Dear Sir

At Mostyn is Charles II. in the size of the inclosed on board surrounded with numbers of beauties of the same size.¹ they probably are reduced from larger pictures. Pray by whom & by whom the originals. are the beauties of Hampton ^Court: you perhaps can give me the list & say who the inclosed is? Is there not a set of prints of them?

The History of Mostyn library & its wondrous M.S. missals &c must be the subject of another Letter

Adieu
Y^rs most truely

TP

Downing Dece 23^d. 17[...]8 - 88.²

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Editorial notes

1. See 1183, where it becomes clear that Pennant is here referring to individual drawings of courtly ladies, such as the group of three-quarter length portraits by Sir Peter Lely, 'The Windsor Beauties', painted in the early 1660s, and the 'Hampton Court Beauties' mentioned in this letter. Portraits of women currently at Mostyn Hall include one of Dorothy, Viscountess Andover, later Countess of Berkshire, after Anthony Van Dyck, and members of the Mostyn family, such as Essex Mostyn, Duchess of Roxburghe, by Thomas Hudson.
2. The first date suggested (17[...]8) is written in pencil in Richard Bull's hand; the second (– 88) added later. Neither is accurate.