Delving into the Archives: A trip to Boughton House

By Liberty Collard

[Left to Right] Tracy Cheung, producer, Paterson Joseph, actor and novelist, Liberty Collard, research assistant, Crispin Powell, archivist, Reginald Mobley, Countertenor and research lead, Ben Park, composer.

In early March 2025, the CounterTenor team visited Boughton House, the country estate of Richard Scott, the 10th Duke of Buccleuch and 12th Duke of Queensberry. Boughton House in Northamptonshire is one of Britain’s finest and best-preserved stately homes, with an impressive collection of paintings, furniture and tapestries from across the globe. 

The team visited the house to spend the day delving into the Montagu-Buccleuch’s vast archival collection in search of Sancho. Charles Ignatius Sancho (1729?-1780) was a Black Georgian polymath and one of the first and only Black musicians to publish original compositions in Britain before the nineteenth century. The team was able to trace Sancho through a series of documents found by Buccleuch archivist, Crispin Powell. The sources reveal Sancho’s important status in the household, a well-known servant to several generations of the Montagu-Buccleuch family. He rose up to become one of their most senior servants, valet to the 1st Duke of the 2nd Creation, George Brudenell (1712-1790). 

One intriguing source explored by the team was a water taxi bill from April 26th 1749, ‘for carrying and waiting on [Sancho] a Black’ (Boughton House Archive BM1.12). This source may seem unremarkable in itself - with the Thames a key travel route around the city during the eighteenth century - but the date is important. On April 27th 1749, the Royal Firework Display was hosted in Green Park. The ceremony celebrated the end of the War of the Austrian Succession and the signing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen). John Montagu, 2nd Duke of Montagu (1690-1749) was the Master-General of the Ordnance and in charge of organising the event for King George II. If Sancho was indeed present, he would have heard Handel’s popular composition for the event live. There is little doubt that the two men would have been acquainted, given Handel’s frequent presence in the household and Sancho’s important domestic role. Handel often dined with the Duke and Duchess, as well as attending their renowned musical parties. 

Another highlight of the day included seeing a financial record which revealed that Duke George bought Sancho's musical compositions for a servant's ball in 1767. This fragment of information helps us reconstruct the type of music he was composing, and who for. These snippets help us piece together the puzzle of Sancho’s elusive early life, prior to the Letters. 

As well as evidence directly related to Sancho, the archive also details the lives of other Black musicians in the household, including Julia Green who was taught music by Joseph Abington in 1745, and Cobina Milton, who was taught by Giovanni Stefano Carbonelli, Handel’s violinist. The Montagu Music Collection at Boughton contains over 550 volumes of music and dance from the last two and a half centuries, a treasure trove for exploring Sancho's musical influences during his long service for the family. The collection is particularly rich in eighteenth-century music and especially in George Frederic Handel - including 55 operas and oratorios, mostly in the first edition. The sources give us crucial glimpses into Sancho’s musical education, background, and influences by situating him in the wider archival collection. 

The visit was hugely inspirational for the research team and we would like to thank the team at the Buccleuch archive for their assistance with our visit. This trip formed part of the CounterTenor team’s March Summit, a series of workshops supported by the Arts & Humanities Research Council. To find out more about the project, see our other blog posts.