Robert Beale, administrator, diplomat and Clerk of the English Privy Council: collection of letters Collection of letters (in different hands) between Elizabeth I and foreign nobles, etc., some concerning ambassadors, including some letters patent (2 series: 1st series 41, 2nd series 54: 95 papers in total). The letters are from a wide range of correspondents, and not all are addressed to Beale, although virtually all contain endorsements and annotations in his hand that demonstrate his engagement with these materials. They encompass the business of states in the form of the diplomatic correspondence of Elizabeth, and a variety of statesmen and estates across Europe including the Dukes of Brunswick and of Saxony, The Lord Treasurer of Poland, and the Council of State of the United provinces. Amongst them are particular groups of material relating to Beale’s time in Paris, as secretary to Sir Francis Walsingham, as well as correspondence of the 1580s from the time of Earl or Leicester’s appointment as Lieutenant Governor/Governor General of the United Provinces. These items provide examples of official channels of state diplomacy in the period but, in the Beale Papers, they sit alongside letters that demonstrate Beale’s personal connections across Europe, with letters from scholars and counsellors such as David Chytraeus, Lutheran Professor of Greek at the University of Rostock, and the reforming printer André Wechel. The international nature of Beale’s connections is demonstrated by the range of languages here. While the majority of letters are in Latin or French, there are others in German, Italian, and Scots, as well as in English. (With the original papes are the research of James D. George (1906–1977), depute secretary of the University of Aberdeen and palaeographer, who prepared a hand list of items in the Beale papers and made partial transcriptions and notes on various items). 1550-1600