will and Testament, and no other. In Wittnesse whereof I the said John Tredescant to this my present last will and testament haue set my hand and seale the daie and yeare aboue written.

"JOHN TRE (L.S.) DESCANT.

"Signed, sealed, published, and declared by the said John Tredescant the Testator, as and for his last Will and Testament, in the presence of John Seatewell, Foulk Bignall, Robert Thompson, Junris, Ric. Newcourt, Junr, Richard Hoare, Notary Publique.

"Probatum apud London coram venerabili viro Dño Williamo Mericke milite Legum Doctore Commissario, etc., quinto die mensis May Anno Domini 1662, iuramento Hestore Tredescant, Relicte dicti defuncti et Executricis, etc."

It will be recollected that Ashmole, in his Diary, says—

"Decem. 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 14th) they had given their 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 Tredescant'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 the Court of Chancery, in which Ashmole sets forth, that in December, 1659, he visited the Tredescants in South Lambeth, and that he was entertained by Tredescant 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, medalls, 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 acknowledgment of his (Ashmole's) previous trouble concerning the preparation of the catalogue of his museum and gardens,[2] he purposed to do so, and that in effect Ashmole and Mrs. Tredescant, as long as she lived, should enjoy it together. Ashmole also says, Tredescant had made it a condition that he should, after Mrs. Tredescant's decease, pay a certain Mary Edmonds, or her children, one hundred pounds sterling. That he did then actually 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 (Ashmole here cunningly includes the botanic garden); Mrs. Tredescant was to have the joint proprietorship, and nothing was to be abstracted from the collection.

[2] In the preface to the catalogue the assistance of two friends is mentioned; it appears that the other was Dr. Thomas Warton.

This deed Tredescant had, on the 16th of December (1659), confirmed under his hand and seal. Mrs. Tredescant fetched a Queen Elizabeth's milled shilling, which Tredescant handed over to him, together with the conveyance, and thereby he came into possession of the collection.[3]

[3] 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 that the same might better appear to be a free and generous gift, and therefore the consideracion of the deed was expressed to be for the entire affeccion and singular esteeme the said John Tredescant had to him (Ashmole), who he did not doubt would preserve and augment 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. Edmonds, one hundred pounds.

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 proprietress 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 such a conveyance; but the truth is she has burnt or destroyed it in some other manner.

Against this Mrs. Tredescant refers to her husband's last will and testament of the 4th of May, 1661, by which all previous dispositions of his property, of whatever kind, were declared invalid, and strongly urges that the museum was expressly bequeathed to her and her alone, with the stipulation 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 University 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.

Minor Notes.

Bothwell's Burial-place.

—Bothwell was imprisoned in Seeland, in the castle of Draxholm, now called Adelersborg, near the town of Holbek. He died there, and was buried in the neighbouring village church of Faareveile, where I in vain have searched for this tomb or coffin. An old coffin, half opened, standing between several other old coffins in a vault below the floor of the church, certainly was said, according to tradition, to contain the body of Bothwell, but no inscriptions or other signs proved the truth of it.

J. J. A. WORSAAE.

Handel's Organ at the Foundling Hospital.

—It is generally understood that the organ in the chapel of this Institution was the gift of Handel. That great musician conducted a concert of sacred music upon the opening of the chapel in 1749, and superintended the annual performance of his oratorio, "The Messiah," from 1751 to 1759. In his will he left to the charity "a fair copy of the score, and all its parts," of the same oratorio; which score is still preserved, and has furnished the editor of the new edition, lately produced by the Handel Society, with several new and important readings.

Dr. Burney, in his "Sketch of the Life of Handel," prefixed to his Account of the Commemoration, 4to., 1785, says, "The organ in the chapel of this [i.e. the Foundling] hospital was a present from Handel." But how are we to reconcile this statement with the following, which I find in the European Magazine for February, 1799:

"Handel did not give the organ to