368 



NOTES AND QUEEIES. 



[No. 129. 



and Testament ; and I doe desire Dr. Nurse and 

 Mr. Mark Cottle to be Ouerseers of this my last Will 

 and Testament, and I giiie to each of them fortie shil- 

 lings apiece. Lastly, I doe hereby revoke all Wills by 

 me formerly made, and will that this onely shall stand 

 and be my last will and Testament, and no other. In 

 Wittnesse whereof I the said Jolm Tredescant to this 

 my present last will and testmant haue set my hand 

 and scale the dale and yeare aboue written. 



"John The (L.S.) descant. 



" Signed, scaled, published, and declared by the said 

 John Tredescant the Testator, as and for his last Will 

 and Testament, in the presence of John .Scatewell, 

 Foulk Bignall, Robert Thompson, Jun'''^ Ric. New- 

 court, Jun'', Ricliard Hoare, Notary Publique. 



" Probatum apud London coram venerabili viro Dno 

 Williamo Mericke railite Legum Doctore Commis- 

 sario, etc., quinto die mensis May Anno Domini 1662, 

 iuramento Hestore Tredescant, Relicte dicti defuncti 

 et Esecutricis, etc." 



It will be recollected that Ashmole, in Lis 

 Diary, says — 



"Decern. 12, 1659. Mr. Tredescant and his wife 

 told me they had been long considering upon whom to 

 bestow their close of curiosities when they died, and at 

 last resolved to give it unto me." 



Two days afterwards (on the 14tli) they liad 

 given tlieir scrivener instructions to prepare a 

 deed of gift to that effect, which was executed by 

 Tredescant, his wife being a subscribing witness 

 on the 16th, as Ashmole records with astrological 

 minuteness, "5 hor. 30 minutes post meridian." 

 On May 30th, 1662, little more than a month after 

 John Ti-edescant's death, he records — 



" This Easter term I preferred a bill in Chancery 

 against Mrs. Tredescant, for the rarities her husband 

 had settled on me." 



Dr. Hamel succeeded in finding the protocols in 

 this suit among the records of tlie Court of Chan- 

 cery, in which Ashmole sets forth, that in Decem- 

 bei", 1659, he visited the Tredescants in South 

 Lambeth, and that he was entertained by Tredes- 

 cant and his wife with great professions of kindness. 

 That Mrs. Tredescant told him that her husband 

 had come to the determination to bequeath to him 

 " the rarities and antiquities, bookes, coynes, me- 

 dalls*, stones, pictures, and mechanicks contained in 

 his Closett of Raryties, knowing the great esteeme 

 and value he put upon it." That Tredescant 

 himself had afterwards said to him, that in ac- 

 knowledgment of his (Ashmole's) previous trouble 

 concerning the preparation of the catalogue of his 

 museum and gardens*, he purposed to do so, and 

 that in effect Ashmole and Mrs. Tredescant, as 

 long as she lived, sliould enjoy it together. Ash- 

 mole also says, Tredescant had made it a condition 



* In the preface to the catalogue the assistance of 

 two friends is mentioned ; it appears that the other was 

 Dr. Thomas Warton. 



that he should, after Mrs. Tredescant's decease, 

 pay a certain Mary Edmonds, or her children, one 

 hundred pounds sterling. That he did then ac- 

 tually let a deed be prepared, by which he made 

 over to him his collection of every kind of curiosities 

 of nature and art within or near the house (Ash- 

 mole here cunningly includes the botanic garden); 

 Mrs. Tredescant was to have the joint proprietorship, 

 and nothing was to be abstracted from the collection. 



This deed Tredescant had, on the 1 6th of De- 

 cember (1659), confirmed under his hand and seal. 

 Mrs. Tredescant fetched a Queen Elizabeth's milled 

 shilling, which Tredescant handed over to him, to- 

 gether with the conveyance, and thereby he came 

 into possession of the collection.* 



Mrs. Tredescant had signed the deed as witness ; 

 but, when Ashmole was about to leave the house, 

 she had requested him to leave it with her, as she 

 wished to ask some of her friends whether, by 

 having signed it as witness, her right as joint pro- 

 prietress of the collection might not be diminished. 

 He left the document with her, in expectation that 

 it would soon be restored to him, but this was 

 never done. Now, after the death of Tredescant, 

 she maintains that her husband never made svich a 

 conveyance ; but the truth is she has bui-nt or 

 destroyed it in some other manner. 



Against this Mrs. Tredescant refers to her hus- 

 band's last will and testament of the 4th of May, 

 1661, by which all previous dispositions of his pro- 

 perty, of whatever kind, were declared invalid, and 

 strongly urges that the museum was expressly be- 

 queathed to her and her alone, with the stipula- 

 tion that she should leave it either to the University 

 of Oxford or to that of Cambridge. And she adds, 

 that she had determined to leave it to the Univer- 

 sity of Oxford. 



I must not now further trespass upon your space ; 

 you shall have the sequel for your next Number. 



S. W. Singer. 



Manor Place, So. Lambeth. 



iBinar ^att^. 



BothweWs Burial-place. — Bothwell was im- 

 prisoned in Seeland, in the castle of Draxholm, 



* Ashmole says, " It was not thought fit to clogge 

 the deed with the payment of the said hundred pounds 

 to Mrs. Edmonds or her children, to the end tliat 

 the same might better appear to be a free and generous 

 gift, and therefore the consideracion cf the deed was 

 expressed to be for the entire affeccion and singular 

 esteeme the said John Tredescant had to him (Ash- 

 mole), who he did not doubt would preserve and aug- 

 ment the said rarities for posterity." He declares that 

 he will pay the money ; and in his Diary we find that 

 after Mrs. Tredescant's death, in 1678, he pays to a 

 Mrs. Lea, probably one of the daughters of Mrs. Ed- 

 monds, one hundred pounds. 



