Book Cover.
THE ROMANCE OF WILLS AND
TESTAMENTS
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
SONGS AND LYRICAL POEMS
(1908)
In Preparation
SPIRITUAL TESTAMENTS
OR
PRAYERS AND PREFACES FROM
WILLS, &c.
THE
ROMANCE OF WILLS
AND TESTAMENTS
BY
EDGAR VINE HALL
T. FISHER UNWIN
LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE
LEIPSIC: INSELSTRASSE 20
1912
(All rights reserved.)
“My Life’s my dying day, wherein I stillAm making, alter and correct my Will.”Francis Quarles.
“Remember me when I am gone away,Gone far away into the silent land.”Christina G. Rossetti.
“Of Carthage wall I was a stoneO’h Mortals Read with PityTime consumes all it spareth noneMan, Mountain, Town nor City.Therefore O’h Mortals now bethinkYou where unto you must,Since now such Stately BuildingsLie Buried in the dust.Thomas Hughes, 1663.”
The Carthage Stone, S. Dunstan’s Church, Stepney.[Pg 7]
PREFACE
By way of preface it is necessary to explain the sources from whichthe material for the following pages is taken. The chief feature ofthese essays consists, I think, in the large amount of original matterrescued from the multitudinous MS. volumes of wills, &c., which arepreserved at Somerset House and elsewhere.
As in death, so in those volumes, small and great rest side by side.Of the majority their wills, or, if they died without wills, theirintestacies, are their only memorials. But it is fascinating to comesuddenly upon some well-known name. In a volume of intestacies ofthe year 1674, for instance, is an entry stating that administrationwas granted to Elizabeth Milton, widow of John Milton, late of theparish of St. Giles, Cripplegate, his nuncupative will not having beenproved—“testamento nuncupativo dicti defuncti ... per antedictamElizabetham Milton allegato nondum probato.”[Pg 8]
Different types and times, the lighter or the more serious pages ofthis book, will appeal to different readers. I would, for my part,especially suggest attention to wills illustrative of times of plagueas likely to interest students of human nature and history. Time andopportunity for research have been limited—not unfortunately, perhaps.Amid greater abundance of material, choice would have been the moreperplexing.
It is desired to make full acknowledgment of the various printed bookswhich I have perused, and from which I have sometimes borrowed, viz.:such books as “Wills from Doctors’ Commons” (Nich                        
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