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NOTES AND QUERIES. [U8.ni.nB.i7.itt7.

since the earnest and sensible advice con- tained in the letters indicates a real and pressing anxiety on the part of his father.

If his parents were married in 1520 and the younger Wyatt was born in 1523, are there indications of other surviving children of the marriage, as the phrases of the bio- graphers would seem to suggest ? Accident brought to the writer's notice the existence of an elder daughter, whose tombstone is to be seen in the parish church of Ponsonby, Cumberland, on the north wall of the chancel, as the present vicar, the Rev. W. H. Davies, kindly informs me. It was pub- lished in Hutchinson's ' History of the County of Cumberland ' (1794), i. 592 n., but with punctuation (here omitted) that does not exist in the original :

Here lyeth the bodye of Frances Patryckson daughter to Sir Thomas Whyet Knight of the

most honourable Pryve Councell to Kynge Henerye

the viii Some tyme wyfe of Thomas Liphe of Calder and

at the day of her death wyfe of William Patryckson

gentleman God gave "this wyfe, mynde to praye in

grones and pangs of deth And to heaven elevaytinge hands and eyes

smylynglye to yeld breth And thus at age of Ivi to grave she toke her

waye God grante that she and we may mete in joye

at the la.st daye

She dyed the xvi day of Julii in the yere of our Lord 1578.

This epitaph establishes the important fact that Wyatt had a daughter Frances, who married twice, and was 56 at her death in July, 1578 that is, she was born not later than July, 1522, nor earlier than August, 1521, and so was bet ween one and two years older than her brother, the younger Sir Thomas Wyatt. In connexion with her Northern marriages her mother also married twice we may remember that not only were the Wyatts originally a Yorkshire family, but that her father was sent to the North in 1523, while in 1535, when Frances was almost of marriageable age according to Tudor ideas, he received the grant of the lease of Aryndon Park, Yorkshire, from the king, and so may well have come into further contact with the Northern gentry.

We saw that the evidence of the Egerton MS. and of the " letters out of Spayne " pointed unmistakably to the year 1523 as that of the birth of the younger Wyatt, as against the earlier dates usually accepted ; we now see that the existence of the hitherto unknown Frances Wyatt makes it impossible

to assign the birth of her brother to an earlier date than that year. We may, therefore, look on it as proven that the younger Sir Thomas was born three, and not one or two years after his father's marriage, since he- had an elder sister Frances, born in the latter half of 1521 or the first half of 1522, who married in the North, and whose tombstone- supplies yet another variant to the Wiat, Wiot, Wyote, and Wyatt which the latitude of Tudor spelling allowed to the sama name. KATHARINE A. ESDAILE.

THE CORRESPONDENCE OF RICHARD- EDWARDS, 1669-79. (See ante, pp. 1, 44, 81.)

LETTER IX.

Richard Edwards to John Smith (rough draft] (O. C. 3339.)

Cassambazar Sept. 6th 1669 Mr John Smyth

Sir, Yours of the 17th past month received the 26 ditto, together with 200O rupees, 1000 rs. whereof being by you Or- dered for Jerrome Maleek,* accordingly dispeeded to him the 1st Instant, and is by this time (I hope) arrived with him ; the other 1000 rupees you sende to be Invested by me, I have given you Creditt for, but I am Sorry Should arrive So late, as not possible to be' Invested this year, and the- more, because you entended them as a test of my truth, and by -my care and Successe- therein to prove the reallity of my protesta- tions ; and indeed you could not have laic a more pressing Obligation upon me, but '. must begg you not to hold me to Such hare termes, Seing (the time is So far gone) '. cannot Invest any thing for my Selfe, who having a Small Summe, and (I Presume) a more pressing Necessity, might with more ease effect it were it possible to be done, bu If you can propose any way' (within tht reach of my ability) that may tend to the Improvement of what of yours In my hand I assure you my diligence and care Shall no be wanting to Shew that it is not my faul (though Indeed I account it my misfortune that I cannot now comply with your desires then which, nothing is more desired by Sir

Your reall friend and ready Servant

R. E. [No endorsement.]

Company's " house broker." ^
 * J.iiram Malik, a merchant at Hugll and the-