Dear Sir

Thanks again & again for the box which my carrier brought this week. it contents [sic] were so various that I grudge not the expence. alas poor Lever! the prints you so kindly sent came so critically as to shock me when I look on so striking a likeness. I mention him in the preface to the Int. arct. Zool.. so he will find a place. Pray favor me with another for my Hist. of. Quadr. where he also has a place.¹ If you can conveniently get me a Hollar's muff (one only) & his views of Tangiers I shall thank you.

Please to insert the bleachings mills in vol. II.ⁱ p. 27. they are Fitzmaurices. Get the new edition to refer to.³ M^r Chiswel will readily give you a copy.

Plâs y ward is in the vale of Clwyd near Ruthin.
Golden Grove near Llanasa II. p. 4.
Greenfield hall. vol. I. near Basinwerk abby.
Bodowen chapel is not mentioned but ought to be put in.

Johnny Ferguson was a jacobite steward to M^r Middleton of Chirk castle ab^t 1741. very ill used by the family on suspicion of betraying his masters cause in the great contested election between his master & sir W. W. & of course became a great favorite with the Tories.⁴

I cannot account for the crowned arms in the picture. I know it & agree it is arthur.⁵ I just made an attempt to by [sic] a fine portrait of old Sir Henry Lee for M^r Walpole: but it was left as a legacy. I got a fine drawing of it: which with Sir Richard Clough will be engraven for the journey acc^t of to London.

I am happy in a Gentleman-like worthy printer. Still I am weary of publication: my pleasure in writing is the same: but after the above, my works will be postumous.

adieu
Y^rs most truely

T Pennant

Downing Febr. 13^th 1788.⁶

I keep this till Febr. 16^th. that I may say moses sends the inclosed.⁷ I know you love a little & often.

y^r favor of the 11^th is [...] come to hand.⁸ I beg my respects to Lord Exeter & let his Lordship know that I am sure my Son will take great pleasure in executing his commands: & peculiarly y^rs. He will not reach Madrid till the last week in may. before which you may add some more to them. As a parent I lament for those of the filles de la folie⁹ you speak of. see my Tour in Scotland vol. III p. 109 for an Intrigue in Ruthven house in which the fair shewed a spirit equal to that of mademoiselle Bowes¹⁰

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Authorial notes

i. or third if you bind them in thre five.

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Editorial notes

1. A reference to Lever is found in the (unpaginated) Advertisement to Arctic zoology, I (1784) and in History of quadrupeds (2nd edn., 1781), pp. viii, 132, 173, 189.
3. Both 1778 and 1784 editions of A tour in Wales refer to Lleweni on p. 27, but Pennant is apparently working on the later version.
4. In 1740 Watkin Williams Wynn, 3rd baronet (?1693–1749) was reported to be ‘hearty and may certainly be depended on’ with regard to a plan for a Jacobite rising. He went to great expense to promote the election of pro-Jacobite members in the Denbigh and Flint Boroughs in May 1741, but with no success. He also lost his own Denbighshire seat to John Myddelton in a controversial contest at the same election, but was reinstated on petition in February 1742. Hist P.
5. It is difficult to identify the Arthur in question here. Pennant may be referring to Arthur, son of Henry VII, whose visit to Chester in 1497 is mentioned in A tour in Wales (2nd edn., 1784), I, p. 141, or to the legendary King Arthur, references to whom are scattered throughout both volumes of the work.
6. The year 1788 is added in pencil, probably by Richard Bull.
7. The enclosure has not been preserved with the manuscript letter.
8. See 1070.
9. 'girls of madness'.
10. See A tour in Scotland 1772, part II (1776), p. 109, for the story of a daughter of the first Earl of Gowrie of Ruthven House in the Highlands of Scotland, who 'took the desperate leap of nine feet four inches over a chasm of sixty feet' to escape detection and chastisement following a night-time visit to her lover, 'a young gentleman of inferior rank'. For 'Mademoiselle Bowes' see 1070. The fact that Pennant refers to the volume as no. III may suggest that he is consulting his own set of extra-illustrated Scottish tours, where an account of Ruthven House and an accompanying plate entitled 'Ruthven Castle; now called Hunting tower', is included in the third of the extra-illustrated first edition volumes of the 1772 tour. See A tour in Scotland 1772, part II [external link] (1776), pp. 108/2, 109.