IN the library of W. J. Hemp, Esq., F.S.A., of Criccieth, is an heraldic manuscript of c. 1610 or earlier on Venetian¹  paper produced at the end of the sixteenth century and bound in a Caroline binding stamped with the initials T. P. for Thomas Peniston.
   It contains firstly the arms of the gentry of Kent as once displayed in Queenborough Castle; secondly and without a break, an interesting armoury of Kent; thirdly the arms of various of the nobility of the period; fourthly a list of baronets in order of creation, 92 in all, the last two, in a different hand, Sir Thomas Penningston and Sir Thomas Temple, both created September 24th, 1611, (this list is an insertion in the volume); fifthly (also an insertion) a continuation of the list to 1620, inclusive; sixthly, beside this, a fine marshalling of 36 coats for Penyston of Cornwall House, co. Oxon; and lastly on the following page, an inferior trick of Penyston quarterly of four, with the Ulster hand in base, and an inescutcheon of Watson. This, with its accompanying subscription, is, save for the Ulster hand, exactly as in Guillim, 1632 edn., p. 388, where Guillim states: "I have omitted to blazon his Baronets marke because it is not cut in the Escocheon." Beneath the subscription is "This booke was given mee by Sr. Thos. Penyston 15° Junii, 1641. 

E:W:" and on the fly leaf at the beginning of the MS., in the same hand, is written Ed: Woods. I have been unable to trace this man, though I suspect an unchronicled marriage with a female Penyston, probably without surviving off-spring, since this MS. was the property of Miss Frances Peniston of Cornwall House, the last member of the family, and given by her to her cousin, Mr. Richard O. Assheton, from whom by marriage it has descended to its present owner.
   The connection of the Penystons with Kent starts in the sixteenth century. There is a stray cleric, Thomas, curate of Hope in 1502, and vicar of Selling at the time of his death in 1518; in his will of that date he is of New Romney, and in 1511 he leased and farmed the rectory there (A.C., XLVII, 24; XXXI, 90; XIII, 413). But one must turn to North Kent in Elizabethan times for any connection with this MS., when Thomas Penyston of Deane, co. Oxon, married Mary, daughter and coheir of John Somer of Newlands in St. Mary's, Hoo, Somer being Clerk of the Privy Signet, and Penyston Clerk of the Council. John Philipot, Somerset Herald, edited and published Camden's Remains concerning Britain, and in this, "upon a Piller of
   ¹  Briquet, Les Filigranes, No. 755. He quotes examples from the 1590's.