Dear Sir

Both your favors reached me: but my ramble prevented me from paying the due attention to them.

I detest the Americans: but must say that by the Lenity of our ministry this ungrateful Child has been enabled to attain powers that I fear will cost torrents of blood to reduce to proper bounds. I have seen Forster twice; & hope his specimen will be satisfactory: & that the emoluments will prove a sufficient support to him & his.¹

Many thanks for yr account of the price of a cornecy [sic], &c It was in behalf of a young gentleman of some fortune who I fear will take to nothing after all.

For want of other subject permit me to give you an account of the sensations of the Earthquake at my house Sept^r 8^th.² Some friends were sitting with me after supper about ten o'clock when the shock began attended with the usual hollow sound. our first perception of it was by a violent waving of the walls of the house which was repeated in a twisting manner two or three times. Then succeeding a rapid vibratory motion which shook chairs, table, bottles & glasses. such was the state of it in my Library.

My children were in bed in the nursery on the first floor; & notwithstanding they were going to sleep, were so terrified as to cry out for assistance.

A servant above ill in bed perceived what I find every body abed did, a movement as if somebody was under, & lifted it up.

Two maid servants in the Garrets who were making a bed were so agitated as to be obliged to catch hold of the posts to support them.

I had occasion to ride the next morning to Grich [sic]³ near Abergelli but could trace this convulsion at Newmarket only. at Chester it was scarcely felt. its course seems to or from Shropshire. I hope to hear from you soon. Adieu

Y^rs most affectly

Tho. Pennant.

Downing Oct^r 15^th. 1775.

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Editorial notes

1. The transaction mentioned here may relate to Pennant's efforts to promote Forster to the naturalist Peter Brown following Forster's return in August 1775 from a voyage with Cook to the South Seas. Brown included information gathered by Forster in his New Illustrations of Zoology (London, 1776). See ibid., 'Preface', and p. 90; Evans, 'The life and work of Thomas Pennant (1726–1798)', p. 298.
2. An earthquake was felt on the evening of 8 September 1775 by people across the Midlands and Wales according to a report in the Shrewsbury Chronicle, 16 September 1775. A letter from Worcester quoted in ibid. notes that the quake struck at 10pm; the same hour is given in a letter from Coalbrookdale in Shropshire, printed in the Chester Chronicle, 18 September 1775, where the description mirrors some of the details given by Pennant here ('a rushing noise'; 'the pewter jarred on the shelves'; 'those in bed were apprehensive of being thrown out'). Pennant's account of an earthquake felt in Flintshire on 2 April 1750, which appeared in the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions, vol. 46, no. 687 (1750), was his first published work.
3. This place has not been identified. It may possibly be a form of the name 'Gwrych', a twelfth-century castle near Abergele which was destroyed during the Civil Wars, but for which the building of a replacement was not begun until the early nineteenth century.