father Peter Hatton (1-2) and her friend Lady (Joan?) Smythe (of Hill Hall in Theydon Mount?), Essex (8). Written from: Quisty (also Kisstie)-Birches in Hatton, Helsby and Brooke House in Kingsley, Cheshire; Chigwell, Essex; Bath and London. She comments on a book of poetry of Mr. Spencer (Edmund Spenser?) Randolph had given her (4) and on a romantic story (6). He tells her of a gay party on the Thames with singing of madrigals in 1654 (10) and reminds her of one lady's feet "like Chris Dixon's in the show from Leeds" (10). They were both critical of and sympathetic to the Roundheads and Royalists: in her letter of September 10, 1653 she pleads with him not to get entangled in a conspiracy that seems to have been afoot to overthrow "Oliver" (3) and in her letter of March 27, 1654 she repeats an anecdote about Cromwell (4). She writes to her father on May 1, 1660, that some fear "the manners of the new court will be full of the outlandish breeding of so many in foreign parts for all these years among popish people" (1). Her letter to Lady Smith (Smythe), written from Bath, describes that city (8). In all her letters she shows she has an eye for the scenes around her.

23 items.

Folger Shakespeare Library