Letters

This collection consists almost entirely of letters about the affairs of the Yorkshire Association not previously printed, though it includes a very few which were included by Wyvill in his political papers, and also a few draft paragraphs which appeared in print in York newspapers. There is considerable correspondence about the collection of signatures to the petition for economical reform and to the Association in 1780, and to the petition for parliamentary reform in 1783. Many letters of Wyvill to William Gray, the clerk to the Committee of the Association, illustrate Wyvill’s organization of propaganda in the York newspapers, and can be connected with paragraphs appearing in the Chronicle and in the Courant; some of them throw light on his opinion at different times of the progress of the campaign for reform.

Open

Material is available subject to the usual terms and conditions of access to Archives and Local History collections.