The winter of 1703-04 seems to have been peculiarly trying to his health. He hardly expected to live through it; but he still maintained his cheerfulness, and followed his usual employments. On the 11th of April, 1704, he made his will--perhaps not his first. To most of his friends, relatives, and dependents he left some remembrance; but the bulk of his personal property be left to Frank Masham and Peter King, the latter of whom was sole executor and residuary legatee. All his manuscripts were left to King. Many of these were published for the first time by the seventh Lord King, in his _Life of Locke_. His land he designedly did not will, and so it devolved by law, in equal shares, on his two cousins, Peter King and Peter Stratton. His funeral was to be conducted without any ostentation, and what it would otherwise have cost was to be divided amongst four poor labourers at Oates. The approach of summer had not its usual restorative effect upon him. On the other hand, all the bad symptoms of his disease increased. To use his own expression, "the dissolution of the cottage was not far off." In a letter, written on the 1st of June, he earnestly pressed King to come to him, that he might pass some of the last hours of his life "in the conversation of one who is not only the nearest but the dearest to me of any man in the world." Both King and Collins seem to have visited him frequently during the last months of his life; and their society being cheerful, and the topics of their conversation interesting, he appears to have taken great pleasure in their company. He did not, however, find equal enjoyment in the visit of Dr. Edward Fowler, Bishop of Gloucester, who, like himself, was in a bad state of health. "I find two groaning people make but an uncomfortable concert." The moral he draws is, that men should enjoy their health and youth while they have it, "to all the advantages and improvements of an innocent and pleasant life," remembering that merciless old age is in pursuit of them. The lamp of life was now dimly flickering, but once more it burnt up in the socket before going out forever. Peter King had been married on the 10th of September, and he and his bride must be received with all due honours at Oates. King was asked to cater for his own wedding feast, and goodly and dainty is the list of delicacies which he was to buy. But something, perhaps, might be omitted in which Mrs. King took special delight. "If there be anything that you can find your wife loves, be sure that provision be made of that, and plentifully, whether I have mentioned it or no." The feast was to be cooked by "John Gray, who was bred up in my Lord Shaftesbury's kitchen, and was my Lady Dowager's cook." The wedded pair arrived at Oates towards the end of the month, and well can we picture to ourselves the pride and pleasure with which the genial old man entertained the wife of his cousin and adopted son--the adopted son whom he had rescued