Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/685

Rh a lover of antiquities, she must not be excluded from the catalogue of famous women. She generously communicated to that learned antiquarian Dr. Powell, Sir Edward Stradling's manuscript history of The Winning of Glamorgan, or Morgannwe, out of the Welchmen's Hands, &c. which is published by the doctor, in his valuable, and now scarce, history of the Welch princes; and likewise procured of queen Elizabeth, for that famous mathematician Dr. John Dee, the grant of the mastership of St. Crosse's, when he was in distress.

She drew up a pedigree of the Parry family, which shews her taste for those studies, and the gentility of her descent.

In Westminster Abbey, on the south side of the chancel, is the following inscription:

"Here under is intombed Blanch Parry, daughter to Henry Parry, of New-Court, within the county of Hereford, Esq; chief gentlewoman of queen Elizabeth's most honourable privy chamber, and keeper of her majesty's jewels, whom she faithfully served from her highnesses birth; and beneficial to her kinsfolk and countrymen, charitable to the poore, insomuch that she gave to the poore of Bacton and Newton, in Herefordshire, seven-score bushels of wheat and rye yearly, with divers summes of money to Westminster and other places, for good uses. She died a maid, in the 82d year of her age, the 12th of February, 1589."

In her will, written by the treasurer Burleigh's own hand,