Thomas Pennant

Thomas Pennant
Thomas Pennant by Thomas Gainsborough (1776)
Born	27 June [O.S. 14 June] 1726 Downing Hall, Whitford, Flintshire, Wales
Died	16 December 1798(1798-12-16) (aged 72) Downing Hall, Whitford, Flintshire, Wales
Occupations	Naturalist antiquarian
Known for	Writings on natural history, geology and geographical expeditions

Thomas Pennant (27 June [O.S. 14 June] 1726 – 16 December 1798)^[1] was a Welsh naturalist, traveller, writer and antiquarian. He was born and lived his whole life at his family estate, Downing Hall near Whitford, Flintshire, in Wales.

As a naturalist he had a great curiosity, observing the geography, geology, plants, animals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish around him and recording what he saw and heard about. He wrote acclaimed books including British Zoology, the History of Quadrupeds, Arctic Zoology and Indian Zoology although he never travelled further afield than continental Europe. He knew and maintained correspondence with many of the scientific figures of his day. His books influenced the writings of Samuel Johnson. As an antiquarian, he amassed a considerable collection of art and other works, largely selected for their scientific interest. Many of these works are now housed at the National Library of Wales.

As a traveller he visited Scotland and many other parts of Britain and wrote about them. Many of his travels took him to places that were little known to the British public and the travelogues he produced, accompanied by painted and engraved colour plates, were much appreciated. Each tour started at his home and related in detail the route, the scenery, the habits and activities of the people he met, their customs and superstitions and the wildlife he saw or heard about. He travelled on horseback accompanied by his servant, Moses Griffith, who sketched the things they encountered, later to work these up into illustrations for the books. He was an amiable man with a large circle of friends and was still busily following his interests into his sixties. He enjoyed good health throughout his life and died at Downing at the age of seventy two.

Family background

The Pennants were a family of Welsh gentry from the parish of Whitford, Flintshire, who had built up a modest estate at Bychton by the seventeenth century. In 1724 Thomas' father, David Pennant, inherited the neighbouring Downing estate from a cousin, considerably augmenting the family's fortune. Downing Hall, where Thomas was born in the 'yellow room', became the main Pennant residence. This house had been built in 1600 and the front and main entrance were set back between two forward facing wings. By the time the Pennants moved there it was in a state of disrepair and many alterations were set in hand. It had a number of fine rooms including a well-stocked library and a smoking room "most antiquely furnished with ancient carvings, and the horns of all the European beasts of chase". The grounds were also very overgrown and much effort was put into their improvement and the creation of paths, vistas and pleasure gardens.^[2]

Pennant received his early education at

Pennant married Elizabeth Falconer, the daughter of Lieutenant James Falconer of the Royal Navy, in 1759 and they had a son, David Pennant, born in 1763. Pennant's wife died the following year and fourteen years later he married Ann Mostyn of Mostyn Hall, daughter of Sir Thomas Mostyn, 4th Baronet of Mostyn, Flintshire.^[4][5]

Interests

A visit to

In 1754, he was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries but by 1760 he was happily married and resigned his fellowship because "my circumstances at that time were very narrow, my worthy father being alive, and I vainly thought my happiness would have been permanent, and that I never should have been called again from my retirement to amuse myself in town, or to be of use to the society."[8] When his financial circumstances later improved, he became a patron and collector. He amassed a considerable collection of works of art, many of which had been commissioned and which were selected for their scientific interest rather than their connoisseur value. He had several works by Nicholas Pocock representing topographical landforms, mostly in Wales, and others by the artist Peter Paillou, probably commissioned, representing different climate types. His portrait by Thomas Gainsborough shows him as a country gentleman. Also included in the "Pennant Collection", housed at the National Library of Wales, are many watercolours by Moses Griffith and John Ingleby, and some drawings by Pennant himself.^[3]

The artist

Pennant was an improving landowner and active defender of the established order in church and state. He served as high sheriff of Flintshire in 1761, and actively opposed popular agitation for parliamentary reform. In 1784 he supported the prosecution of William Davies Shipley, the Dean of St Asaph, for seditious libel.^[9]

Scientific work and publications

Early works

Pennant's first publications were scientific papers on the earthquake he had experienced, other geological subjects and

Observing that naturalists in other European countries were producing volumes describing the animals found in their territories, Pennant started, in 1761, a similar work about Britain, to be called British Zoology. This was a comprehensive book with 132 folio plates in colour. It was published in 1766 and 1767 in four volumes as quarto editions, and further small editions followed. The illustrations were so expensive to produce that he made little money from the publication, and when there was a profit, he gave it to charity. For example, the bookseller Benjamin White, brother of the naturalist Gilbert White,^[10] received permission, on payment of £100, to publish an octavo edition, and the money thus raised was donated to the Welsh Charity School. Further appendix volumes were added later and the text, largely written from personal observations, was translated into Latin and German.^[11] The observations Pennant recorded in British Zoology were sufficiently detailed and accurate that it was possible to use them to recreate a modern ecological study that had used a decade's worth of laboratory-based molecular data.^[12]

