The Correspondence of John Campbell MP, with his Family, Henry Fox, Sir Robert Walpole and the Duke of Newcastle 1734–1771

In 1727 John Campbell began a forty–year career as a member of parliament, during which time he adhered to an old corps whig view of the world. His correspondence, containing letters to his son and to his friend and political ally Henry Fox, to Sir Robert Walpole and to the Duke of Newcastle, is here published together as a single collection for the first time. This unique historical source provides remarkable insights into the politics of the day, and especially into debates in the Commons at a time when Parliament placed an embargo on the reporting of political debates. His letters to his son Pryse, written during the period of the collapse of Sir Robert Walpole’s administration, are the most extensive and extant collection of historical insights written from the point of view of a staunch Walpole supporter. Campbell’s correspondence with Henry Fox, first Lord Holland, dates  from 1755, a period of political turmoil, during which time, various whig administrations attempted to stave off the demise of their power at Westminster, whilst dealing with a major war. Letters written towards the very end of their political lives reveals the views of the two men over the crisis of the Stamp Act, the loss of the American colonies and the parliamentarian furore caused by John Wilkes.

John E. Davies is currently county archivist of Carmarthenshire, Wales.  He has previously published The Carmarthen book of Ordnances (1996). In 2008 he completed his PhD at Swansea University on The Cawdor Estates in South–West Wales in the Nineteenth Century .