appointed executor in the second will, that we have to fasten. His will, or at all events the will of a John Jeffery of East Hanningfield, yeoman, is dated Feb. 22, 1550-1, and was proved the 21st of March following. Nearly thirty persons are named in it for legacies; but the bulk of his property, which was very considerable, was left to his widow Johan Jeffery and their six children. One of the children was a daughter, already married to a David Simpson, and with issue. Of the five sons only two were of age at their father's death, viz. Richard and Thomas, while three, viz. John, another Thomas, and Paul, were minors. Richard Jeffery, the eldest son, was left co-executor with his mother and residuary legatee; Thomas the elder was left a tenement in Chelmsford and other property in Springfield, Co. Essex; the remainder of a portion of the real property was to descend, after the widow's death, to John, the eldest of the minors, who was moreover to have £50 when he came of age and a specified share of the household stuff; the second minor, Thomas the younger, was also to have £50 when he came of age, with the same specified share of the household stuff; and the youngest, Paul, besides his share of the household stuff, and £50 when he came of age, was to have a certain "specialtie" of £13 68. 8d., with 5 marks more, and certain reversions if his brother Thomas the younger should die before the age of twenty-one.-The widow, Johan Jeffery of East Hanningfield, survived till 1572, and bequeathed, by her will, dated March 9, 1571-2, small money legacies to two sons of her foresaid eldest son Richard, and to four sons and two daughters of the foresaid Thomas the elder, but left the residue of her estate to her third son, John. In this same year 1572 all the five Jeffrey brothers, sons of John and Johan Jeffrey, were still alive, except the younger Thomas, who had settled in West Hanningfield, and was dead before the end of the year, leaving issue. Richard Jeffrey, the eldest brother, with property both in East Hanningfield and in Little Bursted, was settled in the latter place; the surviving Thomas Jeffrey was elsewhere in Essex and had a family; John Jeffrey had succeeded

his mother in East Hanningfield, and seems to have been unmarried; and Paul, the youngest of the family, had gone, or was soon to go, to London, to become citizen and Merchant-Taylor there, with a domicile in St. Swithin's parish. It is with this PAUL JEFFREY, citizen and merchanttaylor of London, that we are chiefly concerned.—In April 1572, if not before, he was a married man, his wife's name being Ellen; and before the 11th of February 1572-3 they had one child, named Sara. This is proved by the will of his elder brother, John Jeffrey of East Hanningfield, which bears the date last mentioned. The will, of which Paul Jeffrey is one of the witnesses, bequeathes a number of small legacies to different persons, but remembers chiefly, as might be expected in the will of an unmarried man, his brothers and sister and their children. The eldest brother, Richard, is left executor and residuary legatee, and two sons of that Richard 100s, each when they reach the age of twenty-one; his next brother, Thomas, is to have £50, five of that Thomas's children 40s. each when of age, and one of them £6 13s. 4d.; three of the daughters of the other and deceased brother Thomas are to have 668. 8d. each at marriage; there is a recollection of his only sister Simpson, also apparently deceased, by a bequest of £20 to John, son of his brother-in-law, "Davy Sympson," and of 100s. to two other children of the said "Davy Sympson" when they shall come of age; the wives of his three brothers, Richard, Thomas, and Paul, are left 20s. each; to Paul himself, styled "my brother Pawle Jefferey," there is a legacy of £66 13s. 4d.; and to Sara, his daughter, there is a legacy of 100s., with proviso that, if she should die before the age of twenty-one, the same shall go "to the next child. who shall be lawfully begotten by my said brother Pawle." In February 1572-3, therefore, Paul Jeffrey and his wife had one daughter, Sara, and no more. Within a few years, however, a second daughter was born to them. This we learn from another will of one of the Essex Jeffreys, not a brother of Paul, but not very far off in kin.-Among the Essex Jeffreys there was a John Jeffrey of Childerditch, styled also of Stratford, Co. Suffolk. He had died before his namesake,

the last-named John Jeffrey, Paul's brother, leaving a will dated April 11, 1572. Of this will also Paul had been one of the witnesses. While it provides more immediately for the testator's own wife and children, it bestows various tokens of remembrance on members of Paul's family, including 20s. to Pawle Jeffries wife. That, though proving independently that Paul was married before April 11, 1572, would not give us the information of which we are in quest. But in this will of John Jeffrey of Childerditch a prominent person is a "cousin" of the testator, called Henry Jeffrey of Little Bursted. To this "cousin," most probably a nephew (for the word "cousin" then was used indefinitely), there was left, in fact, the main succession to the estate in case of failure of the immediate heirs. Now, the will of this Henry Jeffrey of Little Bursted has been found, and is of more consequence to us. It is dated Feb. 23, 1578-9, and was proved May 13, 1579. It is very long, and is full of bequests to his relatives, Jeffreys and others. To Paul's eldest brother, Richard Jeffrey, styled "cousin,” he leaves a gold ring with a death's head, worth 20s., and his book of Calvin's Sermons upon Job; he leaves small tokens also to this Richard's wife and to two of the same Richard's sons; there is a similar remembrance of Paul's other brother, "my cousin Thomas Jeffrie of Chelmsford," and of that Thomas's wife and sons and daughters; and the remembrance of Paul himself takes this form,-" Item, I geve unto my cosin Paule Jeffrie of London three poundes, and to his wief twentie shillinges, and to Sara his daughter fourtie shillinges, and to his youngest daughter twentie shillinges, meaninge them twoo that be nowe lyvinge at this presente." Here there is certified, almost with the particularity of foresight that the words would be of value, the existence of two daughters of Paul Jeffrey and his wife in February 1578-9, the Sara who had been alive as an infant in February 1572-3, and another who had been born since. Our next incident is the death of Paul Jeffrey, the father of the two children. It happened before the 14th of March 1582-3; on which day, says Colonel Chester, "a commission issued, from the Commissary Court