The book took several years to write and during that time, Pennant was struck by personal tragedy when his wife died. Soon afterwards, in February 1765 and apparently as a reaction, he set out on a journey to the continent of Europe, starting in France where he met other naturalists and scientists including the

While work on the Synopsis of Quadrupeds was still in progress, Pennant decided on a journey to Scotland, a relatively unexplored country and not previously visited by a naturalist. He set out in June 1769 and kept a journal and made sketches as he travelled. He visited the

In 1771 his Synopsis of Quadrupeds was published; a second edition was expanded into a History of Quadrupeds. At the end of that same year, 1771, he published A Tour in Scotland, 1769. This proved so popular that he decided to undertake another journey and in the summer of 1772, set out from Chester with two companions, the Rev. John Lightfoot, a naturalist, and Rev. J. Stewart, a Scotsman knowledgeable in the customs of the country. They travelled through the Lake District, Carlisle, Eskdale, which Pennant much admired, Dumfries and Glasgow. In passing, he was fascinated by the account of the inundation of the surrounding farmland by a bursting out of the Solway Moss peatbog. The party set sail in a ninety-ton cutter from Greenock to explore the outer isles. They first visited Bute and Arran and then continued to Ailsa Craig. Pennant was interested in the birds, frogs and molluscs and considered their distribution. The boat then rounded the Mull of Kintyre and continued to Gigha. They would have continued to Islay but were becalmed. During this enforced idleness, the ever-industrious Pennant started on his ancient history of the Hebrides. When the wind picked up they continued to Jura.^[18]

Here, as elsewhere, they were hospitably welcomed, lent horses to explore the island and shown the principal sights and the improvements that had been made. Pennant records the scenery, customs and superstitions of the inhabitants with many an anecdote. They later reached Islay where Pennant found

Pennant's next publication, in 1774, was his account of the second journey to Scotland. This was in two volumes with the second appearing in 1776. These works include so much detail of the countryside, its economy, natural history and the customs of the inhabitants that they are still of interest today by way of comparison with the very different state of things now. While these volumes were in preparation, he started some new projects. In 1773 he returned to Cumberland, Westmorland and Yorkshire to visit the parts of them that he had missed previously. As with all his tours, he travelled on horseback, keeping his daily journal and accompanied by Moses Griffith who made copious sketches on the way. Pennant seems to have been an unpretentious man of simple tastes, who was welcomed into the homes of strangers wherever he went. He also made tours in Northamptonshire and the Isle of Man. Whenever he travelled to London he took a slightly different route, again recording what he saw and did and on the basis of these details, some years later he wrote his Journey from Chester to London.^[19] On one of these journeys, the church he visited at Buckingham in the morning collapsed into ruins that evening.^[20]

Over the next few years, Pennant made various excursions in North Wales. As with his other tours, he started from Downing. Almost one hundred pages in the first volume that he subsequently wrote were about the ancient city of Chester. His emphasis in these books was on history and the antiquities he saw, rather than on natural history. He was interested in Owain Glyndŵr and his struggle with Henry IV for supremacy in Wales. The first volume of Tour in Wales was published in 1778 but covered a limited area of the country. In an attempt to remedy this, it was followed by a Journey to Snowdon (part one in 1781 and part two in 1783), and these later jointly became the second volume of his Tour. Although these also concentrated on the history of the places visited, they provided some information on the zoology and botany, in the later case with the assistance of Reverend Lightfoot.^[21] Pennant includes tales of the strongwoman and harpist Marged ferch Ifan although he never met her.^[22][23] Pennant mentions tales of the beaver's presence on the River Conwy with a deep stretch being known as "Llyn yr afangc" (Beaver's pool). He also records herons nesting at the top of the cliffs at St Orme's Head above the noisy gulls, razorbills, guillemots and cormorants which had their own nesting zones further down.^[21]

Pennant's interests ranged widely. In 1781, he had a paper published in the Philosophical Transactions on the origins of the turkey, arguing that it was a North American bird and not an Old World species. Another paper, published at the instigation of Sir Joseph Banks, was on earthquakes, several of which he had experienced in Flintshire. In the same year he was made an honorary member of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and in 1783, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and separately, a member of the Swedish Royal Physiographic Society in Lund.^[24] In 1791, he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society.^[25]

In 1782, Pennant published his Journey from Chester to London. He had then intended to write a "Zoology of North America" but as he explained in the "Advertisement", since he felt mortified by the loss of British control over America, this was changed to Arctic Zoology.

