As an example from Catholic England the following is typical: “In the name of God, Amen. I Dame Anne Haydon, widow, being in my whole mind and of good memory the XVIIth day of December in the year of our Lord God 1509, and in the first year of King Henry the VIIIth, make this my testament and last will in manner and form following, that is to say, First, gracious Jesu, I as a sinful creature by reason of my demerits not worthy to be accepted into the holy company of heaven to continue in that holy place, Lord, without Thy great and large mercy and grace, (the which through Thy Passion to every Christian man meekly and lowly asking graciously grantest): Wherefore I now being in my full and whole mind and in perfect love and charity, and in steadfast faith, ask and cry Thee, Jesu, our Lady Saint Mary Thy blessed Mother, all the holy company of heaven, and all the world, mercy, trusting verily that through Thy Passion and with the succour and relief of that gracious Lady Thy Mother and Maid to sinners to her calling for help of her great pity greatly and very comfortable: Wherefore, blessed Jesu, I commit my soul to Thee and to Thy blessed Mother our Lady Saint Mary and to all saints of heaven through the mean and help of St. John Baptist, St. Anne, St. Mary Magdalen and St. Christopher mine avouers. And my sinful body to be buried in the Chapel of St. Luke in the Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity of Norwich, if I die in Norwich or in Norfolk.” Such is a common form, diversified by individual and expressive variations, of wills in those days. The Reformation changed the form but not the spirit of these avowals. “I render back,” wrote Sarah Ward in 1662, “into the hands of my God and Creator the soul I received from Him, humbly desiring His fatherly goodness for the infinite merit of His Son Jesus Christ and His all-sufficient Passion, (on which I wholly rely, disclaiming any confidence in saints or angels,) that He would make it partaker of eternal life and a citizen of His heavenly Kingdom. My body I bequeath to the earth whence it was taken, firmly believing the resurrection of the dead, and that I shall rise again in the last day, and see God in my flesh with the self-same eyes I now use and no other. The manner of interring it I leave wholly to my executors ... being no farther solicitous for so contemptible a remnant than as it is yet the hospital of a reasonable soul.”