University of Pennsylvania Finding Aids

This collection consists primarily of documents concerning government administration in Ireland during the tenures of Sir Robert Southwell (1635-1702) and his son Edward Southwell (1671-1730) as Secretaries of State for Ireland. The documents here are largely miscellaneous in nature but are clustered around a few themes. Highlights include lists of rents and financial transactions from the period after Cromwell’s invasion and before the Williamite war in Ireland, a 1689 eyewitness letter recounting the battle of Derry, a series of documents related to admiralty, smuggling, and collecting maritime revenue in the first decade of the eighteenth century, an inventory of maps of Ireland, and a substantive series of petitions relating to Richard Blake of Ardfry.