Thanks to the work of our Content Providers the Devonshire Collection Archives, and our UK aggregator Archives Hub, the first two collections of the Cavendish Family papers, one of the most important and oldest families in the UK and Europe, are now available on Archives Portal Europe.
The first collection are the Papers related to Thomas Hobbes, one of the most important Western philosophers, who spent much of his life under the patronage of the Earls of Devonshire and living at Chatsworth and Hardwick in Derbyshire. This collection comprises papers and manuscripts collected and created by Hobbes and members of the Cavendish family. They reflect Hobbes's role as tutor, secretary, librarian and advisor to the Earls of Devonshire, as well as his life as philosopher, scientist, scholar and correspondent to a circle of foreign academics and scholars of the time.The second collection are the Hardwick Manuscripts, a mix of records created by several generations of early Cavendishes in the running of their estates in Hardwick, starting from the 14th Century to the 19th Century. The collection includes the the household financial accounts of Bess of Hardwick (the founding figure of the Cavendish family and their presence at Chatsworth), inventories, rentals, surveys, memoranda books, court records, scribal manuscripts of a political, literary and utilitarian nature, including texts by Francis Bacon and a copy of Purchas's Virginia's Verger.