Chippenham <1>
8 May 1858
Dear Sir,
I have obtained the Execution of your Exchange Deeds by both of your Trustees. I have paid £400Ì to Messrs Coutts & Co <2>
Lord Talbots <3> Case stands adjourned till Friday next – I believe all the evidence is now closed – I will do myself the pleasure of calling early next Week and telling you all I heard of Mr C.
I am Dear Sir Yours obliged
West Awdry
[envelope:]
H. F. Talbot Esq
Lacock Abbey
Notes:
1. Chippenham, Wiltshire: largest town near Lacock, 3 miles N.
2. Coutts & Company, bankers, London.
3. Henry John Chetwynd Talbot, 18th Earl Shrewsbury, 5th Baron Talbot (1803–1868), succeeded Bertram Arthur, the 17th Earl, after the latter’s death 10 August 1856. The succession was contested by James Robert Hope Scott and Lord Edmund Bernard Fitzalan Howard (by his guardian Hon Albert Henry Petre) in the Court of Chancery in January and February of 1858, and Lord Talbot’s Petition of Appeal was brought before the Committee of Privileges in the House of Lords 12 March 1858, and resolved in the summer of that year. [See Journals of the House of Lords, v. 90].