quasi-grandfather at Bradbourne. Two other sons were subsequently named John and Walter, and three daughters, Susanna, Anne, and Elizabeth. Where John Manningham lived after he quitted the Temple, whether in London with a view to practice at the Bar, at Hatfield which was the place of residence of the Curles, or at Bradbourne with his "father in love," then a second time a widower, does not appear.

On the 3rd January 1609-10, the old merchant proved the reality of his assumed fatherhood by executing a deed of gift to John Manningham of the mansion-house of Bradbourne and the lands surrounding it in East Malling, and two years afterwards, on the 21st January, being, as he states, "in tolerable health of body in regard of mine age and infirmities," he made his will. It confirmed, "if needful," the deed of gift to John Manningham, appointed him sole executor, and with some slight exceptions and the charge of a considerable number of legacies, most of them tokens of remembrance, gave him all the residue of his property. The multitude of the old man's legacies and not less so their character tell of his continuing interest in the connections of his past life. They read like the last utterances of a warm and affectionate spirit casting back its glance upon those from whom it was about to part; whilst his adjuration to his adopted son to discharge the amounts with punctuality, although deformed by the verbiage of legal formality, and smacking a little of the mercantile estimate of the indispensable importance of payment on the very day, is not devoid of real solemnity. Omitting some of the tautologous expressions it reads thus:—"I charge John Manningham, by all the love and duty which he oweth me, for all my love and liberality which I have always borne [to] him and his heretofore, but chiefly in this my will, that he pay every legacy within six months after my death, those excepted that are appointed to be paid at certain days, and those to be duly paid at their days appointed, as my trust is in him, and as he will answer afore God and me at the latter day!" Nor is the pious close of the document without a share of true impressiveness:—"Having thus, I thank God, finished my will, and set an order in my worldly affairs, I will henceforward await God's will to depart hence in peace, most humbly beseeching him that when the day of my dissolution shall be come, I may by his grace be armed with a true and lively faith, firm hope, and constant patience, and be ready to forsake all to go to my blessed Saviour and Redeemer Jesus Christ. Amen, good Lord!"

He had not long to wait. His will was dated, as we have remarked, on the 21st January, 1611-12. On the 25th of the following April,11 Richard Manningham entered into his rest, and John Manningham into possession as adopted heir. On the following 1st of May he proved the will of his "father in love" at Doctors' Commons.

The few particulars we have been able to gather of the course of this family after the death of Richard Manningham are little more than a brief register of dates. On the 16th April 1617, William Curle the father died. He was interred in Hatfield church, where a monument commemorates his fidelity as a public officer, his good-fortune in his children and friends, and his calm and happy death.12

In 1619, John Philipot, York Herald, made a Visitation for Kent as Deputy for Camden, the Clarencieux. On this occasion John Manningham registered his arms and pedigree. It is observable that he did not introduce into it the descent of his cousin Richard Manningham from their common ancestor, nor even his name. If the Visitation may be depended upon we may infer that between the time when the return was made and the 21st January 1621-2, when John Manningham made his own will, he lost his daughter Anne by death, and his youngest son, to whom he gave the name of his brother-in-law Walter, was born. Before the same day his other brother-in-law and chamber-fellow Edward Curle had also died. The last trace we have found of him is in 1613.

In the will of John Manningham to which we have just alluded, and which it will be observed was dated like that of his predecessor on a 21st January, he described himself as of "East Malling, esquire," and devised Bradbourne and all the lands derived from his "late dear cousin and father in love" Richard Manningham, "who for ever," he remarks, "is gratefully to be remembered by me and mine," to his widow for life and after her decease entailed the same on his three sons in succession. He gave to his daughter Susanna a marriage portion of 300l.; to Elizabeth, 250l.; to the little Benjamin of his flock, the young Walter, anything but a Benjamin's share of 100l.; and to his executors 20 nobles a piece; all the rest of his personalty he divided between his widow and his eldest son. He named as executors Dr. Walter Curle, who had then ascended upon the ladder of preferment to the Deanery of Lichfield, and John Manningham's cousin, Dr. William Roberts of Enfield. The Will was proved on the 4th December, 1622, by Dr. Curle alone, Dr. Roberts having renounced.

Two further facts bring to an end the brief glimmerings we have been able to discover respecting the third generation of the Manninghams at Bradbourne.

Bishop Walter Curle made his will on the 15th March 1646-7, and left to his nephew and godson Walter Manningham a sum of 50l. To the boy's mother—"my loving sister

Mrs. Anne Manningham," the Bishop left "a piece of plate of twenty ounces."13

Nine years afterwards the "loving sister" had followed the Bishop into the better land. Where she was buried does not appear, certainly not at East Malling. Bradbourne then fell to the second Richard Manningham, who sold it in 1656 to Mr. Justice Twysden, in whose family it still remains. Thus drops the curtain upon the connexion of the Manninghams with East Malling.

Other persons of the same name appear in the succeeding century, one on the episcopal bench as Bishop of Chichester, from 1709 to 1722, and his son Sir Richard Manningham as a distinguished physician and discoverer of the fraud of Mary Tofts the rabbit-breeder, but their connexion with the subjects of our inquiry does not very clearly appear.

Turn we now from the Diarist and his family to the Diary. It was written by John Manningham whilst a student in the Middle Temple, and runs through the year 1602 down to April in 1603, Occasionally, as we have remarked in one of our notes, some few of the entries are out of chronological order, either from mistake of the binder or irregularity of the Diarist. In some cases it clearly arose from the habit of the latter of making his entries in any part of the book where there happened to be a vacant space. The consequences are of so little moment that we have thought it best in printing to follow the order of the original MS. as it now stands.

Chronological sequence is the less important as the book is scarcely what is generally understood by a Diary. It is rather a note-book in which the writer has jotted down from time to time his impressions of whatever he chanced to hear, read, or see, or whatever he desired to preserve in his memory. The result is a curious