Royal Navy Mobilisation letter The Privy Council about the Seven Years' War 1755

SEVEN YEARS’ WAR – Royal Navy Mobilisation Letter dated 1755
 
[Privy Council.] Circular letter signed by the Lords of the Council (Hardwicke, Granville, Buckinghamshire and co.), to John, Earl Poulett, Lord Lieutenant of the County of Somerset.
St James’s, 6 February 1755.
 
Folio (c. 470 × 370 mm), manuscript in a secretarial hand on a single bifolium, signed at the foot by eight members of the Privy Council; address on verso “To Our very good Lord John Earl Poulett, Lord Lieutenant of the County of Somerset,” with remains of red wax seal and docketing “Letters respecting seamen to man His Majesty’s Fleet from the Council, 1755.” Old folds, splits and dust marking, browning marks and staining to the reverse, and loss, but overall good.
 
A Privy Council mobilisation order issued to every county Lord Lieutenant in February 1755 as Britain braced for conflict with France. The letter, signed by the leading ministers of the Newcastle–Hardwicke government, directs Poulett to raise “a very large supply of able-bodied seamen and seafaring men to man His Majesty’s Fleet now fitting out,” commanding him to use “utmost diligence in enquiring after and securing all seafaring men … and to deliver them up for the better manning of His Majesty’s ships.”
 
Dated months before the outbreak of open hostilities, this is a relic of the crisis that preceded the Seven Years’ War. By early 1755 the British and French were already clashing in North America and at sea, and the Admiralty—facing a severe manpower shortage—moved to mobilise the fleet on a wartime footing. The Privy Council’s circular letters of February 1755 mark the first nationwide effort to impress and recruit seamen for the Royal Navy’s great expansion. Within weeks Britain’s squadrons under Boscawen and Hawke would be reinforced, and by May 1756 formal war was declared.
 
Addressed to John, 4th Earl Poulett, Lord Lieutenant of Somerset and a Privy Councillor, whose role was to coordinate local justices of the peace in raising men for the fleet.
 
An impressive Privy Council document marking the first phase of Britain’s wartime mobilisation — a survival from the eve of the Seven Years’ War.