Dear Sir

Downing Jan^y [...]20^th 1797¹

Your favors of Jany 1. & 15^th are before me shamefully unthanked.² I beg you at present to receive my grateful acknowlegements & a tenfold return of my best wishes. I lament your confinem^t: as to myself: notwithstaning my swelled leg I am capable of riding three miles & back again: & by the use of Fox glove find a visible diminution of my mill post.³

I cannot but confess that my daughter's conduct gave me much uneasiness; It was deceptive & disingenuous, & that at theHer age of 35. Her choice had nonot one reason of my approbation. The lover could boast of no one object of admiration, his aspect mean, understanding moderate, & his manners, uncouth. on his little landed property he had built a house without money, so that 2000^£ of her fortune was obliged to be advanced for the redemption: but for her future maintenance we have secured sufficient of her fortune.

I thank you for the prints:⁴ & am sorry for the mistake about my drawings.⁵ Be so good as to send them to M^r White to wait my directions. I wish to make a cancel in my favorite work⁶ & will allot what white can get for them for that purpose & will send you the sheet.

I thank you much for all y^r intelligence I& do still hope that the french will refine too much & at length irritate the dastard monarchs into proper spirit. This is rather a low day with me. accept my sincere prayer for miss Bull's & your improvement in health.

Adieu, Dear Sir,
Y^r ever obliged &
affect. friend

Tho. Pennant

I paid Ingleby the 10^£. please to repay it into the hands of Mess Gosling & Sharpe.

So strong is my curiosity that I open my letter to ask when you have ocasion to write again the story of the Captⁿ of the man of war who was hanged in his uniform, his crime, name &c &c⁷

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Editorial notes

1. The precise date in the month is not clear, but note that the postmark is dated 22 January 1798.
2. See 1213 and 1215.
3. Pennant refers humourously to his 'thick or fat legs'. OED s.v. mill-post.
4. This refers to 'the prints of Drake and the other english Admiral you wanted', sent by Bull according to 1215.
5. Bull's marginal note to this letter may suggest that Pennant refers here to the eight prints of the Bay of Fundy mentioned in 1212 and 1213.
6. To 'make a cancel' means here 'The suppression and reprinting of a page or leaf'. OED. Since the prints mentioned were to be returned to White for selling, it seems reasonable to assume that the cancels in question related to one of the eight of Pennant's works printed by his house.
7. Bull may have answered this request in a letter of 22 January 1798, which he believed went amiss. See 1218. The news which interests Pennant was relayed in several papers during January 1798. See the Hereford Journal, 10 January 1798, which reports how 'An Admiral on the Jamaica station, in consequence of the decision of a Court Martial upon a Captain of a sloop of war, which was that of death, ordered him to be hung up at the yard arm; which sentence was accordingly executed; and, by the Admiral's direction, the Captain was dressed in his full uniform'. The report concludes by noting that 'We forbear to mention further particulars', hence, presumably, Pennant's curiosity.