On this page you can learn more about the western post-1500 letters in our manuscript collections. You may be also interested in the Letters section of our western medieval manuscripts collection. Please note that personal papers relating to prominent literary alumni are covered on the St John’s College website.
MS 269
MS 269 is the latter part of an eighteenth-century letter book belonging to Dr Richard Rawlinson, topographer and bishop to non-jurors (1690-1755). Written in Rawlinson’s hand, this manuscript contains rough copies of correspondence sent over the period 1735-1742.
MS 279
A collection of six letters written by the novelist Jane Austen (d.1817) and members of her family.
Catalogue entry available
Partial digital edition available (edited by Simone Gaddes, this edition includes images, descriptions, and diplomatic transcriptions)
MS 294
MS 294 includes five letters from Josiah Tucker (1712-1799, economist, political writer, Dean of Gloucester, matric. St John’s 1733), together with notes for a ‘moral’ poem in his hand. These are kept with two engraved portraits of Tucker, part of an obituary[?] cut from a newspaper, and a letter from “William Seward, Esq.”
MS 301
MS 301 contains five documents chiefly from the 1550s including an autograph letter from Francisco Mendoza de Bobadilla (1508-1566, Spanish Cardinal & Archbishop of Burgos) to Mary I (1516-1558, Queen of England), shown here.
Catalogue entry available
Full digital facsimile available
MS 302
MS 302 is a letter from William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury (1573-1645) to the City of Edinburgh dated 15th May 1637, relating to ecclesiastical matters. It is bound in a guard book with later material.
MS 325
MS 325 is a fragment of an eighteenth-century letter, postmarked Oxford, and sent to a Mrs Hannam in Cheapside, containing a mock-heroic encounter between a knight and an amazon.
MS 326
MS 326 is a seventeenth century letter from Richard Amherst at, Grays Inn, to his son, also Richard, studying at St John’s College, Oxford, containing parental advice.
MS 327
MS 327 is an endorsed copy of a letter from William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury (1573-1645) to his godson, William Chillingworth (1602-1644, theologian) dated 5th September 1632 discussing his return to England and re-conversion to Anglicanism.
MS 328
MS 328 contains two letters from William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury (1573-1645), one to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh in 1634 and one to John Jennings (Mayor of Reading) in 1639.
MS 338
MS 338 is a substantial fragment of a nineteenth-century letter from Elizabeth Griffin to her son, who seemingly worked at St John’s. This manuscript was discovered under the floor of the President’s Dining Room by electricians in 1970.