Michael Theobald Langton copied the letters which he wrote into what he entitled his 'Quaderno de Extractos de las Cartas' [Notebook of Extracts from the Letters]. It consisted of large sheets of paper which he folded in half to form a large booklet; when the first booklet was full, he made another. In all, there are 5 booklets, but he numbered the pages consecutively from 1 to 204 across all of them, and the five have therefore been regarded as one item.
It seems that the letter book was at first intended only for letters to Spain, but in fact it contains letters to a number of different recipients, in Spain, England, Ireland and France. The letters deal primarily with the settling of the Will of his father, the liquidation of the business assets, and the division of the estate; they also deal with the family's finances more generally, especially as it became clear that there would not be a speedy resolution to the liquidation, and Miguel Theobald began to investigate the family's property in Ireland in the hope of raising money there. There is much more than financial and legal matters in these letters, though: they include family information, insights into life in Bath at the time, political news, accounts of the conduct of the wars with France, with particular insight into the plight of the wives of Spanish men who joined the French occupying administration.
Some of the items in the letter book are summaries of the content of the letters sent, rather than direct copies, with some information omitted (rather frustratingly for the researcher). Most of the letters are written in English, but some are in Spanish and some in French.
Transcripts of most of the letters can be found on the Bath Record Office website at www.batharchives.co.uk/Explore_the_archives.aspx
