Holinshed, Raphael

Bequeathing all his worldly goods "unto my Master Thomas Burdett of Bromecote" in Warwickshire, twelve lines in an Elizabethan secretary hand, 1 October 1578, together with a certificate of probate issued by the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, 24 April 1581, two parchment membranes (the larger 190 x 285 mm), each with a parchment tag, these tags joined together with a pendant red wax seal impression; creasing, loss to seal. Blue cloth folding-box in a morocco-backed slipcase.

Sir Thomas Phillipps (Phillipps MS 40616; Sotheby's, 13 April 1981, lot 85, to Quaritch). acquisition: James Cummins, 2003

Henry Summerson, "Raphael Holinshed: New Light on a Shadowy Life," in The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed's Chronicles, eds. Kewes, Archer and Heal (Oxford, 2012)

An exceptionally rare biographical document of the great Elizabethan historian. Raphael Holinshed had a long connection to the Burdett family, gentry landowners of Bramcote in Warwickshire, having been employed by Thomas's father Robert as early as 1547 and working as steward for their manor of Packwood in the 1560s. He seems to have retired to Warwickshire after the publication of the first edition of the Chronicles in 1577, and Holinshed's bequest of all his goods to Burdett reveals the trust and respect he felt for his employer of some thirty years.