On the other hand, the interest of a will may arise not merely or so much from its provisions in themselves, as from our knowledge of the inner history of the testator’s life and death. Bishop Corbet, that witty and jovial soul, was one of those fathers who, for all their love and longing, for all their piety, are disgraced by their sons. In his will, dated July 7, 1635, and proved on the 5th of the following September, he wrote: “I commit and commend the nurture education and maintenance of my son and daughter into the faithful and loving care of my mother-in-law, declaring my intent by this my last will, as I have often in my health expressed the same, that my desire is that my said son be brought up in good learning, and that as soon as he shall be fit be placed in Oxford or Cambridge, where I require him upon my blessing to apply himself to his books studiously and industriously.”
He had in “health expressed the same” by verse: but the son Vincent, in spite of prayer and admonition, was a ne’er-do-well, and after the Bishop’s death a beggar in London. These lines were addressed to him upon his third birthday by his fond but ill-requited father:—
“I wish thee, Vin., before all wealth, Both bodily and ghostly health: Nor too much wealth, nor wit, come to thee, So much of either may undo thee. I wish thee learning, not for show, Enough for to instruct, and know; Not such as gentlemen require, To prate at table, or at fire. I wish thee all thy mother’s graces, Thy father’s fortune, and his places. I wish thee friends, and one at court, Not to build on but support; To keep thee, not in doing many Oppressions, but from suffering any. I wish thee peace in all thy ways, Nor lazy nor contentious days; And when thy soul and body part, As innocent as now thou art.”
Or take the case of the Gills, father and son. Alexander Gill, senior, was High Master of St. Paul’s School from 1608 to 1635, and is famous as having numbered Milton among his pupils. A degree of fame is also his for the unsparing use of the rod, which he wielded even upon his son, the under master:
“‘O good Sir,’ then cry’d he, ‘In private let it be, And do not sauce me openly.’”
In his will we see that as he had ruled in his lifetime, so he would have his wife rule after him. “And although it may seem needless to charge my sons so professed how they should honour their mother, yet I hold it fit in and by this my last will to leave this precept unto them as my last remembrance, charging them as much as I can that, as they hope for a blessing of God to be with them, to give her that honour which is due as the law of God and nature bindeth them, and in every thing to harken to her counsel and precept and to obey her and be ruled by her.”
Nor is it surprising to find that another son, Nathaniel, “hath refused my correction,” and that he has an “unthankful and injurious brother.” “To my unthankful and injurious brother Simon Gill I freely forgive all debts which he oweth me, with all demands for other charges of food apparel losses and supplies in his want by which I have been much damnified by him, which in a most charitable accompt would come to above fifty pounds; I forgive, I say, all most freely except one bill of eight pounds, which debt I give to my executrix, with hope she will not be troublesome to him by suit thereof except he become troublesome unto her or her children as his manner hath been towards me and others.”
There are other interesting passages, but as a final touch to the will of this stormy nature it may be noticed that he gives “the dust of this wicked carcase to be buried in the dust.” Altogether his will confirms the opinion of Aubrey in his “Brief Lives,” that “Dr. Gill, the father, was a very ingeniose person, as may appear by his writings. Notwithstanding he had moodes and humours.”
Sometimes the circumstances suggest romance. “On the morning of the action between the Portland packet and the Temeraire French privateer, off Guadaloupe, on the 14th of October, 1796,” says Kirby’s “Wonderful Museum” (1803), “Mr. Cunningham, a passenger, who, in a previous engagement sustained by the Portland packet with another privateer, had evinced great courage, observed to the captain that he felt a strong impression that his dissolution was at hand; and on the enemy bearing in sight, he went below and made his will, declaring his hour was come; returning to his station on deck, in a few minutes a bullet verified his prediction.”
So it has been again and again, from the case of Mary Stuart, writing her will in her own hand during the last hours before her execution, or of Archbishop Laud drawing up his will in the Tower, to the case of Señor Ferrer, dictating his testament in the prison chapel at Barcelona.