Crown, Colonies and Countrymen at the Treasure House

What do a Tudor mayor of London, the confiscation of royalist lands during the English Civil War, 50 years incarceration in an asylum, a five month journey to New Zealand, the Treaty of Waitangi and Buffalo Bill have in common?

The answer is in a collection held by East Riding of Yorkshire Council’s archives and local studies service, which is pleased to announce a new cataloguing project listing the family papers of the Calverley-Rudstons of Hayton called ‘Crown, Colonies and Countrymen’.

Dating from 14th to 20th century, the papers offer a splendid representation of a Yorkshire family’s national and international contribution to history.

Collections officer, Joanna Larter, said: “Although this family is an ancient one we know little about them and it will be fascinating to learn more about the characters and allow their stories to be told.

“The papers include the will and inventory of Sir John Rudston, who was a draper by profession and mayor of London in 1528.He was one of the wealthiest men in the capital and probably would have appeared on the equivalent of the Tudor ‘rich list’.

“We also get an insight into mental health care in the early 19th century because Anne Rudston was placed in Blakeley House private asylum, near Manchester, in the early 1800s and some of the letters describe her symptoms and show the cost of housing a resident.

“In 1904 George Calverley-Rudston was sent in financial disgrace to Wyoming, America where he met Buffalo Bill, and George’s correspondence reinforces the idea of the ‘Wild West’ with gunfights and murders commonplace.”

Other highlights include Irish warrants dating from the early 1630s and issued to regulate Irish society and are testimony to the ruthless rule of ‘Black Tom Tyrant’ Thomas Wentworth and Lord Deputy of Ireland and papers recording the confiscation of Sir Walter Rudston’s royalist estates during the 1640s and 1650s which record his wife’s trial and trauma trying to save the family estate on behalf of her son and heir.

Some items have a more antipodean flavour.  Charles Rudston-Read, took the emigrant ship ‘Balnaguith’ to New Zealand.  Leaving England in December 1853 it arrived in Wellington in May 1854.  His journal provides a descriptive account of the gruelling journey that many took to seek a better life or to join family that had already emigrated.

Often people had no idea what to expect and were ill-prepared for cramped living quarters and a drunk captain incapable of sailing his ship during a howling gale.

Another journal by Charles Rudston-Read records his ten day journey accompanying Donald McClean around New Zealand in the aftermath of the Treaty of Waitangi.  The Treaty was the founding document of New Zealand and the journal records their contact with the Maoris to purchase land for the Crown.

The project is funded by the National Cataloguing Grants scheme which is administered by The National Archives.

The papers are held at the Treasure House in Beverley and they will be made available for the public to see when they have been catalogued.

The cataloguing project started April 2010 and will continue till December 2011.  An exhibition about the archive will take place in the Treasure House in February 2012.