Sir

Oxford 23 April 1777

I was favoured with your Letter last night on my Return here. I am sorry that I did not happen to be in the way when it arrived to return you an immediate Answer.

The Paper which M^r Barrington put into your Hands is an Extract out of a MS of M^r J Price Bodley Librarian, and you have his hearty concurrence to make what use you please of it. I claim no Property in it, neither have I any Intention of making any further Use of it, it is therefore entirely at your Service. M^r Morris of the Navy Office informs me that it was published last Century by John Rhydderch in his Welch Grammar.¹ I beg you will accept of my sincere thanks for the Assistance which you so obligingly offer me. I have nothing simlar to your Plan in View and therefore I will at all Times give you any Information in my Power with the greatest Pleasure. My Leisure Hours are chiefly employed about a MS of old British Musick belonging to M^r Morris above mentioned which M^r Barrington very obligingly has been at the Pains to procure me the use of, for sometime. As it is written in a manner which seems to be peculiar to the Britains the Decyphering of it is attended with no small Difficulty. If any thing relative to that Subject falls in your way, I shall take it as a particular Favour, if you will be so obliging as to communicate it to me.

I have sent you a specimen of the Musick in the MS. on the opposite Page that in Case you meet with any thing similar to it, it may not escape your Notice. M^r Price desires his best Respects to you. M^r Fletcher gives him great Hopes that the Drawings sent to M^r Rivington will be recovered. I wish you all possible Success in your Undertaking and am with great Esteem

Sir
your most obliged humble Servant

John Jones

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Editorial notes

1. Jones may be referring to the classification of the letters ('Dosparthiad y Llythrennau') associated with the name of Edern (or Edeyrn) Dafod Aur, a copy of which was included in the Red Book of Hergest at the Bodleian Library. See Roderick, Grammadeg Cymraeg (1728), pp. 39–46; and John Morris Jones, ‘Dosbarth Edern Dafod Aur’, THSC (1923–4), 1–28. The claim that Roderick's Grammar had been published in the previous century is clearly erroneous.