Pathetic, indeed, death-bed wills too often are. Here is the cry of a humble inhabitant of Kent in 1608. “Loving father, my humble duty remembered unto you. It hath pleased God to visit me with sickness, so as I think not to see you any more in this world: wherefore I pray you to be good to my wife and children.” Or take another more than a hundred years later. “Queenborough, May 12th, 1721. Brother John Smith, I am very bad, so bad that I cannot tell whether I shall live or die. So in case of death I desire you to be executor to take care of the things and the girl. I cannot write, but this shall stand in as full force as if in any other form drawn.” More explicit, indeed of a painful preciseness, are the last words of Denham Castle, who died of smallpox in 1709. “Sir, I am very much obliged to you for enquiring after me in so particular a manner. My circumstances are very bad, and smallpox come out as thick as they can. I have not had a wink of sleep, and am choked almost with the phlegm. If some method is not taken to rid me of the phlegm and give me some speedy relief, I shall not be able to hold out. I would desire the favour to acquaint my father with it, who is at Sheperton beyond Hampton Town in Middlesex, but I would not have him or any of my sisters come near me, for it will be of no use to me. If I should do otherwise than well, I have some money in a box in my study, the only box there: it is under lock and key. Some part of it which is gold is put up within the lids of my pocket-book, which will be found wrapped up in some linen. There are also [some other sums]: that money will bury me privately; and if there is any remaining, I desire my youngest sister and Nanny who is a prentice in London may have it, as being the worst provided for.” Well worth comparing with the last is the will of Thomas Dixon, “late of the parish of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields.”