] Anielka, if you have the leisure, could you fill us in about what you know of the name Morland?

Quite a tricky one. There are no obvious Morland candidates in JA's family whereas there are obviously a branch of Bennets, Willoughbys and Wentworths. On the whole JA tended to use a name that (i) she was related to (ii) was related to her "storyline" or another character through the female line (therefore impossible to trace unless you knew JA's genealogy as pedigrees are patrilineal). Here are the two candidates so far:

1)JA's 2nd cousin (a son of her father's cousin & family's patron, Francis Motlety Austen) Col. Thomas Motley Austen married a Margaretta Morland. However I don't think they married until after JA had written NA. Didn't JA changed the name of NA from "Susan" 13 years after writing so she might have retrospectively changed the surnames too? As these Morlands were a Kippington family (the same as Francis Motley Austen) these Morlands had probably been related to or known to JA for generations past. I need to investigate Margaretta's pedigree further. Her father was Thomas Morland and her mother was Ann Matson

2)The most famous Morland I can think of that would have appealed to JA was Sir Samuel Morland, 1625-1695. He was a Rev., a fairly amazing diplomat (worked for both Cromwell and Charles II - JA was keen on Charles) and invented the first money-adder and multiplying machine, other scientific instruments and had a go at raising water in Lord Arlington's grounds (Lord Arlington was a cousin of JA). He was also of a philosphical bent and wrote religeous articles and studied the Waldenses. (It would be very interesting to look at his writings - especially if he was discovered to have written the unidentified quote at the beginning of NA (I am not sure which one is the unidentified quote because I have a very average Wordsworth Classic edition of NA and the notation of "Quote 8" seems to be missing). I haven't yet found an ancestral connection to JA because I can't trace Sir Samuels's genealogy (he married four times and I can only find a record of one daughter) but he is definitely a fascinating character and the only really prominant Morland whom I think JA would have known about. One of his wives "Lady Morland, a woman of abandoned character, who had been divorced from ....Sir Samuel Morland, Bart., in 1688" married Sir Gilbert-Cosin Gerard after her divorce. Does anyone know if Goldsmith mentions Sir Samuel Morland in his "History of England"? - if so then we know JA knew about him and in what context. He also pops up briefly in Pepy's diaries. Do we know if JA read them? Sir Samuel Morland also wrote " New Method of Cryptography (1666)" which might have appealled to JA's interest in Mary QOS and the use of coded messages.

Try "Sir Samuel Morland" in your search engine if interested - one link below. He is a fairly amazing all-rounder - rather the opposite of Catherine.