The Chamber in which they are kept, is entered
through the Vestry on the Northern side of the nave; whence a flight
of dark winding stairs, lighted only by loop-holes, leads you to a
small square room, surrounded by oaken presses containing the original
Wills tied up in bundles. The Calendar, or Index to the Register Books,
extends from 1418 to 1599; all after that year being kept at the
Bishop’s Consistory Court in Great Knight-Ryder Street. It is a small
folio volume, having a parchment cover, anciently tied with strings,
and is written in a small neat black text upon parchment, though now
much soiled by time and the continual dust of the chamber. If ever you
visit this Registry, however, I would not have you trust too much to
this Calendar; for in referring to the Will which I have now quoted,
its volume and page are called ‘_Moore, prima pars, folio_ iiij.;’
though the true reference is ‘_3 Moore, folio_ cccclxij a.’ This
volume, _Moore_, is so called from the first Will entered in it, and
it contains registers of Wills from the year 1418 to 1438, beautifully
written in a small black text upon parchment, in a very thick square
folio.
“Another benefactor to London Bridge mentioned by Stow, was one John
Edwards, Citizen and Butcher, who ‘gave by his Will, dated the 8th of
November, 1442, to John Hatherle, Mayor of the City of London, and
to John Herst and Thomas Cook, Masters of the work of the Bridge of
London, for ever, his tenement, with a garden, in the Parish of St.
Botolph, Aldgate, situate between the tenement lately John Cornwallys’s
on the South, &c., and extending from the King’s Street leading from
Aldgate towards the Tower on the West, &c. towards the sustaining and
reparation of the said Bridge.’ You will find this Will in the Register
called 4 _Stacy_, now _Prowet_, folio ciiij b, which extends from 1438
to 1449; though the Calendar marks it as entered at folio xxv. Both of
these Wills are in Latin.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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