For nearly two hundred years a quaint custom has marked February 2nd at Wotton, in Surrey, in pursuance of the will of William Glanvill. Boys of twelve to sixteen stand bareheaded round the testator’s tomb, recite the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Apostles’ Creed, read the 15th chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, and write down two verses therefrom. After these tests five boys are selected, and receive 40s. apiece. As an instance of a school founded by a will, John Neville, Lord Latimer (1542), may be quoted. “After my decease the Master and Vicar (of Well, in Yorkshire) shall take all the rents of the parsonage of Saint George Church in York, for the term of forty years, and therewith to find a schoolmaster at Well for keeping a school and teaching of grammar there, and to pray for me and them that I am most bounden to pray for.” The school exists, but does the master pray for the worthy founder still?
There are various reasons why wills should sometimes not be fulfilled. The estate, for instance, may not be adequate. It is strange how vague are the ideas of some testators in this respect, and one recalls what Dr. Johnson said of a certain bequest to erect a hospital for “ancient maids” that the word maintain should be expunged and starve inserted, so insufficient were the funds. It is amusing (to the outsider) when legacies are given with effusive expressions of admiration or gratitude, while all the time there is no money to pay them.
Some admit frankly that they have no material blessings to bestow. Thomas Johnson, otherwise John Plummer (proved January 22, 1780), left everything to his “dearly beloved and most deservedly esteemed ever loving affectionate friend Ann Watson ... being thoroughly sure she will take good care of the dear boy, J. H. Plummer, to whom unfortunately I have nothing to leave but the wide world to seek his fortune, excepting my prayers for his success.” Queen Elizabeth Woodville, in her will dated April 10, 1492—a death-bed will—pathetically says: “Whereas I have no worldly goods to do the Queen’s Grace, my dearest daughter, a pleasure with, neither to reward any of my children, according to my heart and mind, I beseech Almighty God to bless her Grace, with all her noble issue; and with as good heart and mind as is to me possible, I give her Grace my blessing, and all the aforesaid my children.” Maeonides nullas ipse reliquit opes. Even Homer died penniless.
Another cause of non-fulfilment may be a legal barrier. There is no legal method of enforcing a testator’s wishes for the disposal of his body, except for anatomical purposes. The bequest is void if money be given to expend the interest in keeping up a grave. In England there is a legal obstacle against a bequest for the celebration of masses for the repose of the soul: it is termed a “superstitious trust” and is invalid. The famous decision in 1835 in the case of West v. Shuttleworth has not been superseded. The Master of the Rolls, Sir Charles Pepys, afterwards Lord Cottenham, held that in this country gifts to priests “that I may have the benefit of their prayers and masses,” or “for the benefit of the prayers for the repose of my soul, and that of my deceased husband,” were void, and void such bequests remain.
Personal reasons, lastly, may bring about the breaking of a will. Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey’s recommendations for his funeral have been quoted: he desired to be buried in the meanest place, without pomp or pageantry, without numerous attendants either of friends or relations, very early in the morning or very late at night, as privately as possible, without sermon or harangue. But the excitement and notoriety of his end, the passions that it aroused or signified, could not suffer him so to depart. His death and funeral are part of the history of his time. On October 12, 1678, he disappeared: on the 17th he was found dead in a ditch on the southern side of Primrose Hill. The funeral was postponed till the 31st, when his body was borne to Old Bridewell, and publicly lay in state. A solemn procession accompanied it through Fleet Street and the Strand to St. Martin’s Church, where it was buried and a sermon preached by the vicar, William Lloyd. Thus was his will wholly set at nought—a remarkable but perhaps a pardonable violation.
CHAPTER III
DR. JOHNSON’S WILL
“My readers,” writes Boswell, “are now, at last, to behold Samuel Johnson preparing himself for that doom from which the most exalted powers afford no exemption to man.” There can be few sights more fascinating. In the case of Johnson there is an especial fascination, since for many years he felt, and at times expressed, fear and horror of death in a degree to which most men are strangers. He said “he never had a moment in which death was not terrible to him.” But toward the end this horror abated, so that there is a peculiar beauty in the opening of his will, which he made but five days before his death. “In the name of God, Amen. I, Samuel Johnson, being in full possession of my faculties, but fearing this night may put an end to my life, do ordain this my last will and testament. I bequeath to God a soul polluted with many sins, but I hope purified by repentance and I trust redeemed by Jesus Christ.”
He calmly anticipates the acceleration with which he advances towards death. But, now as formerly, he will not dogmatise on his salvation; he “hopes” and “trusts.” “A man may have such a degree of hope as to keep him quiet,” he had observed on one occasion; but on another, “No man can be sure that his obedience and repentance will obtain salvation.” He might have prayed, as did Sir Francis South in his will dated November 14, 1631, “beseeching Him for the all-sufficient merits and infinite mercies of His only Son and my alone Saviour Christ Jesus to accept of this my poor sacrifice, and freely to pardon and forgive me my many multiplied sins and transgressions, and in the love of His most blessed Spirit to give me some comfortable assurance thereof during my time in this vale of flesh, that I may joyfully and willingly part with this miserable world to live with Him for ever in His eternal rest.”
It was this “comfortable assurance” that Johnson needed. To the last he seems logically to have maintained the distinction between hope and belief, but emotionally to have discarded it. Certainly at the end he was resigned.