This collection contains the call numbers L.a.1-1076.

These letters date from 1557-1671, but most were written in the lifetimes of Richard Bagot (d. 1597) and his son Walter (1557-1623). They are letters to them, letters from them (some of them drafts written on blank parts of letters addressed to them, and copies made by them of letters addressed to others, especially of official letters. They cover a wide variety of topics and amply illustrate the life of a prosperous county family and the multifarious duties its members were called upon to perform for the Crown. Some of their more prominent correspondents include Lord Burghley; George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury; and later his son Gilbert, Earl of Shrewsbury; Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex; Sir John Fortescue and many lesser officials. Men and horses had to be recruited for the wars in Ireland and on the Continent. The right men had to be elected to Parliament. Recusants and possible Papists had to be kept under surveillance whenever a foreign invasion threatened and their arms seized. Above all money had to be collected.

There are many letters from the immediate family and from "cousins", reflecting the intermarriages between the Bagots and many of the gentry of Staffordshire and the neighboring counties. Richard Broughton, Walter's brother-in-law, corresponded frequently with his wife's family. He was a lawyer and a member of Parliament and he and his wife Anne wrote of the cloth, spices and other items they were sending to Blithfield as well as of news from London. Later he became a circuit judge in Wales and a member of the Council of Wales. One of his letters (L.a.269) discusses Parliamentary procedure. A fair number of the family letters are from women: Lettice Kynnersley, Walter's sister, needed her brother's help desperately in her difficulties with her husband and his family. The letters from the Irish cousins in Dublin and Drogheda vividly describe conditions in the Pale. Two generations of Bagots attended Oxford Anthony, a friend of the Earl of Essex, and Walter in the 1570s, and Harvey and William from 1608 to 1622. Both at Oxford and afterwards Harvey showed his aptitude for versifying. Two manuscripts contain some of Sir Harvey Bagot's Latin exercises (L.a.53, L.a.58). Both these exercises and five others contain poems (L.a.571, 573, 581, 605, and 992).

There are a few exciting glimpses of important events. A correspondent in London gives news of Frobisher's return from his first voyage to North America in 1576 (L.a.987). Several discuss certain glass and iron works, and one contains an inventory of equipment at the Cannock iron works (L.a.75). Also included are documents concerning recusants, a form of the oath of supremacy (L.a.1044), a few deeds, specifications for two buildings (L.a.1070) and other papers, 1428-1662.