Ancient, Curious, and Famous WillsHarris, Virgil M. (Virgil McClure)
History
Ancient, Curious, and Famous Wills
Harris, Virgil M. (Virgil McClure)
Wills
By his will, he left to Magdalene College, Cambridge, the Pepysian
Library of some three thousand volumes. This collection is kept in a
separate building, and contains manuscript of his celebrated diary,
together with many rare and curious documents, including the love
letters of Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn, a collection of Scottish poetry
and ancient English ballads. The diary, which was deciphered from the
author’s shorthand notes, is yet a popular book and is of standard
importance to English literature, reflecting, as it does, the court,
times, characters, and peculiarities of the age of Charles II.
WILL OF CECIL JOHN RHODES
Cecil John Rhodes, of Cape Town, South Africa, who died in 1902, was a
South African statesman and financier; an affection of the lungs
necessitated his leaving England when a young man, and he acquired fame
and wealth in the home of his adoption. Rhodes’s mode of life was the
subject of diverse criticism; he was regarded as a man actuated by
selfish motives, and preëminently, a man of money, but by his will, he
left nearly his entire fortune to educational purposes; his scholarships
have commanded the admiration of the world, and former estimates of his
character were modified. Certain portions of this remarkable will, taken
from Mr. Remsen’s excellent work, follow:
“I, The Right Honourable Cecil John Rhodes of Cape Town in the Colony of
the Cape of Good Hope, hereby revoke all testamentary dispositions
heretofore made by me and declare this to be my last Will which I make
this first day of July 1899.
“1. I am a natural-born British subject and I now declare that I have
adopted and acquired and hereby adopt and acquire and intend to retain
Rhodesia as my domicile.
“2. I appoint (naming seven persons) to be the Executors and Trustees of
my Will and they and the survivors of them or other the Trustees for
the time being of my Will are hereinafter called ‘My Trustees.’
“3. I admire the grandeur and loneliness of the Matoppos in Rhodesia and
therefore I desire to be buried in the Matoppos on the hill which I used
to visit and which I called the ‘View of the World’ in a square to be
cut in the rock on the top of the hill covered with a plain brass plate
these words thereon--‘Here lie the remains of Cecil John Rhodes’ and
accordingly I direct my Executors at the expense of my estate to take
steps and do all things necessary or proper to give effect to this my
desire and afterwards to keep my grave in order at the expense of the
Matoppos and Bulawayo fund hereinafter mentioned.”
The testator gives certain pecuniary legacies, directs the erection or
completion of a monument on the said hill in memory of certain dead, and
provides for interments thereon. He provides for the cultivation of
certain of his lands “for the instruction of the people of Rhodesia,”
the establishment of a park, “planted with every possible tree,” with
funds for their maintenance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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