[Sir Charles Travis Clay, Librarian of the House of Lords, antiquary and genealogist.] Autograph Letter Signed (‘Charles Clay’) to the mediaevalist Austin Lane Poole, regarding his work on the entry on the Percy family in the Complete Peerage.

2pp, 4to. 34 lines of closely-written text. In good condition, lightly aged. Folded twice. Addressed to ‘Mr. Poole’. After expressing a hope that they will be meeting Poole now that they are both on the council of the Royal Historical Society, he explains that he is writing in relation to his redrafting of ‘the early part of Percy for the Complete Peerage’, noting that ‘the present draft is certainly alarming’. He is taking it ‘down to 1245’ and finds it ‘full of snags’. He has ‘just finished a draft of Jocelin, Agnes de Percy’s husband’, and L. C. Loyd has pointed him towards Poole’s ‘paper in the volume of essays presented to your Father’, and he asks for ‘documentary evidence’ regarding Jocelin’s paternity: ‘I should be very grateful to have the reference which I could incorporate. In one of his charters to Reading Abbey Jocelin mentions his father duke Godfrey & his mother - but unfortunately unnamed.’ He ends with a paragraph regarding work on ‘a consolidated index of names & places’ to the first three volumes of Sir William Farrer’s Early Yorkshire Charters. vols. I-III’.