Letter: In Brief

Sir: The "bloody shirt" of King Charles I was taken to France by John Ashburnham, MP for Hastings, when he took the king's two younger children to join the Queen (Charles I's shirt is really lady's nightie", 23 September). His descendants, the Earls of Ashburnham, kept the shirt under glass as an honoured relic and their descendant, the Rev John Bickersteth, wrote to me in 1991 that he still showed it to visitors.

DEREK J COLE

St Leonards-on-Sea,

East Sussex