The cover of this National Archives booklet shows novelist Jane Austen's will (top) and a portrayal of Thomas Braithwaite (d.1607) drafting his will with a quill. The novelist's will can be viewed at the Archives in Kew, southwest London. 'I have taken, as she knows, a solemn oath never to leave her sixpence when I die, but while I live, I make her an annual allowance: not extravagant in its amount and yet not stinted. There is a compact between us that no amount of cajolery shall ever be addressed by either to the other, but that she shall call me always by my Christian name: I her, by hers. She is bound to me in life by ties of interest, and losing by my death, and having no expectation disappointed, will mourn it perhaps: though for that I care little. This is the only kind of friend I have or will have.'
Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit (1844)
