The following are extracts from some recent English wills: Thomas Blyth, after directing that no person was to wear mourning for him out of his money, goes on to say: “But I cannot forget the kindness of the ladies who have promised to wear Dolly Varden garters of black and white as a mark of respect for my memory.” William Hampton, after leaving to his son Lawrie’s “Interest Tables,” says he does so, “not from its intrinsic value, but from the hope that so small an incident may be of use to him in future years. And I particularly recommend to him the study of the compound interest tables, as showing that from comparatively small investments, by patience, large sums may be realized.” James Brown evidently believed in every man voting according to his own political convictions, for after leaving to a nephew two cottages, “for which he is to get his vote on,” adds, “and to vote the way which he likes best.” William Farren’s statement as to the character of Cambridge undergraduates is, we hope and believe, unfounded: he hopes by his disposition of his property, “to save his family from keeping or living in an undergraduate lodging-house, as undergraduates are more like wolves and dogs than human beings.”
Ostentation
Matthew Wall of Braughing, Hertfordshire, England, by will, in 1595, charged all his lands and tenements in the parish of Braughing with the yearly payment of twenty shillings, to be distributed by the minister and churchwardens on St. Matthew’s Day, in the following manner:
To the sexton, to make up his grave yearly, and to ring the bell, 1s. 10d. To twenty boys, between the age of six and sixteen, twenty groats. To ten aged and impotent people of the parish, ten threepences. To sweep the path from his house to the church-gate every year, 1s. To the crier of Stortford, to make proclamation yearly, on Ascension and Michaelmas Day, that he left his estate to a Matthew, or William Wall, as long as the world should endure, 8d. To the parish clerk at Hallingbury for the same, 8d., and to the minister and churchwardens, to see his will performed, 5s.
Powder Plot and Spanish Armada
Robert Wilcox, of Alcester, Warwickshire, England, by will, dated 24th of December, 1627, gave a house and grounds to the town of Alcester, for the maintenance of three sermons in the year, viz.:
“One upon the 5th of November, in remembrance of our happy deliverance, with our king, nobles and states, from the pestilent design of the Papists in the Powder Plot; one on the 17th of November, in remembrance of that good Queen Elizabeth, her entrance unto the Crown; and the third upon the last day of July, in remembrance of the Lord’s gracious deliverance from the Spanish Armada, in ’88.”
And whereas the rent was 20s. by the year then, and the good-wife, Lilly, having her life in it, after her decease no doubt the house and close would be worth 30s. by the year; then his will was that the said overplus should be given to the poor every year, as the rent should come in, forever.
More Generous than Polite
The will of Edward Wortley Montagu, son of Mr. Montagu, Ambassador to Constantinople in 1716, by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, his wife, the supposed “Sappho” of Pope, is more than singular. After some bequest “to my noble and worthy relation, the Earl of ——,” he adds, “I do not give his lordship any further part of my property because the best part of that he has contrived to take already. Item, to Sir Francis —— I give one word of mine, because he has never had the good fortune to keep his own. Item, to Lord M—— I give nothing, because I know he’ll bestow it on the poor. Item, to —— the author, for putting me in his travels, I give five shillings for his wit, undeterred by the charge of extravagance, since friends who have read his book consider five shillings too much. Item, to Sir Robert W—— I leave my political opinions, never doubting he can well turn them into cash, who has always found such an excellent market in which to change his own. Item, my cast-off habit of swearing oaths I give to Sir Leopold D——, in consideration that no oaths have ever been able to find him yet.”