The Romance of Wills and Testaments

by Edgar Vine Hall

Needless to relate, the masses were duly said, and the noise of the tale was rumoured abroad. Her husband found, among the papers of the deceased lady, memoranda to the effect that two hundred masses were to be said on account of a vow, which she had made but at her death had not yet fulfilled.

This seventeenth-century tale of Italy finds an echo in Brazil at the end of the nineteenth century. An aunt, who narrates the facts, received her nephew at Barbacena after the death of his young Belgian wife, in 1894, and though the nephew did not stay long, some luggage appears to have been left at the aunt’s house. Two months or so later she had a vivid dream. “It seemed to me that she entered the room where I really lay asleep, and, sitting down on the bedside, asked me as a favour to look into an old tin box under the staircase for a certain wax candle which had already been lighted, and which she had promised to Our Lady. On my consenting to do so, she took leave of me saying, ‘Até o outro mundo’ (‘Till the other world’). I awoke from the dream much impressed. It was still dark, but I could no longer sleep.” Search was duly made in the box, which contained old clothes and cuttings, and among them the candle of the dream. “It was of wax—of the kind used for promises [to saints]—and, what was a still more singular coincidence, it had already been lighted. We delivered the candle to M. Jose Augusto of Barbacena, in performance of my niece’s pious vow thus curiously revealed in a dream.”

In England, before the Reformation, it was common in wills to order solemn celebrations, for the rest of the soul and for a memorial of the departed. In this respect the will of Richard Cloudesley, of Islington, is not unusual. “In the Name of the Holy Trinity, Father, and Son and Holy Ghost, Amen, the 13th day of the month of January, the year of our Lord, 1517, and the ninth year of the reign of King Henry VIIIth. I, Richard, otherwise called Richard Cloudysley, clear of mind, and in my good memory being, loved be Almighty God, make and ordain my testament or my last will, in the manner and form as followeth. First, I bequeath and recommend my soul unto Almighty God, my Creator and Saviour, and His most blessed mother Saint Mary the Virgin, and to all the Holy Company of Heaven. My body, after I am passed this present and transitory life, to be buried within the churchyard of the parish Church of Islington, near unto the grave of my father and mother, on whose souls Jesu have mercy. Also I bequeath to the high altar of the same church, for tythes and oblations peradventure by me forgotten or withholden, in discharging of my conscience, 20s. Also I bequeath to the said church of Islington eight torches, price the piece six shillings four of them, after my month’s mind is holden and kept, to remain to the Brotherhood of Jesu within the said church, and the other four torches to burn at the sacryng of the high mass within the said church as long as they will last.... I will that there be incontinently after my decease, as hastily as may be, a thousand masses said for my soul, and that every priest have for his labour 4d. Item, I will that there be dole for my soul the day of burying, to poor people 5 marks in pence.... I bequeath to the poor lazars of Highgate to pray for me by name in their bead roll 6s. 8d. Also, I will that, every month after my decease, there be an obit kept for me in Islington Church, and each priest and clerk have for their pains to be taken, as they used to have afore this time. And I will that there be distributed at every obit, to poor people, to pray for my soul, 6s. 8d. I will that all that now be seised to my use, and to the performance of my will or hereafter shall be seised to the same, of and in a parcel of ground called the Stony-field, otherwise called the Fourteen Acres, shall suffer the rents and profits of the same from henceforth to be counted to this use ensuing; that is to say, I will that, yearly after my decease, the parishioners of the parish of Islington, or the more part of them, once in the year, at the parish church aforesaid, shall elect and choose six honest and discreet men of the said parish, such as they think most meet to have the order and distribution of the rent and profit aforesaid, which rent I will shall by the said six persons be bestowed in the manner and form following; that is to say, I will that there be yearly for ever a solemn obit to be kept for me within the said church of Islington, and that there be spent at the obit 20s. And also that there be dealt to poor people of the said parish at every obit, to pray for my soul, my wife’s soul, and all Christian souls 6s. 8d. And further, I will that the said six persons shall yearly pay, or do to be paid, to the wardens of the Brotherhood of Jesu, 1 l. 6s. 8d. towards maintaining of the mass of Jesu within the said church; upon this condition, that the said wardens shall yearly for ever cause a trental of masses to be said for my soul in the said church; and further I will that the aforesaid six persons shall have among them for their labour, to see the true performance of the same, yearly at every obit 10s.”

