Thousands of letters documenting the story of a family from the 13th to the 20th Century have been saved from being sold to a private collector.
Northants County Council has bought the Cartwright Archive for £300,000 after a £250,000 Heritage Lottery grant.
An inventory of the food consumed at an 18th Century dinner, a hiring tradesmen budget and letters from William Gladstone are among the archives.
The Cartwright family lived at Aynho Park in the south of the county.
Soldiers' suffering
The Cartwright family held positions as landowners, MPs, diplomats and travellers and the archive documents national events and political issues at the heart of Europe up to World War One.
There are letters speculating about Napoleon's war and accounts of the suffering of Russian soldiers in the Crimean War.
The family corresponded with the likes of publisher John Murray, poet Robert Browning and former prime ministers Gladstone and Neville Chamberlain.
County councillor Andre Gonzalez de Savage said: "All archives are unique and irreplaceable but it is the range of issues and interests covered by these documents and the light they shed on so many areas of Northamptonshire's history that makes this collection so significant."
Although the collection was privately owned it has been on loan to the record office at the county council since the 1960s.
The county council was given the opportunity to raise £300,000 for the purchase of the collection rather than open the bidding to private collectors.
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