Alnwick, Northumberland. A quantity of personal and business papers (mainly the latter) which illuminate the quotidian life of Robert Thorp. Amongst other things, the papers confirm the supposition that he was the brother of Charles Thorp, as there is an account relating to 'Rev. C. Thorp', clearly the Charles Thorp of Durham – it could of course be a coincidence that he undertook business for a man with the same initial and surname as the man who went on to found Durham University, but it seems extremely unlikely, and next to impossible that they were not related. Many of the papers relate to Thorp's business activities, and are (not, perhaps, very surprisingly) scrawled in a hasty hand that was only meant for himself: these are not account books, or records intended for future generations, but notebooks which he used at the time, and when the business was done, the note was deleted with a vertical line. But what we can read shows that he undertook business on behalf of numerous people in the area, including the Duke of Northumberland: Alnwick Castle was naturally the most prominent building in the district, and the Duke would then – as now – have been the major landowner and employer. A few letters also survive: at least two of these are from Thorp himself, sent to one Edward Allen, at his own office in Alnwick, when he was himself away on business in Morpeth and London in 1817 and 1818. The signatures here match those found in the main music collection, and demonstrate conclusively that the attorney of Alnwick and the music collector were one and the same man.