Notes and Queries

trouble to local custodians. Then Mr. A. C.
Flick suggests the erection throughout New
York State of markers," by which are
meant commemorative tablets, on all its num-
erous historic sites and buildings. He urges
that every Indian village and trail, pioneer
cabin, early road and bridge, grist mill, saw
mill, lumber camp, tannery, factory, church,
school, old home, battlefield and fort, birth-
place, deathplace and residence of eminent
men and women, and scene of historic events
should have an appropriate marker," and, in
setting out what he thinks these markers
should be like, lays stress on historical
accuracy, on simplicity and brevity, and on Two Hundred Years Ago.

the detail with which the British Israelites
find it in them to prophecy. At the third
annual meeting of this society, recently held
at Londonderry House, Mr. Basil Stewart
announced that the next great world war
will start on May 28 of next year, and come
to an end on Sept. 16, 1936. This is arrived
at by combining data from the Bible with
indications in the symbolism of the Great
Pyramid. It is satisfactory to learn that
Israel (England, her colonies and her allies)
will emerge at last victorious. For Russia
the outlook is dark indeed.

the lettering being large enough to be read

easily and quickly by a passing automobile." This last requirement, in places where markers are to be numerous, might make lovers of landscape rather thoughtful.

THE

Weekly Journal

OR, THE

Britifh Gazetteer.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1727.

Laft Monday Night there was a Mafquerade at the Theatre in the Hay-Market, and we hear that it is her Majefty's Requeft there may be no more Entertainments of that Kind this Season.

We are inform'd that the poor Infolvent Debtors in Newgate on Wednesday 7-Night laft in celebrating the Day of their Majefties Coronation, lighted an hundred Candles in one Window of the faid Jail, with which Mr. Allen the Prison Keeper was fo well pleas'd that he gave them a Piece of Money to drink their Majefties Healths, which they all did upon their Knees, bare headed, no Man being fuffered to have either Wig or Cap on at the drinking of the faid Healths: No fuch Obfervation hath been in that Jail fince the Restoration of King Charles the Second.

WE E learn that Mr. Aleyn Lyell Reade has
now ready for the printer Part v. of his
Johnsonian Gleanings' entitled The Doc-
tor's Life, 1728-1735.' The edition, which is
privately printed, is limited to 350 copies,
and the price to subscribers before issue is
£1 1s. Its length is considerably greater
than that of Part iv., and it can claim to be
the most important volume of the series yet
issued, dealing with the obscurest part of
Johnson's life and establishing the chronology
of those seven years more definitely than has
before been possible. Elaborate investiga-
tion and analysis of the buttery books of Pem-
broke College has proved that Johnson never
returned there as an undergraduate after
December, 1729. Brief biographies of his con-
temporaries at college are given, with more
detailed accounts of those whose actual asso-
ciation with him is known, such as Oliver
Edwards, John Fludger, Philip Jones, John
Meeke, Andrew Corbet, Matthew Bloxam and
William Jorden. A catalogue of his library
at college, of over 80 items, is included, with
identifications and illustrative notes. After
leaving college Johnson's failing to obtain
usherships at Stourbridge and Ashbourne,
and succeeding at Market Bosworth, his
long stay at Birmingham (where he trans-
lated Lobo '), and his tutorship to the
Whitby family, are examined closely in the
light of fresh research, as are the circum-pany.
stances preceding his marriage, and there is
an extended account of his life-long friends,
the Astons of Lichfield.

TO those outside their circle there is some-
thing mystifying in the assurance and

One John Watfon, a Lad, was tried for High Treason in counterfeiting the Coin, and was acquitted.

Thurfday the Queen being flightly indifpofed, there was no Drawing Room at Court as ufual, and their Majefties faw no Com

His Majesty hath ordered fome of the Paintings at Kenfington Palace to be erazed, and the Monarchs of England, from Alfred, &c., to be placed in their Stead.

Literary and Historical deceased person was to be made. It was to

Notes.

