Letters and documents related to the life and career of the Jacobean diplomat and courtier Sir Charles Cornwallis.

Sir Charles Cornwallis (1553/54-1629) was an English Jacobean diplomat and courtier of Beeston, Suffolk and Harborne, Staffordshire. Cornwallis was born at Brome Hall, Suffolk, in 1553/54. His father, Sir Thomas Cornwallis, had been Comptroller of the Household to Queen Mary I. Charles Cornwallis was knighted in 1603, elected to Parliament for Norfolk in 1604, and in 1605 appointed resident ambassador to Spain, where he was particularly concerned with protecting English seamen and English commercial interests. Cornwallis returned to England in 1609, and the following year joined the household of Prince Henry, the Prince of Wales, whom he served as treasurer until the Prince's death in 1612. Cornwallis was sent to Ireland as a commissioner to investigate Irish grievances in 1613, but the following year was suspected of opposing the King in Parliament, and was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower for a year. Sir Charles married, first, Elizabeth Farnham of Fincham, Norfolk, with whom he had a son, William, the noted essayist; his second wife was Anne or Elizabeth (Barrow) Skelton; his third was Dorothy, daughter of Bishop of London Richard Vaughan and widow of Bishop of Norwich John Jegon. In 1604 Cornwallis had purchased the manor of Smethwick, with Harborne, in Staffordshire, to which he eventually retired and where he died in 1629.

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