"of London, to Ellen Geffraye, to administer the estate of "her husband, Paul Geffraye, late of St. Swithin's, London, "deceased intestate." As he had been a young minor in 1551, he can hardly have been much over forty at the time of his death. From this point we overleap twenty years. The various Jeffreys of Essex, in East Hanningfield, West Hanningfield, Little Bursted, and other parishes, have been going on through those twenty years, with fresh family sproutings; and many other things have happened in the same interval in Essex and elsewhere, including the arrival in London of the disinherited John Milton from his native Stanton St. John's in Oxfordshire, his tentative efforts in London for a livelihood, his apprenticeship at last with Colbron the scrivener, his admission to the Scriveners' Company, his setting up as a scrivener in the Spread Eagle in Bread Street, and his marriage. He had been in the Spread Eagle for more than two years, when an incident occurred which is reported thus by Colonel Chester from the preserved marriage-allegations of that time in the Bishop of London's Registry:-" On the 28th of August 1602 "William Truelove, of Hatfield-Peverill in the County of "Essex, gentleman, aged about forty years, alleged that he "intended to marry Margaret Jeffraye, of Newton Hall, in "Great Dunmow, in the County of Essex, a maiden, aged "about twenty years, the daughter of Paul Jeffray, of the "parish of St. Swithin's, London, merchant-taylor, deceased, "with the consent of her mother Ellen Jeffraye, widow, whose "consent was attested by John Milton, of the parish of All"hallows, Bread Street, London, who married the sister of the "said Margaret." The marriage duly took place, and Margaret Jeffrey became Mrs. Truelove.

Nothing could well be more complete than this demonstration, the feat of Colonel Chester, a genealogist from America, on a problem that had been waiting, unsolved by native ingenuity, for two hundred years. It fits itself into

1 The first link discovered by Colonel Chester was the marriage allegation between Mr. Truelove and Margaret Jeffray in 1602. To that discovery,

announced in the Athenæum of Nov. 7, 1868, the rest is recent addition by Colonel Chester's express investigation. I have the pleasure of knowing that,

our narrative thus: A certain Paul Jeffrey, of St. Swithin's, London, merchant-taylor, of an Essex family, died in 1582-3, leaving a widow, Ellen Jeffrey, and two daughters, Sarah and Margaret, the elder about ten years of age, and the younger several years less. In charge of the two young girls, the widow lives on, in London or in Essex, or alternating between the two, apparently with sufficient means, and certainly with relatives of good means in Essex. At length, as the girls are growing up, chance, or perhaps some link of previous family connexion or acquaintance, brings to the widow's parlour an occasional visitor in the sedate John Milton from Oxfordshire, who is in training to be a scrivener. It is the elder daughter, Sarah Jeffrey, that attracts him; and, early in 1600, just when he has been admitted of the Scriveners' Company, and has set up house in Bread Street, he marries her, his age at the

though the investigation interested him on its own account, it was undertaken in special generosity to myself and with a view to the purposes of the present volume. He communicated to me the substance of the results in a letter which I made public, with his leave, in the Athenæum of May 29, 1880; but he has since put at my disposal a more detailed statement and explanation in MS., containing accounts and abstracts of the various wills, with a formal pedigree of the Essex Jeffreys as derived from those wills. It is from this manuscript that I have taken the matter of the preceding paragraph. It gives the following references :-Will of Thomas Gefferey of 1518, registered 23 Ayloffe, Prerog. Court of Cant.; Will of Richard Geffrey of 1533, among the records of the Commissary Court of the Bishop of London for Essex and Herts, now at Somerset House; Will of John Jeffery of East Hanningfield, of date Feb. 1550-51, registered 9 Bucke in Prerog. Court of Cant.; Will of his widow Jone or Johan Jeffery, of date March 9, 1571-2, on file in the Commissary Court for Essex and Herts, as above; Will of John Jefferey of East Hanningfield, of date Feb. 11, 1572-3, on file ibidem; Will of John Jeffrey, of Childerditch, of date April 11, 1572, registered 19 Daper in Prerog. Court of Cant.; Will of Henry Jeffrey of Little Bursted, of date Feb. 23, 1578-9, registered 17 Bakon in Prerog. Court of

Cant.-What, after Colonel Chester's demonstration, are we to do with Aubrey's Bradshaw tradition? The supposition that Milton's mother had been previously married to a Bradshaw would be wholly unwarranted in itself, and would not at all meet the conditions of the problem as it has been left by Aubrey. Are we, then, to set aside Aubrey's Bradshaw tradition, with his sketch of the Bradshaw arms, &c., as a mere hallucination on his part, and suppose perhaps some connexion of this hallucination in his mind with his previous Jeffrey-Haughton complication in the paternal pedigree? There is, indeed, nothing impossible in the occurrence of the name Jeffrey in both pedigrees in the way suggested. Milton's mother may have been a Jeffrey and his paternal grandmother may have also been a Jeffrey for a portion of her life by a previous marriage. In the special circumstances, however, the duplication does look suspicious; and I should be glad to see the supposed prior Jeffrey swept out of the paternal pedigree altogether, where in any case he is unpleasantly superfluous.-The Caston tradition from Phillips is not so hopelessly puzzling. The maiden name of Milton's maternal grandmother, Mrs. Ellen Jeffrey, may have been Caston; or the name may be collateral in some other way. We may have a glimpse of light yet on that matter.