George Montagu, 4th Duke of Manchester, 1737-1788, of Kimbolton Castle, Huntingdonshire, was appointed ambassador-extraordinary to France in 1783 to supervise the completion of the Treaty of Versailles, ending England’s conflict with France and Spain and confirming the independence of her former American colonies.
Manchester returned from France in 1783 highly suspicious of French intentions, and continued to monitor her naval preparations, particularly along the Channel coast. He received regular reports from his political agent, Captain Taylor, whose letters of January and February 1788 reported that French naval re-armament continued: ‘As to the works at Cherbourg being destroyed by the gales, only very small damage was done …. You may depend the works will be continued when the season will permit.’
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Hand-drawn water-coloured plan, accompanying a ‘Description of the Port of Cherbourg with the New Works now constructing to cover and defend that Road, particularly of the Truncated Cones or Conical Caissons, invented by Monsieur De Ressart, Inspecteur General des Ponts et Chaussees’, c1787/8.
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Description of the Port of Cherbourg
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Particulars of the Caissons at CherbourgCaissons
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The plan and description, deposited at Huntingdonshire Archives with the Manchesters’ estate and family papers, may have accompanied Taylor’s report. The letters were among the family’s political and literary papers, deposited in the Public Record Office in 1870, but withdrawn and dispersed by sale in 1969. The present whereabouts and full content of the 1783-88 correspondence is unknown. The letters are described in brief detail in The 8th Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, Appendix Part II: Report on the MSS of his Grace the Duke of Manchester, 1869, (items 1323, 1324), from which the quotation above is taken.