Pedigree and achievement, dated 1637, of the Watkins family of Usk, Monmouthshire, with fifty-one fully painted coats of arms, mostly impaled, apparently compiled by Walter Hopkins of Brecon.
The pedigree shows the Watkins family's descent, in four parallel lines, from Bennett Pencla[w]dd [Sir Bennet de Penclawdd], lord of Kilfigyn [Cilfeigan, near Usk], as well as Kydifor Vawr of Kilsant, Barnard Newmarch [Bernard de Neufmarché] and Iestyn ap Gwrgan[t], down to the brothers William and Thomas Watkins of Usk (both alive 1637); some collateral branches are also noted. An inscription concerning Bennett Penclawdd is inserted in a cartouche at the beginning of the pedigree, with a further inscription, mostly illegible, on the dorse. Several roundels, for the Watkins brothers's wives and immediate descendants, have been left blank; two escutcheons have been added below the last generation and then carefully erased with white paint; the roll also retains pencil markings used to sketch out the pedigree before painting. A missing individual ('Gronow Benet') has been interpolated in a later seventeenth-century hand. The pedigree is an example of 'Style 3' in Michael Powell Siddons, Welsh Pedigree Rolls (Aberystwyth, 1996), pp. 11-12.
