An Early Copy of Shakespeare's Will

Summary

In 1948 the Trustees and Guardians of Shakespeare’s Birthplace acquired an early copy of Shakespeare’s will which, so far as is known, ranks as the earliest transcript in existence.

Its immediate previous owner was Miss C. Hartwell Lucy, a descendant of a family prominent in Stratford-upon-Avon in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Miss Lucy’s great grandfather built the present mill on the Avon below the church at Stratford-upon-Avon and also the large residence, now a private hotel, called Avonside nearby. The copy of the will was discovered by Miss Lucy among a few papers in a deed box which belonged to her grandfather, the Reverend Edmund Lane, M.A., D.C.L. This gentleman, born and educated in Stratford, was a brilliant but rather peculiar person, whose absorbing hobby was the collection of rare books, manuscripts and the like. He spent the last twenty years or so of his life as Episcopalian Rector of St John's, Selkirk, and died in 1898 or 1899. His library was subsequently dispersed to sundry dealers, and it was by extraordinary good fortune that the precious document, folded up in an insignificant foolscap-sized envelope, endorsed ' Shakespeare's will' in typical Victorian handwriting, survived among a few family papers. How it came into Lane's possession is not known.