Amongst estate papers in the Letterbook of Walter Powell (National Library of Wales) are six letters or receipts by William Lawes, five of them holograph, dated December 1644 to March 1645 – only six months before his death in battle. Transcription and annotation give a chance to list exhaustively life-records or contemporary testimonia for him, as well as to examine his normative writing hand and in the light of a now better-definable army service, gauge whether outbreak of civil war in England in autumn 1642 marked the end of his composing career, or what minor exceptions there could be.