THE PROVING OF SHAKESPEARE'S

WILL.

be in duplicate, one part being kept in the registry, and the other part being delivered to the executor, or administrator. The two parts were to be indented, that is to say, their edges were to be cut or indented exactly alike, so that they would tally with each other upon comparison. Such indentures were necessarily written on parchment or indented. The law had not been altered in 1616, and Shakespeare's inventory must have been in duplicate. But indented inventories seem to have been confined to the two Preroga

PROBATION of testaments," says Henry vellum, as paper could not be properly

Swinburne, 'belongeth to the Bishop of the dioces where the testator dwelleth "

(A Treatise of Testaments,' 1611). Why, then, was Shakespeare's will proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, which was in London, and not in the Court of the Bishop of Worcester, in whose diocese he dwelt? The reason was that he had personal property in more than one diocese. If he had bona notabilia, i.e., chattels to the value of a hundred shillings in two distinct dioceses or jurisdictions, then the will was to be proved before the metropolitan of the province, by way of special prerogative. Hence we may safely infer that Shakespeare had personal property in London as well as at Stratford-on-Avon.

The poet died on April 23, 1616, and, before his will could be proved, an inventory of his personal estate had to be exhibited in the Prerogative Court. As he was a man of considerable wealth, and had a large house, the preparation of the inventory would take a considerable time. It would be drawn up, as the custom always was, by at least four substantial neighbours. It was exhibited to the Court on June 8, or fourteen days before the will was proved. We learn this last-named

fact from the Act Book for 1616, which contains the following entry :

Vicesimo secundo die [Junii] probatum fuit testamentum Willielmi Shackespeare nuper de Stratford super Avon in comitatu Warwici

defuncti.

tive Courts.

and published the probate inventory, dated
Let me give an example. In 1881 I copied
1691, of Strelley Pegge, Esq., of Beauchief
Hall (Derbyshire Arch. J. iii. 55-56).
was the executor's copy, and it then remained
at Beauchief. It was written in a bold
engrossing hand on a roll of parchment about
thirty feet long. It gives particulars of the
furniture in the various rooms, the linen,
silver, corn, farming implements, etc., the
total value being £499 5s. 4d. No books or
pictures are mentioned, though there must
have been a considerable number of books in

'The

I have one of them myself, which the house. may have belonged to him, namely AdlingGolden Asse, 1639, and I know that there ton's translation, in black letter, of were many other old books in the house, which now have been dispersed. Shakespeare's inventory, though seventy-five years earlier, must have greatly resembled in its form this inventory of a Derbyshire squire and barrister. The inventory is said to have been exhibited, but in what court we told. There were four appraisers.

are not

On Aug. 29 last I suggested in a letter to The Times that the old probate inventories at Somerset House should be classified and indexed. I know that the officials at the Literary Department of the Probate Registry are not too well supplied with money, and it The Act Book goes on to say that admin- occurred to me that such a letter might posistration was granted to John Hall, one of sibly fall under the eye of some rich Amerthe executors, power being reserved to ican. On Aug. 31 Mr. Ernest Law replied Susanna Hall, the other executor. In the to this letter and said that in 1881 the late right hand margin are the words: Inm Dr. Furnivall (with Mr. J. Challenor Smith, ext. viijo," that is "Inventarium exhibitum the Superintendent of the Literary Search [fuit] viijo [die]." The word defuncti " Department) tested twenty-eight boxes in not superfluous, for, as Swinburne naively that department-these containing all the remarks, a will must not be proved before the seventeenth century inventories. They contestator is dead! cluded that the inventories of the early part of the century had been consumed Great Fire (see Memorabilia,' ante p. 163).

In 1529 (21 Hen. VIII) it was enacted that an inventory of the goods and chattels of a

in the

Twelve years after 1881 Mr. Challoner A few months ago MR. ALFRED RANSFORD Smith edited and published the first volume of the Index of Wills proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, and in the Introduction he says, on p. xxix:

Inventories. There is a very large series of these documents, beginning c. 1480. Very few of these are of earlier date than 1600, and apparently none belong to the period 1601 to 1660. From about 1710 it was not customary for them to be exhibited save where they were specially demanded. Those of date previous to 1710 are kept in boxes and are in a condition of the utmost confusion, without even an approximation to chronological order. If these should ever be sorted they supply, in addition to a very great deal of interesting archaeological material, some names of persons in whose estates grants may be presumed to have issued, although there is no other evidence of the fact.

