To THOMAS PENNANT 23 JUNE 1782 19

To THOMAS PENNANT, Sunday 23 June 1782

Printed for the first time from the MS now WSL. For the history of the MS see ante 25 May 1773. Address: To Thomas Pennant Esq. at Downing, Flintshire. Postmark: 24 IV.

Strawberry Hill, June 23, 1782. I GIVE you many thanks, dear Sir, for the new order for the prints,1 which I have received from Mr White, and for your kind inten­ tions about Dr Nash, who I do not doubt forgot what he was [so] good as to intend for me, and which I shall at any time receive with gratitude. I wish I could tell you any anecdotes of Queen Catherine2 and Owen Tudor. On the contrary I must expect some from you. Their story is certainly very obscure. I think I have read in some authors that he was beheaded during the ;3 and in another, at least, though I forget where, that it was his son of both his names.** Such a son, I suppose, was by a former or later wife,s for Owen's sons by the Queen, if I recollect rightly, were Edmund of Hadham6 and Jasper .? I should think there must be some traces of that descent in the Herald's office; your countrymen, and I may call them mine by the Philipps's,8 were not wont to be careless of their genealogies. It is a point worth scrutinizing. mentioned that it is also supposed to Tudor (d. 1461), grandfather of Henry have been the production of Dr Bland, VII. Dean of Durham.' Nichols goes on to say 3. A faithful Lancastrian, he was taken that Johnson, in his Life of Addison, re­ prisoner at the Battle of Mortimer's Cross fers to a Latin version by Bland. The 4 Feb. 1461 and, by order of Edward of fact that Nichols's edition of The Epis­ York (later Edward IV), was beheaded at tolary Correspondence . . . and Miscel­ . lanies of the Right Reverend Francis At­ 4. Owen Tudor (d. 1501), monk at terbury, D.D., 1783-9, does not contain Westminster (Isenburg, Stammtafeln, II, the Latin translation may indicate that he taf. 63). came to accept the attribution to Bland. 5. He was a son by Queen Catherine See post 30 June 1782. (see below). 6. Edmund Tudor (ca 1430-56), styled 1. In his letter to Pennant ante 13 June Edmund of Hadham; cr. (1452) E. of 1782, HW had requested separate 'prints Richmond; Henry VII's father. of Gorhambury, Gothurst, Castle Ashby 7. (ca i43!-95)' cr- 0453) and Houghton' from Pennant's The Jour­ E. of Pembroke and (1485) D. of Bedford. ney from Chester to London, 1782. 8. HW's maternal grandmother, Eliza­ 2. (1401-37), dau. beth Philipps (d. 1728), was the daughter of Charles VI of France, m. 1 (1420) of Sir Erasmus Philipps, 3d Bt, of Picton ; m. 2 (ca 1429) Owen Castle, Pembrokeshire.