2 - Testaments and Wills

Summary

Death:On thee thou must take a long journey;

Therefore thy book of count with thee thou bring,

For turn again thou cannot by no way.

And look thou be sure of thy reckoning,

For before God thou shalt answer, and show

Thy many bad deeds, and good but few;

How thou hast spent thy life, and in what wise,

Before the chief Lord of paradise … .

Everyman: Full unready I am such reckoning to give.

I know thee not. What messenger art thou?

Death: I am Death, that no man dreadeth,

For every man I rest, and no man spareth;

For it is God's commandment

That all to me should be obedient.

Everyman:O Death, thou comest when I had thee least in mind!

In thy power it lieth me to save;

Yet of my goods will I give thee, if thou will be kind Yea, a thousand pound shalt thou have -

And defer this matter to another day.

from Everyman

On the Sunday before the feast of St Martin in 1408, Richard Micklefield of Blyford made his testament which, being an ecclesiastical document, was written in Latin. In this, he left instructions for the disposition of his body and the distribution of provisions for his soul. The remainder of his movable goods he left to his wife, Katherine. His last will, written nearly a fortnight later, was dated the Saturday next before the feast of St Catherine, the Virgin. It was written in French, the vernacular of the ‘upper’ classes at that time, and it provided for his daughters’ marriage portions from his immovable goods or real estate. One hundred years later, on 6 August 1509, Richard Love of Westhall left a single document written in English catering for bequests of both movable and immovable property under the title ‘last will'. Micklefield's will shows the customary form of testament and last will in use at the beginning of the fifteenth century, as well as the language and the dating common at that time. Richard Love's will lies at the other end of a period during which the testament and last will were fused into one, with English being the preferred language. During this period, wills underwent modification, while being used increasingly by a society experiencing both social and religious change.The formulation of wills evolved over a long period.