Pink Papers

Date range: Late 19th-early 20th centuries

Medium: Manuscript

William Duncombe Pink of Leigh, Lancashire, bookseller and antiquary, spent much of his life collecting material for a biographical dictionary of Members of Parliament. Although a prospectus was published for a Dictionary of Members of Parliament, 1485 to 1708, the dictionary itself was never published. In the process, however, Pink became an authority on parliamentary history.

In 1889 he published with the Reverend Alfred B. Beavan, The Parliamentary Representation of Lancashire, (county and borough), 1258-1885: with biographical and genealogical notices of the members, in a limited edition of eighty copies. This work was a revision and expansion of articles published in the Leigh Chronicle in the 1870s and 1880s.

These papers were collected by Pink mainly in connection with his unpublished biographical dictionary of Members of Parliament. They include:

• Indexes of, and biographical notes on, MPs in the Tudor and Stuart periods;
• Notes on London MPs from the 13th to the 19th centuries;
• Notes on the Long Parliament and Pride’s Purge;
• Transcripts of poll books;
• Lists of English judges and law officers;
• Miscellaneous notes and papers.

Further information:

Catalogue available online via ELGAR.

Location:

• The John Rylands Library, Deansgate  [Map]
• Find out how to use the reading rooms in the John Rylands Research Institute and Library