Sir John Hanmer (first Baron Hanmer). Autograph Letter Signed. Bettsfield, Flintshire, England, Feb. 6, 1871. 4pp. To an unknown recipient.

“I am much obliged to you for the book you have kindly sent me. I thought I perceived here and there some traces of Victor Hugo, a writer with whom I am very well acquainted. With reference to some verses about a Mr. Ravenscroft, there were Ravenscrofts in a Hawarden parish, and I believe Sir Stphen Glynne is descended from and represents some of them. There was on member in former times for Flint. If you make nay note of Hanmer, in another edition, and will send the proof to me, I will look it over for you if you like.

Pennant is a very amusing writer and considering his time and the wide area that his book applies to, very fairly correct. He got his derivation of Threapwood from  a conjecture  of Ld. Chancellor Hardwickes which  my grandfather shewed him but the Saxon Threp is simple and fits the places. It would be hard even on Threapwood to be held up as a proverb for ‘Threaping’”.

(Vertical crease; glue remnant on fourth page; strip of paper pasted to left margin of the first page, affecting only one letter of the conclusion of the letter, which Hanmer has “continued”, with his signature, to the top of the first page. Otherwise in Good condition.)

In the Disraeli tradition of “literary” British politicians, Hanmer inherited a title of nobility from his grandfather and then served in Parliament for 40 years, beginning at age 23, until he was raised to the peerage as the first Baron Hanmer.  His Wikipedia biography says nothing of his poetic predilections, but he published at least one book of Sonnets and one British website describes him as a “famous poet” and analyzes his better-known lines of verse. An 1841 “Literary Annual” reprinted some of his poems, in the august company of poetry by Victor Hugo and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Of the references in his letter, Thomas Pennant was an 18^th century Welsh naturalist and antiquarian who wrote several books about his travels, with scientific observations, through Wales and Scotland. And Philip Yorke, the 1^st Earl of Hardwicke was Lord High Chancellor of British in the mid-18^th century. The Old English word “threap” can mean to contradict, denounce, complain, argue, scold, rebuke, and even cheat.