Ashmole …

Heh

… met the botanist and collector John Tradescant the Younger around 1650.

Tradescant had, with his father, built up a vast and renowned collection of exotic plants, mineral specimens and other curiosities from around the world at their house in Lambeth.

Ashmole helped Tradescant catalogue his collection in 1652, and, in 1656, he financed the publication of the catalogue, the Musaeum Tradescantianum.

In 1659, Tradescant, who had lost his only son seven years earlier, legally deeded his collection to Ashmole.

Under the agreement, Ashmole would take possession at Tradescant’s death.

When Tradescant died in 1662, his widow, Hester, contested the deed, claiming her husband had signed it when drunk without knowing its contents, but the matter was settled in Chancery in Ashmole’s favour two years later.

Hester was to hold the collection in trust for Ashmole until her death.

Ashmole’s determined aggressiveness in obtaining the Tradescant collection for himself has led some scholars to consider that Ashmole was an ambitious, ingratiating social climber who stole a hero’s legacy for his own glorification.

In 1677, Ashmole made a gift of the Tradescant Collection, together with material he had collected independently, to the University on the condition that a suitable home be built to house the materials and make them available to the public.

Ashmole had already moved into the house adjacent to the Tradescants’ property in 1674 and had already removed some items from their house into his.

In 1678, in the midst of further legal wrangling over the Tradescant Collection, Hester was found drowned in a garden pond.

By early 1679, Ashmole had taken over the lease of the Tradescant property and began merging his and their collections into one.

The Ashmolean Museum was completed in 1683, and is considered by some to be the first truly public museum in Europe. 

The collection filled twelve wagons when it was transferred to Oxford. It would have been more, but a large part of Ashmole’s own collection, destined for the museum, including antiquities, books, manuscripts, prints, and 9,000 coins and medals, was destroyed in a disastrous fire in the Middle Temple on 26 January 1679.

— per vcoins.com

Dude! Chill!