Quarto. Speculative date from watermark. Manuscript on paper. [21]pp. excluding blanks. Unbound. A few small tears to gutter margins, slightly browned.

A well-preserved manuscript in the hand of a woman, Elizabeth, providing an account of her husband Richard's final days some four months after his passing. Elizabeth, clearly traumatised by the experience, recounts in great detail the efforts of the doctors to comfort her partner in the throws of his unidentified terminal illness. She passionately records his parting words to their four children, his mother, and brother, concluding with their last hours together alone and his dying remarks: 'I did no think it had been so hard to die. - It's a hard struggle. Oh I wish it was over. - he revived for a short time & when he felt the difficulty of breathing returning he said. Oh this is like dying twice.' It would appear (particularly given the repetition in the manuscript of the above quote and the absence of subsequent dates beyond the first provided), that rather than being an immediate account of events, Elizabeth later recorded her recollections in one sitting for posterity, or indeed as an act of processing her grief.

Incipit: 'Sunday Feby. 26th my dear dear Richard came home about 1⁄2 past four. He stood before the fire. He said ''I eat a piece of beef & a potato at Shieldhall it is lying like lead upon my stomach...'

Explicit: 'Towards morning I gave him a little bread curry he seemed to like it. '