File NLW MS 24190E. - Description of Milford Haven

A transcript, 1853, in the hand of Matilda Pasley, of a version of George Owen of Henllys's 'Description of Milford Haven', dated 17 December 1595 (ff. 2-26), together with a note by the transcriber (f. 1).
The manuscript mostly agrees with the texts of Cardiff 2.46 and BL Add. 22623, as published in George Owen, The Description of Penbrokshire, ed. by Henry Owen, Cymmrodorion Record Series, 4 vols (London, 1892-1936), pp. 529-562; where Henry Owen lists minor variations between those two manuscripts the present transcript does not consistently correspond with one or the other. The wording of the title page (f. 2) is significantly different (see Henry Owen (ed.), p. 533), while the section beginning 'For the more ease…' which concludes the other manuscripts is here interpolated on ff. 17-18. A memorandum concerning Owen's methodology for drawing his map of Milford Haven does not appear to be recorded elsewhere (f. 22). The present manuscript is itself copied from an intermediate transcript made at Worsley [New] Hall, Lancashire, on 22 October 1852, by Mary L[ouisa Egerton, Viscountess] Brackley, from the original 1595 manuscript belonging to her father-in-law [Francis Egerton, 1st] Earl of Ellesmere (probably the manuscript now Huntington Library MS EL 1145 (34/B/32)) (see f. 1). In 1853 Matilda Pasley's husband, Sir Thomas Pasley, Bart, was in command of Pembroke Dockyard and the Pasleys became acquainted with Lady Brackley during visits to Stackpole Court, the seat of her father, the 1st Earl Cawdor (see Lawrence Phillips, 'Captain Sir Thomas Sabine Pasley, Bt., R.N., and Pembroke Dockyard, 1849-1854', Mariner's Mirror, 71.2 (1985), 159-165 (pp. 160-161)).