Fly, Indifference, hated maid,
Seek Spitsbergen's horrid shade,
...
Teach the sweet coquette to know
Heart of ice in breast of snow;

— Pennant, 1782[28]

In 1790 he published his Account of London, which went through a large number of editions. It was written in the style of his previous works and contained information on things of historical interest in the parts of the capital to which his wanderings led him. By this stage of his life he preferred to make tours in his imagination rather than in reality and he published a second edition of his Indian Zoology. He also conceived the idea of publishing a work on a global scale and set to work on the first two volumes of what was planned to be a fourteen volume series. Each country was to have maps and sketches, colour plates and an account of the country's production with notes on its natural history. All this was to be gleaned from the writing of others who had seen these places themselves. The first two volumes appeared early in 1798 and covered most of India and Ceylon. Volumes three and four included the parts of India east of the Ganges, Malaysia, Japan and China but before these were published he suffered a gradual decline in health and vigour and died at Downing, in December 1798. These two volumes were edited and published posthumously by his son, David, as were also several other short papers and an autobiographical work, The literary life of the late Thomas Pennant, Esq. By himself.^[29]

Correspondents

Pennant met and corresponded widely over many years with other naturalists. This gave him privileged access to manuscripts and specimens, and his writings sometimes provide information about otherwise lost discoveries. For example, he visited the botanist Joseph Banks in September 1771 on his return from Captain James Cook's four-year voyage of exploration; Banks appears to have passed his bird specimens on to Pennant. Pennant's manuscripts describe the birds that Banks saw on the voyage; and when he read John Latham's A General Synopsis of Birds (1781–1785), Pennant saw that Latham had omitted some of the land birds from Eastern Australia that Banks had collected, and wrote to Latham to fill in the gaps.^[30] The naturalist Peter Simon Pallas asked Banks to inform Pennant of "the unhappy fate of Capt^n. Cook", and in December 1779 he wrote to Pennant himself, telling the story.^[31]

Letters to Pennant from the

WorldCat listing:-[35]

• The British Zoology, Class 1, Quadrupeds. 2, Birds. J. and J. March, 1766.^[36]
• A Tour in Scotland 1769. John Monk, 1771.
• A Synopsis of Quadrupeds. John Monk, 1771.
• A Tour in Scotland, and Voyage to the Hebrides 1772. John Monk, 1774.
• Genera of Birds. Balfour and Smellie, 1773.
• British Zoology. Benjamin White, 1776–1777.
• A Tour in Wales. H.D. Symonds, 1778 & 1781.
• A History of Quadrupeds. John Monk, 1781.
• Free Thoughts on the Militia Laws. Benjamin White, 1781.
• The Journey to Snowdon. Henry Hughs, 1781.
• The Journey from Chester to London. Benjamin White, 1782.
• Arctic Zoology. Henry Hughs, 1784–1787.
• Of the Patagonians. George Allan (private press), 1788.
• Of London. Robert Faulder, 1790.
• Indian Zoology. Robert Faulder, 1790.
• A Letter to a Member of Parliament: On Mail-Coaches. R. Faulder, 1792.
• The Literary Life of the Late Thomas Pennant. Benjamin and J. White, 1793.^[a]
• The History of the Parishes of Whiteford and Holywell. Benjamin and J. White, 1796.
• The View of Hindoostan. Henry Hughs, 1798–1800.
• Western Hindoostan. Henry Hughs, 1798.
• The View of India extra Gangem, China, and Japan. L. Hansard, 1800.
• The View of the Malayan Isles, New Holland, and the Spicy Isles. John White, 1800.
• A Journey from London to the Isle of Wight. E. Harding, 1801.
• From Dover to the Isle of Wight. Wilson, 1801.
• A Tour from Downing to Alston-Moor. E. Harding, 1801.
• A Tour from Alston-Moor to Harrowgate, and Brimham Crags. J. Scott, 1804.

Reception

Pennant's two Scottish tours were praised by critics, as were his natural history books.^[37] The Critical Review called the Tour in Scotland 1769 "the best itinerary which has hitherto been written on that country".^[38] Pennant's two Scottish tours made him the best known writer on Scotland, and stimulated the great literary figure of the age, Dr Johnson, to travel in Scotland and especially to the Hebrides, resulting in notable works by both Johnson (A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, 1775) and his friend and biographer James Boswell (The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 1786),^[37] According to the historian David Allan, all three of these "famous" texts were "deliberate attempts... to educate their English readers about Scotland. The intention here was usually to instil both a genuine curiosity and a profound sympathy for their fellow Britons" in marked contrast, in Allan's view, to the prevailing English ignorance and hostility to the people of Scotland; and he cites evidence that readers found it "a beguiling vision that literally prescribed how they would now see and respond—positively, fondly, inquisitively—to Scotland and its culture".^[39] With rare praise, Johnson said of Pennant "... he's the best traveller I ever read; he observes more things than anyone else does." And in 1777, Johnson said to Boswell "Our ramble in the islands hangs upon my imagination. I can hardly help imagining that we shall go again. Pennant seems to have seen a great deal which we did not see. When we travel again let us look better about us."^[40]

