Where There’s a Will

Sam’s mix of malaise and excitement from recent events hits a castle wall in Week 28 of 1661, as family feuds are exposed…

We buried my Uncle the day after I arrived, the Sunday. With it being the Lord’s day, all people far and near came in – and in the greatest disorder that ever I saw.

Our house in Brampton, formerly my Uncle Robert’s – painted by the T of the Chat GP

We had spent the morning getting things like ribbons and gloves, and so then had to make shift to serve the great number of guests with what we had of wine and other things. The bill eventually came to 80£ or more – but at least we had several volunteers to assist with carrying him to the church.

Mr Taylor, the master of my old grammar school in Huntingdon, stepped forward to bury my Uncle. A rector from the nearby village of Eynesbury, my Lord’s chaplain John Turner, preached the sermon. He spoke not particularly of him anything, but that he was one so well-known for his honesty – “which speaks for itself above all that I could say for it,” he said. And so made a very good sermon.

Back at my Uncle’s house, we supped in silence before bed. Ah, but perhaps I should now say my father’s house – for that morning, my father and I had walked in the garden and read the Will.

At the time, I recall feeling nothing but gratitude to my Uncle. Though he gave me nothing till my father’s death, or at least very little, yet I was glad to see that he had done so well for us all. My father is to inherit the greater part of his estate, partly on trust for me – and in addition, I am to receive a 30£ annuity (after debts and legacies) for the lifetime of my Uncle Thomas, after which I shall receive even more of the estate.

“He hath done so well to his kindred,” I remember remarking to my father, and he agreed. Both of us had completely overlooked the one relation to whom my Uncle had given nothing:

His wife.

For this rest of this week, we were much troubled with my aunt’s base ugly humours. One of her sons, my stepcousin Jasper, once observed that she could be quite sullen and quiet for a time, then of a sudden she would be in a passion, decrying betrayal from everyone around her, and refusing any offer of assistance.

So she was now. And her discontent continued well into the night, sharing its symptoms with everyone else in the household.

At first, I thought this deep grief was for her much-loved husband. But I soon discovered it more likely due to the deep grievance between them before his death…

You see, as is the law, the estate of her first husband was to pass to my Uncle after their marriage. This would have left her sons from her first marriage unprovided for, and so she had entreated my Uncle to enter a bond of 200£ on her behalf that she could leave to her children.

My compassionate (and doubtlessly doting) Uncle had swiftly done so. But when it came to be calculated, my aunt’s first husband had left far more debt than estate, costing my Uncle over 300£ in addition to that bond.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, my Uncle felt he had been dealt with unworthily – yet still my aunt refused to relinquish the advantage of the bond. Thus my Uncle bequeathed nothing to her, except that his executors “be very civil to her in all respects – although she knows she hath done me much wrong.”

Now my aunt is feeling the loss – as are my stepcousins. And so Jasper and the other, Tom, have put in a caveat against the Will. Them being lawyers, I am troubled as to what this portends.

Ah, for the troubles to stop there! Alas, my Uncle’s papers were not so well sorted as I would have had them. I spent most of this week looking over them with my father, and even now it breaks my brains trying to understand them.

The result of all the confusion? We missed the surrenders of his copyhold land, without which the land could not come to my father and me as per my Uncle’s Will, but rather went to the heir-at-law – in other words, my Uncle Thomas, the elder of Uncle Robert’s two brothers.

This dispute will doubtless compound that of my stepcousins, and I can’t imagine when these troubles will be settled. What with all this, and the badness of the drink, the ill opinion I have of the meat, and the biting of the gnats by night… I am almost out of my wits with trouble.

Only… I appear the more contented. I would not have my father troubled.

I’ll try to end with a glimmer of light. The latter end of the week, Mr Phillips of Brampton, our attorney for this affair, returned home from London. He gave us the best counsel he could.

But for all that, we are not yet quiet in our minds…

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In return for these words of mine, please pay just one word of yours. If there could be only one word on your gravestone other than your name and lifespan, what would you wish it to be?

Speak with you again soon – and may the Lord bless you and keep you till then!