Ancient, Curious, and Famous WillsHarris, Virgil M. (Virgil McClure)
History
Ancient, Curious, and Famous Wills
Harris, Virgil M. (Virgil McClure)
Wills
The body, dressed in his “roast-meat” (or Sunday) clothes, was to be
laid on a bier in the midst. As each guest arrived, sprigs of gorse,
holly, and rosemary were to be distributed, and each was to receive a
cake; then all were to make merry for a couple of hours.
The musicians were then to play, in lively time, the tune of “Britons,
strike home,” while glasses of gin were being handed round to the
company; after this the fiddlers, repeating the said tune, were to head
the cortége, the guests to follow two-and-two, the whole being closed by
the curate riding upon an ass, for which service he was to receive a fee
of one guinea. No one was on any account to indulge in tears; and, as
soon as the coffin had been covered over, they were to repair to the
public-house at which the departed had been best known, and there to eat
and drink as they pleased to the amount of thirty shillings, to be
defrayed by the “estate.”
NO TOMBSTONE HONORS
The late Jesse H. Griffen of Yorktown, New York, who was a prominent
citizen of that part of the State, drew his will on a bill-head. Among
other provisions were these: “I desire that my corpse be put in a plain
walnut coffin and carried in an ordinary spring wagon, and that no
tombstone be erected where my mortal remains are deposited. I notice
that people in moderate circumstances are often distressed by expensive
displays at funerals, and tombstone honors are a truer indication of the
vanity of survivors than of the virtues of the dead.”
WILL OF PHILIPPE BOUTON
Philippe Bouton, _bailli_ of Dijon, dying in 1515, desired by his will
that fourteen girls should be found, who, being clothed in green
cloth,--that hue being sacred to hope,--should attend at his obsequies,
and at all the services consequent thereon. He was buried in the church
of Corberon.
WILL OF CHARLES BOUTON (OF POITOU)
“I, Charles Bouton, Seigneur of Fay, desire by this my will and
testament, that after my death the sacristans of Louhaus shall throw
over my coffin a white winding-sheet, that they shall recite the psalter
before carrying it into the church; that they shall have my body carried
into the Church of St. Peter of Louhaus, where it shall repose one
night; that on the following morning it shall be placed on a waggon,
such as those used for carting manure, and borne to my chapel of Fay and
deposited within its charnel-house, there to be left without any other
light than that of four small tapers, each weighing half-a-pound.”
This testator does not appear to have been in any way related to the
Philippe Bouton cited above: he died in 1532.
WILL OF AN ENGLISH FARMER
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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