Sir Edward Nicholas (1593-1669) was, according to his friend Edward Hyde, 'throughout his whole life a person of very good reputation and of singular integrity'. A trusted servant of Lord Zouche, the Duke of Buckingham, Charles I and Charles II, he suffered a 'long exile for my loyalty'.
Sir Edward's eldest son John (1624-1704) was acting as his secretary in the winter of 1652-3, and by the next summer working for Hyde. Later he became Clerk to the Privy Council. John had one daughter and three sons, of whom the eldest, Edward (d.1726), was Treasurer to Queen Mary and MP for Shaston, Dorset. The others, John (d.1742) and William, appear not to have held public office. Edward married but had no children, and on William's death in 1749 the estate at West Horsley bought by Sir Edward in 1664, with the house and its contents, were left to Henry Weston of Chertsey (who had married William's illegitimate daughter Anne Copperthwaite).
Sir Edward Nicholas retained many of the papers accumulated in the course of a long career as a public servant, perhaps planning to use them when writing, as he intended, a history of his own times. His official and personal papers with records of estates in Surrey, Dorset and Wiltshire, and augmented by the papers of his descendants, remained at West Horsley, where Edward (who could read his grandfather's shorthand) made a catalogue of some of them in 1720-23 (now BL Egerton Mss. 2562).
What happened to the papers after this date is somewhat obscure. In the winter of 1750-1 a large number were seen at Wotton House by William Birch (BL Add. Mss. 4180). Sir Edward Hyde's letters to Sir Edward Nicholas were sent to the editor of the third volume of the Clarendon State Papers in 1782 by William Man Godschall of Albury. It was in the Godschalls' house that Reginald Bray of Shere later found (probably about 1823, see introduction to G85/-), a group, some of which William Bray sent to Wotton in 1827, believing them to belong there (letter from George Evelyn enclosed in G52/7/9). Reginald Bray considered that 'this was a mistake and caused the dispersion of the papers', and stated that 'Mr Evelyn kept some of the most valuable which he received from my grandfather and they were sold at Mr Upcott's sale' (G52/8/6/1); 'most of them', however, were returned to West Horsley (G52/7/9), though 'my grandfather kept a few not knowing where to send them' (G52/7/19). These few may be presumed to be the Nicholas papers still in the Bray collection (G52/2/19/1-182 and G85/5/2/1-44).
In 1842 (according to Brayley's History of Surrey, vol II, part 1, p.97 (1842)), though 'most of those of any great value or interest have disappeared', there were three boxes of papers at West Horsley, which included Edward Nicholas's descriptive list. Reginald Bray had this copied 'by one of his clerks' on paper watermarked 1841, and noted on the copy that it 'showed that the papers I found at Weston House [Albury] were some of the Nicholas papers' (G52/7/9).
As far as is known therefore, by the 1860s the bulk of the Nicholas papers were back at West Horsley, apart from a few at Wotton and a few with the Bray family of Shere. In the 1870s they began to appear on the market. In 1878 and 1879 the British Museum bought of Messrs Puttick and Simpson the papers (chiefly Sir Edward's) now bound in 30 volumes and numbered Egerton Mss. 2533-2562, from which excerpts were later published by the Camden Society, and in 1909 the Museum purchased eight 'Registers of Official Letters' kept by Sir Edward and Sir John (BL Add. Mss. 37816-23). In 1919 the John Rylands Library acquired of Messrs Hodgson's Auction a group including West Horsley court rolls and papers of the second Edward Nicholas (R.45808-17). In the 1920s the 26 'Nicholas Almanacs' from which Reginald Bray had made notes in the 1870s (G52/2/19/183-184) were sold to the British Museum by the Weston family (BL Add. Mss. 41202 A-AA), while estate correspondence and papers were presented by Major C F R N Weston (BL Add. Mss. 44925-6).
It would thus seem that a great part of the papers once at West Horsley is now in the British Library. Items known to exist in other places include (in addition to those already mentioned), Sir Edward's history of the Long Parliament, at Queen's College, Oxford, and a small group of Nicholas and Weston estate and family papers in Surrey History Centre (G22/-).
