Note 467 — Chapter VI

See Burnet, vol. i, Appendix 267, for Secretary Lethington's letter to Cecil, where he tells a circumstantial story so positively, and so open, if false, to a contradiction it never received, that those who lay too much stress on this very equivocal species of presumption would, if the will had perished, have reckoned its forgery beyond question. The king's death approaching, he asserts, "some as well known to you as to me caused William Clarke, sometimes servant to Thomas Heneage, to sign the supposed will with a stamp, for otherwise signed it was never;" for which he appeals to an attestation of the late Lord Paget in parliament, and requests the depositions of several persons now living to be taken. He proceeds to refer him "to the original will surmised to be signed with the king's own hand, that thereby it may most clearly and evidently appear by some differences, how the same was not signed with the king's hand, but stamped as aforesaid. And albeit it is used both as an argument and calumniation against my sovereign by some, that the said original hath been embezzled in Queen Mary's time, I trust God will and hath reserved the same to be an instrument to relieve [prove] the truth, and to confound false surmises, that thereby the right may take place, notwithstanding the many exemplifications and transcripts, which being sealed with the great seal, do run abroad in England." Lesley, Bishop of Ross, repeats the same story with some additions. Bedford's Hereditary Right, p. 197. A treatise of Hales, for which he suffered imprisonment, in defence of the Suffolk title under the will, of which there is a manuscript in the British Museum, Harl. MSS. 537, and which is also printed in the appendix to the book last quoted, leads me to conjecture that the original will had been mislaid or rather concealed at that time. For he certainly argues on the supposition that it was not forthcoming, and had not himself seen it; but "he has been informed that the king's name is evidently written with a pen, though some of the strokes are unseen, as if drawn by a weak and trembling hand." Everyone who has seen the will must bear witness to the correctness of this information. The reappearance of this very remarkable instrument was, as I conceive, after the Revolution; for Collier mentions that he had heard it was in existence; and it is also described in a note to the Acta Regia.