Such feuds and sorrows struck the imagination of Dickens, when he visited Doctors’ Commons, where the wills which now rest at Somerset House were stored in his day. “We naturally fell into a train of reflection as we walked homewards, upon the curious old records of likings and dislikings; of jealousies and revenges; of affection defying the power of death, and hatred pursued beyond the grave, which these depositories contain: eloquent by striking tokens, some of them, of excellence of heart and nobleness of soul; melancholy examples, others, of the worst passions of human nature. How many men as they lay speechless and helpless on the bed of death, would have given worlds but for the strength and power to blot out the silent evidence of animosity and bitterness, which now stands registered against them in Doctors’ Commons!” It is curious how quickly a man turns to his will in the event of coolness or misunderstanding. Cardinal Vaughan has told how his friendship with Cardinal Manning died down. “We consulted one another and told one another everything. Well, he had appointed me to be one of his executors. On one occasion when I was staying with him in London, we got into a discussion; I could not accept his views, and I suppose, on the contrary, strongly maintained my own. I saw he was a little bit put out—but what do you think he did? He went upstairs, took out his will, and struck his pen through my name as executor.” An uninitiated reader of Elizabeth Stow’s will would never have known what bitterness lay behind that £5 legacy; but sometimes such bitterness is evident enough. Harry Staple, of Ospring, Kent, whose will is dated February 19, 1691, is curt and downright: “To the widow Hall of Ospring and unto my three undutiful daughters, Mary and Elizabeth and Martha one shilling apiece.” John Braibroke, of Cooling, in 1535 requested his son Thomas “not to meddle with nothing of my testament or last will, nor my wife Alice to meddle with nothing that is or hath been between me and my son Thomas from the beginning of the world unto the present day.” A startling bequest was that of 3½d. to a son for the purchase of a rope for his wife, to be used as soon as possible. And another son to reap trouble was Freeman Ellis, whose father’s will was proved in 1664. “Memo. that Freeman Ellis late of the parish of St. James Clerkenwell ... having a very great love and affection for Bridget Fanny and Judith Ellis who had always been very kind and loving to him, and being very much displeased with his son Freeman Ellis, who had been undutiful to him and married without his consent and was gone away from his wife, would and did several times in his life time ... say and declare that whenever he died he would make his said sisters ... his executrixes and leave his estate to their sole ordering and disposing.”