From Lieut.-Col. THOMAS HANMER to SIR THOMAS HANMER, Bart. MY DEAR FATHER, Portsmouth, July 21st, 1803. I am happy to hear of your active exertions in the county for the general good, and suppose a Flintshire address will soon make its appearance in the public prints amongst the numerous others with which they abound. I hear you are going to raise a troop of yeomanry, and wish much to hear if it is true, and whether Mr. Kynaston makes any stir in our neighbouring county with respect to his former intentions of raising a regiment. Mr. Wills being appointed Captain I suppose will now be the only officer to bring up the supplementary men. We are in great want of subalterns. I am going to a dance on board the Windsor Castle at Spithead to-morrow evening, which will be pleasant if the weather continues fine. Is the coach finished and come down? They say Bonaparte has ordered dinner at Shooters Hill for the 15th of September; in short, there is no end of the bombast stories in circulation. We fired six rounds of ball cartridges yesterday morning on the beach at a target exactly a hundred yards distance, and put 47 balls through it, which has gained us some credit. The weather is so intensely hot that several of my men were taken ill with fevers yesterday morning owing to standing in one position under such a scorching sun for so long a time; they dropped as if they were shot. How does my colt come on? I suppose he must be quite fat. Lord Grosvenor is just come to town from Newmarket, where I see he has been beat. We expect him next week, but his arrival is always uncertain. With best love to all at Bettisfield, I am, Your ever dutiful and affectionate son, Write soon. THO. HANMER. MY DEAR FATHER, Sandgate, August 16th, 1805. I am glad to hear your crops of hay have been so abundant. Corn harvest here is on the eve of commencing, with fine weather for it. We are constantly watching the enemies' boats, which some days since made a considerable attack on our cruisers, though without much loss. Every preparation is made here to receive them, and the general supposition is that they will make an immediate attempt. Notwithstanding this, the ladies here for the bathing season do not appear the least alarmed. I have ridden about a good deal lately, and made myself acquainted with the coast, coming back by Tunbridge and Ashford. The regiment goes on well, and the Generals are agreeable and pleasant men to serve under. It is very strange we have no accounts from Lord Nelson; the public seem in great expectation. The brigade marched this morning to exercise in Lord Rokeby's park, near a place called Lymne, about six miles off. All precautionary measures have been taken. Your most affectionate son, THO. HANMER. To Sir Thomas Hanmer, Bart. Sir Thomas, by his marriage with Miss Margaret Kenyon, which is registered at the Heralds' College, and, if I remember right, took place at Salford, had seven children :— Thomas, Lt.-Colonel, his eldest son, born April 12th, 1781, the writer of the two last letters, who was my father; he married July 14th, 1808, at Marylebone Church, in London, Arabella Charlotte, daughter of Thomas Bucknall, Esq., M.P., of Hampton Court, Middlesex, and Charlotte Elizabeth Windham, his wife, of the now extinct family of Windhams of Cromer in Norfolk. Job Walden, a barrister, born July 30th, 1782. John, for a long time Vicar of Hanmer, born February 28th, 1784. Margaret Emma, second Lady Kenyon, born. George Edward, Rector of Loddington, born Henry, Lt.-Colonel R. H. Gds. and M.P. for William, of Bodnod, in Denbighshire, born Oct. 28th, 1792. Lieut.-Colonel Thomas Hanmer lived after his marriage for ten years at Hardwick, in Shropshire, a house then belonging to Lieut.-General Sir Rowland, afterwards Lord Hill, who, at the time, was serving in the Peninsular War. In 1818 an accidental discharge of a gun, in a shooting-party brought my father's years to an end at Aldermaston, in Berkshire, and he was afterwards buried at Hanmer, leaving myself with three other brothers, and three sisters, then very young. We then lived with our mother at an ancient house called Whitehall, in Shrewsbury; and from this association, after I came of age, I was twice elected member for that borough. The Ordnance Surveyors are now making their fine new map of the Flintshire parishes, but their papers will not be ready for a year. Their poles are on all the banks, and stand up on the tops of trees, but the herons will know them for landmarks sooner than we shall; I therefore leave them at present to these heraldic birds.1 They stalk about the border of the Mere forty-five yards below the northern slopes of the park; the grey water shines out as if it were a shield of steel: Owen Glyndwr might have stood 1 The map was published in 1874. beside it, to be forewarned by a Welsh witch, as Saul was once at Endor. But now comes the enumerator for peaceful statistics, and not of fighting men; he assigns to us five hundred and eleven inhabited houses against five hundred and four of ten years ago, and two thousand four hundred and twenty-eight inhabitants against two thousand five hundred and nineteen. The decrease is apparent but not real, for it is caused by the completion of railway and drainage works, and the departure of the men employed in them. The births exceed the deaths in this decennial period by two hundred and eighty-four. This Census accounts us in the West Midland division, but we should have said the North Western, from which as it is given we are separated by the narrow course of the Wich Brook. Everybody in these days is trying to catch Plutus the divine, and to open his eyes, as in the days of Aristophanes ; but the deities invoked by Varro are more in our line of rural economy; we have the happiness to be reasonably content. The Census gives one of the proofs usually accepted that we keep up with the tide-marks of the time; and Bettisfield, which always had some traffic by the canal, is now by dint of the railway becoming for a country village |