Third Will, 1888.
This Will of 1877 was suspended in 1882 by a very informal Will written on a single sheet of note-paper, and that in turn was revoked and replaced by a third in 1888.
In 1889 Rhodes met Mr. W. T. Stead, then editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, and the two men discovered a remarkable coincidence in their ideas, especially on the subjects of an English-speaking reunion and a society for the promotion of world welfare and peace.[1] Mr. Rhodes set forth a number of his political ideals at considerable length.
His earlier devotion to the idea of British ascendancy, while not lost, had become but a part of his larger idea of Anglo-Saxon supremacy. So unbiased had he become that in 1891 he expressed himself as so desirous of seeing an English-speaking union that he would be willing that the English monarchical system and isolated imperial existence be sacrificed, if necessary, to its achievement.[2]
Fourth Will, 1891.
In 1891 he signed his fourth Will, making over his real and personal property to two persons, one of whom was ‘W. T. Stead of the Review of Reviews’.
Fifth Will, 1893.
The fifth Will was drafted in 1892 and signed by Mr. Rhodes in 1893. The name of Mr. Hawksley was added as one of the Executors, and joint-heir. It was understood that Mr. Stead was the ‘custodian of the Rhodesian ideas’, and the other two Executors were to direct necessary financial and legal measures.
In January, 1895, Rhodes first announced to Mr. Stead his intention of founding a number of scholarships. He said that while on the Red Sea in 1893 the thought had struck him of creating a number of scholarships at a residential English University to be open to various British Colonies. His proposition at that time was to provide for twelve scholarships at Oxford each year, each tenable for three years, of a value of £250 per year. A codicil was added to the fifth Will providing for these scholarships for Canada, the Australian Colonies, including Western Australia and Tasmania, and for Cape Colony.