The Gentleman's Magazine of 1797 reviewed The History of the Parishes of Whiteford and Holywell, commenting on his claim ("Resurgam", Latin for 'I shall rise') to have returned from the dead (having announced the end of his literary life back in 1791), and continuing to joke about his excesses throughout. For example, the review remarks that the portrait of "the late Pretender" to the throne "at a certain time, might have cost its possessor [Pennant] his seat on the bench of justices".^[41]

Legacy

The naturalist Richard Mabey wrote that Pennant was "a doughty and open-minded traveller, and his various Tours were best-sellers in their time",^[47] adding Samuel Johnson's comment that Pennant was "the best traveller I ever read".^[47] Mabey however comments that he "had no great aptitude or instinct for field-work and nothing approaching [Gilbert] White's critical intelligence",^[47] arguing that Pennant "was essentially an intellectual entrepreneur, a popularizer and compiler of other people's observations and ideas, and was able to produce a large number of very readable guides as a result."^[47] Mabey adds that Pennant had a "pushy and bombastic manner, and a reliance on second-hand information that at times came close to plagiarism"^[47] but admits that he was an innovative author of books, in particular by seeking original reports "from a wide network of field observers",^[47] meeting the fashion in the 1760s for natural history journalism.^[47]

Pennant's exploration of the Western Isles of Scotland was revisited by

Cymdeithas Thomas Pennant (Thomas Pennant Society) was formed in 1989, aiming to foster Pennant's memory. It arranges a programme of events connected with him including publishing leaflets and booklets, holding lectures, an annual dinner and arranging walks in "Pennant Country".[49]^[50] In 2013, the society proposed to Flintshire County Council that "Holywell and the north Flintshire area" be designated 'Pennant Country'. Some Holywell town councillors voiced reservations.^[51]

Species named after him

The following marine species were named with the epithets pennanti, pennantii and pennantiana:^[52]

• Anchomasa pennantiana Leach in Gray, 1852: synonym of Barnea parva (Pennant, 1777)
• Arca pennantiana Leach in Gray, 1852: synonym of Striarca lactea (Linnaeus, 1758)
• Argentina pennanti Walbaum, 1792: synonym of
  Maurolicus muelleri
  (Gmelin, 1789)
• Blennius pennantii Yarrell, 1835: synonym of Chirolophis ascanii (Walbaum, 1792)
• Cardium pennanti Reeve, 1844: synonym of Laevicardium crassum (Gmelin, 1791)
• Cardium pennantii Reeve, 1844: synonym of Laevicardium crassum (Gmelin, 1791)
• Coregonus pennantii
• Ebalia pennantii Leach, 1817: synonym of Ebalia tuberosa (Pennant, 1777)
• Funambulus pennantii
• Gibbula pennanti
  (Philippi, 1846)
• Lamna pennanti (Walbaum, 1792): synonym of
  Lamna nasus
  (Bonnaterre, 1788)
• Maurolicus pennanti (Walbaum, 1792): synonym of
  Maurolicus muelleri
  (Gmelin, 1789)
• Ovula pennantiana Leach, 1847: synonym of Simnia patula (Pennant, 1777)
• Pasiphaë pennantia Leach in Gray, 1852: synonym of Timoclea ovata (Pennant, 1777)
• Pekania pennanti (1771) common name: fisher
• Procolobus pennantii
  Waterhouse, 1838
• Selachus pennantii Cornish, 1885: synonym of
  Cetorhinus maximus
  (Gunnerus, 1765)
• Squalus pennanti Walbaum, 1792: synonym of
  Lamna nasus
  (Bonnaterre, 1788)
• Tetrodon pennantii Yarrell, 1836: synonym of
  Lagocephalus lagocephalus lagocephalus
  (Linnaeus, 1758)
• Trochus pennanti Philippi, 1846: synonym of
  Gibbula pennanti
  (Philippi, 1846)
• Venus pennanti Forbes, 1838: synonym of Chamelea striatula (da Costa, 1778)
• Venus pennantii Forbes, 1838: synonym of Chamelea striatula (da Costa, 1778)
• Vermilia pennantii Quatrefages, 1866: synonym of Pomatoceros triqueter (Linnaeus, 1758): synonym of Spirobranchus triqueter (Linnaeus, 1758)

Notes

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Thomas Pennant.

See also

• Category:Taxa named by Thomas Pennant

References