There was another inventory in this reg istry of which we must take notice, namely that of John Hall the poet's son-in-law and executor. Mr. Hall, described in the Parish Register as medicus peritissimus, died at Stratford in 1635, and, says Halliwell-Phillipps, "in a nuncupative will that was made a few hours before he died, he gave Thomas Nash, the husband of his only child, his 'study of books' [to dispose of them as he should see good.] As the Halls were Shakespeare's residuary legatees, there can hardly be a doubt that any volumes that had been possessed by the latter at Stratord-on-Avon were included in this bequest ('Outlines,' 5th ed., p. 231). Mr. Hall's will was proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. He died possessed of a house in London, and of another house at Acton, now in the county of London, as well as of personal estate. We may be certain that the officials at the registry would demand the usual duplicate inventory. By "study of books" Hall appears to have meant the books contained in his library, and these could hardly have been overlooked by the appraisers who made the inventory, seeing that they were specifically named.

Halliwell-Phillipps regarded Stratford-onAvon as a "bookless neighbourhood," and, at the reference just given, said it was exceed ingly improbable "that Shakespeare ever owned a private library," even of the smallest dimensions. Yet before the age of printing Chaucer said of his Clerk of Oxenford

For him was lever have at his beddes heed
Twenty bookes, clothed in black and reed
Of Aristotil and his philosophie
Than robus riche, or fithul, or sawtrie.

told us in these pages (clii. 291) that "The Revd. John Marshall of Bishopton, a chapelry in the parish of Old Stratford, in 1607 left 187 books. Sir Thomas Lucy the second leaves in his will to his son and heir Thomas 'all my Frenche and Italian books.' The date is Aug. 13, 1600." If a poor Oxford scholar of 1400 could have had twenty wellbound books at his bed's head, can it be that in 1616 Shakespeare, king of poets, had no study of books" in his great house? the last sixteen years of his life at least he had money enough to buy books. One cannot imagine a poet, philosopher, or historian without them, however vast his knowledge of men and nature.

For

The grant of probate was unusually delayed. Shakespeare was buried on April before the inventory was exhibited, and the 25, and a period of forty-four days elapsed will was not proved for a fortnight after the exhibition of the inventory. In those days three weeks would have been ample time in an ordinary case to get the whole business through. The will of Robert Arden, the Poet's maternal grandfather, is dated 24 Nov., 1556, and was proved at Worcester; inventory is dated 9 Dec., and probate was granted on the 16th, the total value of the personal estate being £77 11s. 10d.

the

In the smaller Probate Registries, such as Worcester and Lichfield, the will and the inventory are generally, perhaps always, incorporated in one document, and in both cases they seem to have been copies of the originals. (At Lichfield there are none of the large vellum registers into which wills were copied, as at Somerset House and York). For historical purposes there is a great advantage in that, for you get the whole story in one piece, whereas a will without an inventory is incomplete. Robert Arden's will, just mentioned, is incorporated with the inventory, and is so published by Halliwell-Phillips and Mr. J. W. Gray. This inventory tells us of Arden's hall and chamber and the painted cloths, or tapestries, hung therein-decorations which his grandson must have remembered ('Love's Labour Lost,' V. ii. 571; 'As You Like It,' III. ii. 276). A man whose chief apartments were hung with tapestry was no mere peasant. Many are the glimpses which we get in these documents of the life of other days.

38, Orsett Terrace, W. 2.

S. O. ADDY.

SIR

SIR THOMAS HERBERT'S MEMOIRS. Thomas Herbert's Memoirs ' were first printed, under this title, in 1702, in a small volume containing some other documents, in an Appendix. The subsequent editions varied as regards their Appendices, but that of 1813 contained two important letters at the end.

