The Bodleian letters, corresponding to Martin's nos. I-XIV but not including XIIa, were formerly in the muniment room at the Hall, Beaumanor, Leicestershire, among the papers of Sir William Herrick. John Nichols (1745-1826) drew extensively on the Herrick family papers for his History and Antiquities of the County of Leicestershire (1795-1811). In 1843, William Perry-Herrick asked John Gough Nichols (1806-73; grandson of John Nichols) to arrange and conserve the collection. By 1858, Nichols had rearranged and bound nineteen volumes of loose Exchequer papers and repaired the Jacobean bindings of eight Exchequer ledgers. Eleven volumes of family and business correspondence were completed by 1862, Robert Herrick's letters having been removed from his mother's papers and bound separately.

The Exchequer papers and the Robert Herrick letters, together with a large collection of family muniments, were deposited by Lt. Col. A.P. Curzon-Howe-Herrick in Leicestershire County Record Office in 1947 when the Beaumanor estates were sold off. The eleven volumes of Sir William's family correspondence were not included in the deposit, having been separated from the other papers at some time during the period 1870-1947. These eleven volumes came onto the market in 1968 and were purchased by the Bodleian from the booksellers Hoffman and Freeman. In 1988, the Bodleian purchased the Exchequer papers formerly on deposit at Leicestershire Record Office (Sotheby's, 15 December 1988, lot 20). A note in MS. Eng. hist. c. 474, fol. 105, refers to the 'distinct binding' of the Robert Herrick letters.