MARY I

Letters Patent signed ("Marye the quene") at head and headed ("By the Queene"), St James's, 9 October ("the fiveth and sixte yeres of our reignes") 1558 - REWARDING A TRUSTED ADMINISTRATOR WEEKS BEFORE HER DEATH

Footnotes

'OUR WELBELOVED NYCHOLAS BRIGHAM': MARY I REWARDS A TRUSTED ADMINISTRATOR WEEKS BEFORE HER DEATH.

The reign of Mary I was to end only a few weeks after the date of our document. She died, after a lifetime of illness, on 17 November, having acknowledged Elizabeth as her heir a few days earlier. She gives the regnal dates both for herself and for her husband Philip II of Spain, although by this time they were estranged and Philip rarely visited England (see preceding lot).

Nicholas Brigham, administrator and antiquary, who himself died just a few months after our document, was granted the reversion of the office of the exchequer teller in 1544, and became first teller in 1555. As such he controlled much of the finances of Mary's household, in charge of money from the sale of crown land and, in the year of our document, a substantial loan raised in the City of London. He appears to have resisted the temptations concomitant with the role and had a reputation for being entirely 'trusty and true', emerging from the so-called 'Dudley Conspiracy' against Mary, which involved a plot to rob the exchequer, with his reputation and honesty intact. He was a noted collector of medieval manuscripts and erected a memorial to Chaucer in Westminster Abbey, the first monument in what was to become Poet's Corner. The recipient of our document, George Bredyman (d.1581), had been granted the manor of Dixwell in Bedfordshire by Queen Mary and went on to become Keeper of the Palace of Westminster under Elizabeth I.