Immediately follows: “I give and bequeath to my son-in-law, Sir John Hewell, Baronet, tenn shillings and noe more, in respect he stroke and ceaselessly fought with mee.
“Item: I give unto my wyfe tenn shillings in respect she took her sonnes part against me, and did anymate and comfort him afterwards. These will not be forgotten.” Furthermore, the testator, in resentment against his said wife—“inasmuch as she hath not only deserted mee, but hath taken into her own possession all her own goods, and hath disposed of them at her own pleasure”—declares his determination “to make no ampler provision for her.”
He concludes this vindictive will by leaving all his large estates to his second son.
This will is not exactly of the class alluded to by Steele in one of his plays, where he makes one of the characters, a widow, remark, “There is no will of an husband so cheerfully obeyed as his last.”
Accused of every Crime
John Parker, a bookseller, living in Old Bond Street, served his wife in the following manner, leaving her no more than fifty pounds, and in the following words:
“To one Elizabeth Parker, whom through fondness I made my wife, without regard to family, fame, or fortune, and who in return has not spared most unjustly to accuse me of every crime regarding human nature, except highway robbery, I bequeath the sum of fifty pounds.”
Between the Lines
A rich man, making his will, left legacies to all his servants except his steward, to whom he gave nothing, on the plea that, “having been in my service in that capacity twenty years I have too high an opinion of his shrewdness to suppose he has not sufficiently enriched himself.”
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