| Content Description | For more detailed descriptions see sections Pl F3/1-8 below.
These are the estates inherited by the 3rd Duke of Portland from his mother and her mother (Henrietta, Countess of Oxford and Mortimer), principally in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Northumberland and Middlesex (Marylebone). Most of the estates descended from the Cavendish Dukes of Newcastle, who had acquired them from the Talbot family; those in Northumberland from their Ogle forebears. Marylebone had been acquired by John Holles, 3rd Duke of Newcastle, in 1709.
The sections are arranged: Pl F3/1, early settlements and mortgages to 1694; Pl F3/2, settlements, litigation, etc., 1713-25; Pl F3/3, settlements, mortgages etc., 1716-1784 (mainly 1720s-50s); Pl F3/4, trust accounts, 1737-57; Pl F3/5, litigation in 1756; Pl F3/6, material relating to the Duchess Dowager of Portland, 1769-87; Pl F3/7, miscellaneous copies of deeds and wills; Pl F3/8, a stray item.
The material in Pl F3/3 and 3/4 illustrates the financial difficulties into which the 2nd Earl of Oxford and Mortimer had fallen through his great collecting activities.
Settlement material from 1770 onward will be found at Pl F5. The division of material between Pl F3 and Pl F5 is rather arbitrary to avoid unnecessarily extensive overlaps between that relating to the Countess of Oxford and Mortimer (Pl F3/3 and 3/5) and to the 3rd Duke of Portland (Pl F5). The 3rd Duke's mother will be found in both Pl F3/6 and Pl F5/7. Various mortgages can be traced from the 1720s (Pl F3/3) to the 1810s (in Pl F5/9 and Pl 5/10/1 especially). |