as appears from her will, which, after all, is the only source of reliable information we have respecting her character.  It is dated May 27, 1656, a few days after she received the sentence of death.  In it she names, as overseers and administrators of her estate, “Captain Thomas Clarke, Lieutenant Edward Hutchinson, Lieutenant William Hudson, Ensign Joshua Scottow, and Cornet Peter Oliver.”  In a codicil, she says, “I do earnestly desire my loving friends, Captain Johnson and Mr. Edward Rawson, to be added to the rest of the gentlemen mentioned as overseers of my will.”  It can hardly be doubted, that these persons—­and they were all leading citizens—­were known by her to be among her friends.

The whole tone and manner of these instruments give evidence, that she had a mind capable of rising above the power of wrong, suffering, and death itself.  They show a spirit calm and serene.  The disposition of her property indicates good sense, good feeling, and business faculties suitable to the occasion.  In the body of the will, there is not a word, a syllable, or a turn of expression, that refers to, or is in the slightest degree colored by, her peculiar situation.  In the codicil, dated June 16, there is this sentence:  “My desire is, that all my overseers would be pleased to show so much respect unto my dead corpse as to cause it to be decently interred, and, if it may be, near my late husband.”

When married to Mr. Hibbins, she was a widow, named Moore.  There were no children by her last marriage,—­certainly none living at the time of her death.  There were three sons by her former marriage,—­John, Joseph, and Jonathan.  These were all in England; but the youngest, hearing of her situation, embarked for America.  When she wrote the codicil,—­three days before her execution,—­she added, at the end, having apparently just heard of his coming, “I give my son Jonathan twenty pounds, over and above what I have already given him, towards his pains and charge in coming to see me, which shall be first paid out of my estate.”  There is reason to cherish the belief that he reached her in the short interval between the date of the codicil and her death, from the tenor of the following postscript, written and signed on the morning of her execution:  “My further mind and will is, out of my sense of the more than ordinary affection and pains of my son Jonathan in the times of my distress, I give him, as a further legacy, ten pounds.”  The will was proved in Court, July 2, 1656.  The will and codicil speak of her “farms at Muddy River;” and of chests and a desk, in which were valuables of such importance that she took especial pains to intrust the keys of them to Edward Rawson, in a provision of the codicil.  The estate was inventoried at L344. 14_s._, which was a considerable property in those days, as money was then valued.