To a certain extent, the provenance and dispersal of Bodley’s letters can be directly traced.
The majority of Bodley’s extant correspondence can be found in the British Library (Cotton MSS) and The National Archives in London. The letters in the Cotton papers at the British Library were collected by the antiquarian and historian Sir Robert Cotton. The letters in the State Papers (Foreign) in The National Archives are the administrative collections of the secretaries of state, and have been kept in official custody.
A substantial number of letters are held at Hatfield House in the Cecil papers, in the Bodleian Library, Lambeth Palace Library, and in the Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone in the Sidney papers deposited by the de Lisle family at Penshurst.
Other letters are scattered in libraries across the world, including the University of Leiden Library, Netherlands, and the Huntington Library, Pasadena, USA.
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