13. That Mr. John Warner may have fifty pounds given him to buy a ring.
14. That the Lady Hollyman may have the pension of ten shillings per week continued to her during the said lady's life.
Oct. 18, -87.—This request was attested and acknowledged, in the presence of us,
John Hetherington,
Hannah Grace,
Daniel Dyer.[1]
She died of apoplexy in November, 1687,[2] in her thirty-eighth year, but the exact day is unknown. "Her repentance in her last hours, I have been unquestionably informed," writes Cibber, "appeared in all the contrite symptoms of a Christian sincerity." "She is said to have died piously and penitently," writes Wigmore to Sir George Etherege, then Envoy at Ratisbon, "and, as she dispensed several charities in her lifetime, so she left several such legacies at her death."[3] The bequest to the poor prisoners may receive some illustration from the satires of the time. Her father is said to have died in a prison at Oxford—and Nelly, it is added, "gloried" in relieving the necessities of the poorer prisoners.
- ↑ The will was proved, Dec. 7, at the Prerogative Will office in Doctors' Commons, and the original on the 18th of February following delivered to Sir Robert Sawyer, one of the executors.
- ↑ Letter of 22 March, 1687, in Ellis's Correspondence, i. 264: "Mrs. Nelly is dying of an apoplexy."
- ↑ Cibber's Apology, p. 451, ed. 1740. Letter of 18 Nov. 1687, in Seward's Anecdotes. Her wealth in the letter is stated at a million!
