estate, farm, or property of or from the family of EGERTON, or any person or persons bearing that name, and do and shall pay over the rents, issues, and profits thereof, as and when received, to the Trustees for the time being of the _British Museum_ aforesaid, to be laid out and applied by such last-mentioned Trustees in the service and for the continued augmentation of the said Collection of Manuscripts; and from and after the decease of the survivor of them my said Trustees hereinafter appointed, I give and devise the said house, land, tenements, hereditaments and appurtenances, unto and for the use of the proprietor or proprietors of the Manor and Estate of _Ashridge_, his heirs and assigns for ever. And as to all the rest, residue and remainder of my real and personal estate and effects, of every nature and kind soever and wheresoever situate, not hereinbefore disposed of, or availably so, for the purposes intended, I give, devise, and bequeath the same to my said Trustees, upon trust that they my said Trustees do pay over and transfer the same to the said Trustees of the _British Museum_, and do otherwise render the same available for the service of and towards maintaining, preserving, keeping up, improving, augmenting, and extending, as opportunities may offer, [Sidenote: _Will of Francis Henry, Earl of Bridgewater._ (Official copy.)] my said Collection of Manuscripts so deposited in the _British Museum_ as aforesaid, in the most advantageous manner, according to their judgment and discretion.’ The eccentricity of which I have spoken showed itself in the successive changes of detail and other modifications which these bequests underwent before the testator’s death. What with the Will and its many codicils, the documents, collectively, came to be of a kind which might task the acumen of a FEARNE or a St. LEONARDS. But the drift of the Will was undisturbed. The restrictions as to the underletting of the Whitchurch estate, and the like, were now limited by codicils to a prescribed term of years after the testator’s death; power was given to the Museum Trustees to sell, also after a certain interval, the landed estate bequeathed for the purchase of manuscripts, should it be deemed conducive to the interest of the Library so to do; and an additional sum of five thousand pounds was given to the Trustees for the further increase of the Collection of Manuscripts, and for the reward of its keeper, in lieu of the residuary interest in the testator’s personal estate. [Sidenote: _Minutes of Trustees_; (printed in Parliamentary Paper of 1835–6).] On the 10th of March, 1832, the Trustees resolved that the yearly proceeds of the last-named bequest should be paid to the Librarians in charge of the MSS., but that their ordinary salaries, on the establishment, should be diminished by a like amount. [Sidenote: CHARACTER OF THE EGERTON MSS.;]