It is not surprising that wills should occur in which distrust or horror of alcohol is prominent. “My experience,” says one, “acquired as a large employer of labour and as a Justice of the Peace, and my observation of what is hourly taking place, have convinced me that the present facilities for the sale of intoxicating liquors operate to the prejudice, both morally and materially, of large masses of the community, and that these facilities ought to be curtailed.” He therefore directs that his real estate shall be sold only on condition that the purchaser allows no building to be erected thereon for any purpose connected with intoxicating liquors. The condition was to last “for twenty-one years after the decease of the longest lived survivor of her late Majesty Queen Victoria,” and the term would have been extended had the law allowed. A brewer, on the other hand, provided that, should the licence of any one of forty-four public-houses and twelve off-licence shops belonging to his company be forfeited between the date of his will and his death, an equivalent amount should pass to a University instead of to the town for whose benefit he left his residuary estate. His reason, he stated, was that if the licence was lost through the conduct of the frequenters of the house, their action would cost the town a considerable sum, while if it were lost through the action of teetotal magistrates the town would be punished. A total abstainer, he declared, had no more right to compel a temperate man to abstain from drinking his particular beverage than the temperate man had a right to compel the total abstainer by force of law to drink it. But he hoped the first contingency would make the inhabitants careful of their conduct. Curious glimpses of life in olden days are given in conditions which now and then are enjoined. Edmund Clifton (1547) gave to Sir Geruys Clifton, knight, “the standing cup of silver and gilt and a goblet parcel gilt, which he hath already in his custody, upon condition that he help and assist my wife, and do not enforce her nor be about her to take any husband but such as she shall willingly be pleased and contented with, nor be about to do her any other displeasure, neither by word nor deed; and if he do anything contrary to this condition, then this bequest to be void.” He also gave 40s. to Jane Mering “of this condition, that she shall profess and knowledge herself not to have done her duty to me and my wife, before Mr. Parson and four or five of the honester men in the parish.” He seems to have had the spark of eccentricity in him, and perhaps Jane Mering was not wholly in the wrong. Would that we had the sequel of the story!