A Welsh clergyman asked his legatees to remember the motto of Burns, “An honest man’s the noblest work of God,” and the word of a greater, “Owe no man anything,” an inspired command which we are bound to obey. Baron Bertrand de Lassus, lately deceased, who left the residue of his estate to his brother, closes with a noble exhortation: “I entreat him to remain faithful to our family traditions in the South, to love Montrejeau as I have loved it myself, to attach himself to it, to do there all the good that he will be able to do, and to maintain intact and without a stain the honour and name of our ancestors, and I urge him to continue all the charitable work which I am keeping up in our district, to do it better and more completely if he thinks he can do so, to love the Pyrenees and our South with the same ardent love with which I have loved them, and to remain faithful above all to our old traditions of religion and the honour of our house.” But desire, however ardent, cannot instil love and worship in another’s soul.

Parents’ solicitude for their children is often touchingly expressed. The dead hand is raised in blessing and yearning. A Jewish testator exhorted his son to beware of the vanities and great things of this world, bearing in mind the saying “tout passe, tout casse, tout lasse,” and in his happiest hours never to forget the poor. Viscount Lumley, in his will dated the 13th year of Charles II., says: “And out of the great love and care I have to my grandchild and heir I strictly charge him to follow his studies in his youth, that he do shun ill company gaming debauchery and engagements, by such unhappy means having known many noble men and gentlemen ruined. And I especially enjoin him to take the advice of his mother and other friends in his marriage, when it shall please God he be fit for it, if I live not to see it, and I pray God to bless him. And could I have done more for my family than I have done I would, and had done much more for them, had not I had so great losses by the late calamitous times.”

Thomas Hobbes, of Gray’s Inn (1632), had also one especial object of his anxiety and affection. “And whereas the Lord hath left me now one only tender plant for raising my posterity, whose religious and virtuous education and transplanting into some godly family in a fit season of marriage is my greatest worldly care, my humble request unto the Right Honourable the master of his Majesty’s ward and his associates is, that the wardship of my sole daughter and heir and of her lands may be granted to my approved loving cousin Peter Phesant of Gray’s Inn, and Richard Bellingham of Lincoln’s Inn, Esquires. And my earnest desire and serious charge to them is, that they permit my said daughter to be continually abiding and educated with my worthy respected friend Mrs. Moore, if she shall be pleased to perform so great a kindness, and in testimony of my grateful respect to her undertaking the said charge of my daughter I bequeath to her my best diamond ring.... And I further wish that my said friends ... as shall educate my said daughter, as is aforesaid, during her wardship, shall have the further government of her after her wardship expired until her age of one and twenty years.... And I do expressly charge and command in the Lord my said daughter, her weak and tender constitution of body well considered, that she consent not to be married to any whomsoever before her age of eighteen years at the soonest, nor after such her age and before her age of one and twenty years without such consent as hereunder I require; nor to any man whensoever, but such as is of an approved holy just and sober conversation, preferring one of a competent estate and degree, fearing the Lord, before the greatest that may be, being profane or licentious.”

Of Bishop Corbet’s solicitude for his son we have seen something, nor could anything exceed the kindliness of John Pybus ([v. p. 166]). Such feelings are summed up in the prayer of Anne Covert, widow of Sir Walter Covert, in the eighth year of Charles I. “And for my children, O God, I give and bequeath them all into Thy gracious protection, most earnestly desiring Thy temporal and spiritual blessings to continue with them both here and hereafter.” So human and emotional these old wills often are.

CHAPTER IX
WILLS OF FANCY AND OF FANTASY

It is said that Lord Eldon, in early days, would wrest pieces of poetry into the form of legal instruments, and that he succeeded in reducing “Chevy Chace” into the style of a bill in Chancery. The opposite tendency, it may be imagined, is the more common, and from the history of England to the last will and testament there is little that has not been converted into verse from time to time. It is rumoured that the essential points of those prosaic documents, the acts relating to Death Duties, have been versified: certainly the “Canons of Descent” are in verse and in print. Their quality is not high.

Canon I. “Estates go to the issue (item) Of him last seized in infinitum; Like cow-tails, downwards, straight they tend, But never, lineally, ascend.

Canon II. This gives the preference to males, At which a lady justly rails.

Canon V. When lineal descendants fail, Collaterals the land may nail; So that they be (and that a bore is) De sanguine progenitores.”