It consisted of an original will, dated March 22, 1653, and two codicils, the second dated September 10, 1655.

His wife having predeceased him, leaving no issue, the bulk of his extensive property went to his nephew, Henry Bradshaw; but there were various legacies, and among them the following in one group in the second codicil,--"To old Margarett ffive markes, to Mr.Marcham^t.
Nedham tenne pounds, and to Mr.John Milton tenne poundes." There is nothing here to settle the disputed question of Milton's cousinship, on his mother's side, with Bradshaw.[1] The legacy was a trifling one, equivalent to L35 now; and, as Needham and Milton are associated on terms of equality, Bradshaw must have been thinking of them together as the two literary officials who had been so much in contact with each other, and with himself, in the days of his Presidency of the Council of State,--Needham as the appointed journalist of the Commonwealth, and Milton as its Latin champion, and for some time Needham's censor and supervisor.

In Milton's case perhaps, as the codicil was drawn up fifteen months after the publication of the _Defensio Secunda_, the legacy may have been intended not merely as a small token of general respect and friendliness, but also as a recognition by Bradshaw of the bold eulogy on him inserted into that work at a critical moment of his relations to Cromwell.
[Footnote 1: Ormerod's Cheshire, III.

409; but I owe the verbatim extract from the codicil to the never-failing kindness of Colonel Chester .-- By an inadvertence the date of Bradshaw's death has been given, ante p.

495, as Oct.