The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume VII. Cavalier and Puritan.
§ 10. Correspondence of the Family of Hatton
The Correspondence of the Family of Hatton (1601–1704), though it cannot compare in breadth of interest to the Verney papers, is one of the most amusing of the collections dating from this period; though what has been published only forms part of a larger family correspondence, and mainly dates from postrestoration times. Lord chancellor Sir Christopher Hatton, of Elizabethan fame, left a son and namesake who, after the restoration, became governor of Jersey, and was succeeded in this office by his son, afterwards first viscount Hatton, to whom most of the letters now printed were addressed. Nothing can be more characteristic of the “frank age” from which they date than these outspoken family communings, of which the spelling, by no means the least of their charms, has, happily, not been modernised by their editor.
For final mention among the letter-writers of this period it has been thought well to reserve one who may, perhaps, be considered as the most widely representative of them all, inasmuch as, while himself not unaccustomed to the lower walks of diplomacy, it is rather as an “intelligencer” of long standing, and as a more or less private letter-writer, that he established his claim to the place which he holds in the history of English literature. At the same time, his general literary activity was such that it would be neither just nor convenient were not some general account of his literary labours to be attempted in this place.