Such provisions are stock material in the drama, from Shakespeare to “The New Sin.” “So is the will of a living daughter curbed by the will of a dead father,” sighs Portia in “The Merchant of Venice.” Lesser comedy and melodrama are much indebted to conditional wills. To take two recent examples: In “The Pin and the Pudding” the rich uncle of the poor hero Malkin leaves him his riches—on condition that he has never been in prison: whereby hangs the tale. In “The Beggar Girl’s Wedding” Jack Cunningham only inherits his father’s fortune if he is married by the time he is twenty-five: whence a thrilling plot develops.
But to study real life. A legacy of £20,000 was left recently by a father to a son if, within ten years of the testator’s death, he should have returned to the religious faith in which he was brought up. The difference between the two sects appeared to be slight, but the legacy was under such conditions intolerable. Another strange distinction or definition is that of “member of the Anglican Catholic Church,” as opposed to “member of the Evangelical Protestant Church”: but recently a testator stipulated that no one should take a benefit who deserved the former appellation.
More intelligible is the distinction between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, and in this respect the dead hand is apt to lay heavy restrictions on the living. That any legatee becoming a Roman Catholic or marrying a Roman Catholic shall forfeit all interest is a common provision: it has even been stipulated that if a daughter’s husband should become a Roman Catholic she herself should forfeit. More comprehensive was the will of a testator who cut down the benefit of any child who should join the Roman Catholic Church, or become associated with the Peculiar People, Faith Healers, or Christian Scientists or any similar religious or quasi-religious body, he “well knowing the harm, trouble and misery caused in homes thereby.” Comprehensive, too, was the will of a minister who recorded his “detestation of all state establishments of religion, believing them to be anti-scriptural and soul-ruining. I have for years prayed the King of Zion to overthrow the politico-ecclesiastical establishment of the British Empire, and I leave the world with a full conviction that such prayer must ere long be answered. I thirst to see the Church brought down, the Church by man set up, for millions are by it led on to drink a bitter cup.... Heaven dash all error sin and the devil from the earth, and cause truth holiness and Christ everywhere to prevail.”
It is strange that any should think it a moral act to strive to bind and bribe the consciences of their children or heirs. It is pleasant to turn to the story of Henry More’s inheritance, where tolerance was shown in an intolerant age. The Calvinism of his parents could not appeal to the dreamy, intellectual youth, and they perceived how he was drifting away from their manners and beliefs. But it is said that his father seeing him one day among his books at Cambridge—not Calvinistic, we may be sure—was so taken by his looks and manner that he went away and set him down for a substantial legacy in his will.
But not only in religion the effort to shape destinies is shown. Legacies are made conditional, for instance, on the recipient remaining single, on not marrying a person named, or one not approved by the testator’s wife and sister-in-law, a first cousin, an Irishman. An American heiress ten years of age was to forfeit the fortune of her grandmother if she travelled unaccompanied by a maid or chaperon of education and refinement, or if she married a divorced man or an actor. Recently a legacy was left on condition that the donee should marry a lady in society.
It is not surprising that wills should occur in which distrust or horror of alcohol is prominent. “My experience,” says one, “acquired as a large employer of labour and as a Justice of the Peace, and my observation of what is hourly taking place, have convinced me that the present facilities for the sale of intoxicating liquors operate to the prejudice, both morally and materially, of large masses of the community, and that these facilities ought to be curtailed.” He therefore directs that his real estate shall be sold only on condition that the purchaser allows no building to be erected thereon for any purpose connected with intoxicating liquors. The condition was to last “for twenty-one years after the decease of the longest lived survivor of her late Majesty Queen Victoria,” and the term would have been extended had the law allowed.
A brewer, on the other hand, provided that, should the licence of any one of forty-four public-houses and twelve off-licence shops belonging to his company be forfeited between the date of his will and his death, an equivalent amount should pass to a University instead of to the town for whose benefit he left his residuary estate. His reason, he stated, was that if the licence was lost through the conduct of the frequenters of the house, their action would cost the town a considerable sum, while if it were lost through the action of teetotal magistrates the town would be punished. A total abstainer, he declared, had no more right to compel a temperate man to abstain from drinking his particular beverage than the temperate man had a right to compel the total abstainer by force of law to drink it. But he hoped the first contingency would make the inhabitants careful of their conduct.
Curious glimpses of life in olden days are given in conditions which now and then are enjoined. Edmund Clifton (1547) gave to Sir Geruys Clifton, knight, “the standing cup of silver and gilt and a goblet parcel gilt, which he hath already in his custody, upon condition that he help and assist my wife, and do not enforce her nor be about her to take any husband but such as she shall willingly be pleased and contented with, nor be about to do her any other displeasure, neither by word nor deed; and if he do anything contrary to this condition, then this bequest to be void.” He also gave 40s. to Jane Mering “of this condition, that she shall profess and knowledge herself not to have done her duty to me and my wife, before Mr. Parson and four or five of the honester men in the parish.” He seems to have had the spark of eccentricity in him, and perhaps Jane Mering was not wholly in the wrong. Would that we had the sequel of the story!
Other conditions and stipulations might be quoted at length, as that racehorses should not be kept, moustaches should not be worn, a certain profession should be followed, a certain house occupied for part of the year, a certain person precluded from living in the house, or “that in the event of the death of her husband, she shall not come to reside within twenty miles of Charing Cross.” Daniel Seton (1803) leaves his son Andrew as residuary heir “on condition he goes to Europe on his mother’s death and marries and settles: in failure of him I give the option to Daniel.” Francis Gybbon (1727) of Bennenden, Kent, late merchant of Barbados, gives to his “kinsmen Leonard Gybbon and his brother—Gybbon, the wheelwright, both of Gravesend in Kent, sons of Arthur Gybbon, all that tract of land called Mount Gybbon upon the branches of Unknown Creek near Cohansey, in the province of West Jersey in America, to them and their heirs for ever, provided they go and settle upon it: if they do not in three years, then to revert to Francis Gybbon my executor, ... the quantity being 5,600 acres.”
But frequently the testator only states his inmost beliefs and desires, leaves a prayer or sermon as his solemn admonition when he shall have passed away. A military man, recently deceased, expressed such beliefs and desires in his will: “I desire to bring home to the minds of my sons and of each and every young man who may hereafter take benefit in my property under this my will, how strongly I hold to the view that every man should during some substantial portion of his life, and certainly during his early manhood, have some definite occupation and lead a useful life, and should not suffer wealth or any accession of wealth or other temptation to tempt him into idleness and a mere loafing and useless existence. I might have so framed this my will as to have made idleness operate to forfeit the interests hereby conferred on my sons, or other young men, in my property, but I foresee that such a provision might, in some cases, work hardships, and I prefer to hope and to trust, as I do, that no son of mine, and no other young man who may, under this my will, succeed to the enjoyment of any property of mine, will so disregard my views herein expressed as to lead the life I so strongly deprecate.”