Under the title of Threnodia Carolina,' these Memoirs were first written in 1678, at the suggestion of Sir William Dugdale. In that year Parliament had at last taken in hand the re-burial of Charles I, had voted £68,000 (about a quarter of a million in our money) for a procession and Mausoleum in honour of the King. But Charles II, as a letter at the end of the edition of 1813 states, 18 had some doubt as to whether his father had really been buried at Windsor. I draw attention to this because modern writers, basing themselves upon an absurd error of Clarendon (who died in 1674) are in the habit of asserting that Charles I was never re-buried because the spot where he was buried could not be found. On the contrary, the spot was quite well known, was pointed out to Pepys in 1666 and in the course of the debates in Parliament in 1678 the statement was made that the sexton at St. George's, Windsor, was in the habit of pointing it out. Lack of money was the reason why the matter was not taken in hand before 1678, and Charles II's repeated prorogations of, and finally altogether dispensing with, Parliament, prevented the plans of 1678 from being carried out..

What, then, was the doubt entertained by Charles II? It is to be found in a manuscript of John Aubrey, amongst the Lansdowne MSS., entitled 'The remains of Gentilisme':

I well remember that it was frequently and soberly affirmed by officers of arms and grandees that the body of King Charles the First was privately put into the sand at Whitehall; and the coffin that was carried to Windsor and laid in King Henry the Eighth's vault was filled with rubbish and brick bats.

Herbert, who had seen the King's body embalmed, placed in the coffin, and then swathed in lead, and, not alone, but in company with three other servants of the King, Mildmay, Ducket and Capt. Preston, had accompanied it to Windsor and witnessed the burial, was in a position to refute this and other malicious rumours, and accordingly

did so. There is no criticism to make of his action in this matter, but there is a good deal

to be said about his 'Memoirs,' first utilised by Anthony à Wood. Quite recently these have been reprinted, without any attempt to verify his statements. I propose to prove that the Memoirs' seriously need criticism and verification.

A word of apology for Herbert is necessary in the first instance. He had lost his notes, kept no diary, wrote nearly thirty years after the events he described, and was seventy years old at the time. And mental decay was a common accompaniment of advancing years in the seventeenth century, owing to the hard drinking habits of the times.

Even so, he deserves censure for the manner in which he praises his thoroughly detestable kinsman, Philip, fourth Earl of Pembroke, and magnifies his own services to the murdered King. Herbert was by no means the trusted personal friend of Charles I he represents himself to have been; indeed, there are grounds for thinking that, at all events up to the close of 1648, he was one of the many Parliamentary spies thrust upon the King. We hear nothing in his favour in 1647; he was not trusted with the secret of the King's escape from Hampton Court at the close of that year, and when the King had been successfully inveigled into Carisbrooke Castle he was again forced upon him as one of his attendants, after he had been made a close prisoner, in January, 1648. A letter, printed in Perfect Occurrences for 19-26 May, 1648, and dated from Carisbrooke on the 22nd, says:

Mr. Herbert and Mr. Harrington his [the King's] Privy Chambermen, are weary of their places, for their duty is great.

In all the King's attempts to escape from the Isle of Wight Herbert was not in the King's confidence, and played no part.

I shall commence with a simple, but not unimportant, mistake, before I expose some of Herbert's most glaring falsehoods in his Memoirs.' When describing the last scenes of the King's life, Herbert states:

For about a fortnight after his Majesty's the Presence Chamber, and at meals was served coming to St. James's he constantly dined in after the usual state, the Carver, Sewer, Cupbearer and Gentleman Usher attending and dolge altered, for the officers of the Army their offices respectively. But then (being predominant) gave order at a Council of War that henceforth all State-ceremony or accustomed respect to his Majesty at meals should be forborn," &c.

Now the King was not taken to St. James's until Jan. 19, and this order was made

directly it was known that he was at Windsor. Charles I arrived at Windsor at 3 o'clock in the afternoon of Saturday, Dec. 23, 1648, according to Perfect Occurrences for 22-30 Dec. Under the date of Dec. 27 the writer (Henry Walker) adds:

The Council of Warre (who now manage business in relation to him) have ordered the way of State and Majestie observed about him, as to persons and manner, viz., that nothing be done upon the knee, and all ceremonies of State to the King be left off.

manservant.

