Sheffield. The cartulary was used extensively by Samuel Pegge (Historical account of Beauchief Abbey, 1801) but has never been published. Also emanating from the monastery is a small notebook or miscellany containing biblical texts and a note of an ordination in 1500. Both volumes are in the original bindings. Family and estate records The Wentworth Woodhouse Collection The Wentworth Woodhouse Collection (Wentworth-Fitzwilliam family) include personal papers of statesmen such as the Earl of Strafford, 2nd Marquis of Rockingham and Edmund Burke. The Wentworths had been at Woodhouse since the thirteenth century. Little however survives from any period prior to the early seventeenth century, except ancient deeds and some Gascoigne pedigrees which remain at Wentworth Woodhouse. The muniments may be said to begin properly with the period of Thomas Wentworth the great Earl of Strafford whose correspondence was preserved with care by the family. The archives of his son William, the 2nd earl, have not survived. Since his death in 1695 the estates have twice passed in the female line, first to Thomas Watson-Wentworth whose son, another Thomas, was created Marquis of Rockingham in 1746, and secondly in 1782 to the 4th Earl Fitzwilliam. Members of each of these families were deeply involved in the politics of the time. Much of their correspondence has survived, and forms, together with the correspondence of Edmund Burke, a prime source for the political history of the eighteenth century. The Strafford correspondence comprises eleven letter books into which Wentworth's official correspondence was copied by his secretaries, and about 2,800 original letters, including a considerable number of his own letters to his family, servants and friends. Though by far the largest part of the correspondence dates from the last ten years of Wentworth's life (1631 - 1641), after his appointment as Lord Deputy of Ireland, there is a considerable amount of material even for the years up to 1628, before he held high office. There is naturally much correspondence with the king's ministers, Laud, Cottington, Portland and Secretary Coke, and, at the other end of the scale, many letters full of detail relating to the management of his estates and local affairs. Well-selected letters on national affairs were edited and published in 1739 by William Knowler; more recently Mr J. P. Cooper has published a volume in the Camden series (1973) of Wentworth papers 1597-1628. A vast amount of local interest and many letters from Wentworth's