But, says a worthy Protestant writer on the history of Islington, “all the provisions made by Cloudesley for the pardon of his sins, and the repose of his soul, would seem ... to have proved inoperative.” For the following strange story is told. “And as to the same heavings or tremblements de terre, it is said that in a certain field, near unto the parish church of Islington, in like manner did take place a wondrous commotion in various parts, the earth swelling and turning up every side towards the midst of the said field, and by tradition of this it is observed that one Richard de Cloudesley lay buried in or near that place, and that his body being restless, on the score of some sin by him peradventure committed, did shew or seem to signify that religious observance should there take place, to quiet his departed spirit; whereupon certain exorcisers, if we may so term them, did at dead of night, nothing loth, using divers divine exercises at torch light, set at rest the unruly spirit of the said Cloudesley, and the earth did return anear to its pristine shape, never more commotion proceeding therefrom to this day, and this I know of a very certainty.”

As a final instance of a spirit evoked by the perversion or neglect of his dispositions or desires we may go to the pages of the entertaining writer of the “History of Apparitions Sacred and Prophane, Under all Denominations; whether Angelical, Diabolical, or Human-Souls departed,” published in 1729 and “Adorn’d with Cuts.”

“In the year 1662 an Apparition meets one Francis Taverner on the Highway; the man having Courage to speak to it, asks it what he is? and the Apparition tells him he is James Haddock, and gives him several Tokens to remember him by, which Taverner also calling to mind owns them; and then boldly demands of the Apparition what business he had with him.... The next Night the Apparition comes to him again, and then tells him the Business, which was to desire him to go to his Wife, whose Maiden Name was Eleanor Welsh; but was then marry’d again to one Davis, which Davis withheld the lease from the Orphan, Haddock’s Son, and tell her she should cause Justice to be done to the Child. Taverner neglected to perform this Errand, and was so continually followed by the Apparition that it was exceedingly terrible to him; and at last it threaten’d to tear him in Pieces, if he did not go of his Errand.”

The story was noised abroad, and the famous Bishop Jeremy Taylor took Taverner under his examination. He advised him to ask the apparition, when it should appear again, several questions, including the pertinent inquiry why it should come for the relief of its son, when so many widows and orphans were oppressed more grievously, but no spirit came to right them. But, alas! the spirit was silent.

At last the lease was given up to the son of James Haddock, and the apparition presumably satisfied. But “about five years after, and when the Bishop was dead, one Costlet, who was the Child’s Trustee, threatened to take away the Lease again, rail’d at Taverner, and made terrible Imprecations upon himself if he knew of the Lease, and threatened to go to Law with the Orphan. But one night, being drunk at the Town of Hill-Hall, near Lisburne in Ireland, where all this Scene was laid, going home he fell from his Horse and never spoke more, and so the Child enjoy’d the Estate peaceably ever after.”

Romances have been mentioned, arising from a will’s destruction or loss, and it is no wonder if ghost stories spring up around such themes. There is one such told of a farm on the Thorney estate. A woman sleeping in the haunted room of a cottage felt at midnight something at her side, and saw by the light of the moon a “thin, gray-haired woman of about seventy-six, with a full-bordered cap, red chintz garment, and crossover wrap of the same material. She had only one tooth. She seemed to glide over the floor.” The figure did not speak, but pointed to the ceiling. A search among the beams above the room disclosed the will of a farmer named John Cave, who died there over a hundred years since with a fortune of £10,000.

The person who perceived this apparition denied strongly that it was a dream. But dreams play an important part in stories of things lost or forgotten, and often it is difficult to distinguish, if distinction there be, between a waking vision and a dream. The imagination is stirred—and exasperated—by the story of the “Jennings millions,” where a will was found, but unsigned. Search was made in vain for a duly executed will. Among incidents in the case there is narrated the dream of a lady who on three successive nights saw in her dream the churchyard of Brailsford, and perceived that under a certain grave lay the missing document. But the grave appears not to have been opened, and the matter was forgotten.