In the next number of Perfect Occurrences (that for Dec. 29-Jan. 5) there is a letter from Windsor, dated 3 Jan., giving an account of the conveying of private letters to the King by Herbert's The writer comments: There is not the least occasion to suspect Mr. Herbert himselfe." Of course not, Herbert was not trusted by the King. He had been the faithful servant of the King's enemies, and that is why he was suffered to remain with his master till the end.

After this, mistakes, or worse, multiply. Coming to the trial, Herbert asserts:

Upon Friday the 19th of January 1648 [9] his Majesty was removed from St. James's to Whitehall and lodged in his usual Bed-chamber, after which a guard of musqueteers were placed and centinels at the door of his chamber; thenceforth Mr. Herbert (who constantly lay in the next room to the King, according to the duty of his place) by his Majesty's order, brought his pallat into his Majesty's bed-chamber, to be nearer to his Royal person, where every night he rested.

This is quite untrue; the King did not leave Windsor until 19 Jan., and slept at St. James's on that night. Perfect Occurrences for 18-25 Jan., states, under the date of "" 19 Jan.":

The King came this night to St. James's; many people flockt' to see him passe by before he went into the house. Some offers the King made to an eminent officer, who hath declared himself to be very faithful.

Herbert goes on:

The next day [Sat. Jan. 20] the King was in a Sedan or close chair, removed from Whitehall to Sir Robert Cotton's house near the West end of Westminster Hall. Guards were made on both sides King St. all along the Palace Yard and Westminster Hall, as his Majesty was from the Garden door at Whitehall carried to Cotton House, none but Mr. Herbert going bare before the King, no other of his Majesty's servants going along King St. or Westminster Hall, the soldiers hindering them.

Every one of the circumstances thus detailed is false. The Perfect Weekly Account

About 2 past meridium the King, with a strong guard, came over St. James's park to Whitehall; and at the stayers on the water attended his own barge, which was appointed to carry him from thence to Sir Robert Cotton's house, near the Parliament stayers. Upon report given out that the King would pass that way, great store of boats were gathered together on the water with many spectators. The King sate within the closet of his barge, his attendance [attendants] and some of the soldiery without, the watermen rowing bareheaded, the others covered. Before his barge went another barge laden with musketeers, and after him a barge laden with partizados. About the time he landed at Cotton house, the high court for his tryal in Westminster Hall, and after, the Court, was proclaimed.

The Perfect Diurnall for 15-22 Jan., puts the facts briefly :

The King (who lay the night before in St. James) and was brought this day to Whitehall and thence by water, guarded by musketeers in boats, to Sir Robert Cotton's house, was brought this day to the barre.

Apart from this evidence, we have testimony, given at the trials of the regicides in 1660, by Sir Purback Temple, about Cromwell watching the King come up the garden path from the water at Cotton house, turning as white as the wall,' " and saying to the other regicides, My masters. He is come. He is come." And 'What answer shall we give him when he asks us by what authority we do try him?'

At Cotton house, Herbert asserts:

The King's chamber had the best accommodation could so suddenly be made. The soldiers that were upon the guard were in the next chamber to the King's. His Majesty commanded Mr. Herbert to bring a pallet, and being laid upon the matted floor at one side of the King's bed, there slept.

But, two soldiers having been ordered to stay in his room, the King flatly refused to go to bed. The Armies Modest Intelligencer for 19-26 Jan., referring to Monday, the 22nd, says:

The King was again this day at his tryall Hee was conducted from the barre to Sr. Ralf [sic] Cotton's house, where hee remayned the last night, but refused to go to bed.

However, Perfect Occurrences for 18-25 adds: Jan.,

The King had not gone to bed on Satterday night by reason of his dislike to have anybody in his chamber, but this last [Sunday?] night he did go to bed.

But the Kingdom's Weekly Intelligencer for

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Notes and Queries, Volume 153