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. [Footnote 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] [Footnote 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.]