ANOTHER STRATFORD BED: Last Will and Testament [of] Elizabeth Barodale of Stratford upon Avon

Last Will and Testament of a Stratford woman who owned land close to New Place, Shakespeare’s grand home in the town - and took special care in this document over the disposal of her ‘Bed, Bedstead and the Appurtenances and entire Furniture of such Bed’.

Single manuscript bifolium document measuring 33x21cm with legal text on two leaves and a docket on the final verso: ‘Copy of Mrs Elizabeth Borodale’s Will’ and in another hand ‘proved in Drs Commons’ - the official civil jurisdiction for verifying wills. Old folds. Watermarked paper. Very Good Condition with slight chipping and a couple of small holes at folds. Easily legible professional hand.

The text relates to the property of Elizabeth Barodale, mainly within Stratford itself, her ‘Messuage or Tenement Malthouse and Premises in the High Street of Stratford upon Avon in the County of Warwick with the Seat or Pew in the Parish Church in Stratford.... [bequeathed] unto the said John Hucknall’, and ‘to my Servant Sarah Hancock the Sum of Twenty Pounds and the Bed, Bedstead and the Appurtenances and entire Furniture of such Bed now standing in the Garret over the Blue Room in my now dwelling House’. The attention paid to Mrs Barodale’s bed offers a pleasing symmetry with Shakespeare’s own will and his famous bequest to Anne Hathaway of his ‘second best bed’. Elizabeth Barodale was the figure of some substance in Stratford, being the widow of the town’s schoolmaster, Gabriel Barodale.