Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 8.djvu/91

75 ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE ORIGIN OF CY PR^S. 75 doles to the poor, erection or. repair of churches or chapels therein, or at times even for the marriage of poor maidens, for relief of prisoners, repair of ways, or other objects subsequently included in the statute, side by side with the more direct provisions for the testator's security after decease by masses, candles, torches, obits, knells, months minds, and the like; by which the intercession of the Church and of the saints was bought, and the active agencies of the fiends were averted. As an illustration let us take the will of Joane, Lady Bergavenny, dated January lo, A. D. 1434.^ It begins: — " Purposing, with the leave of God to dispose of such goods, as his grace hath lent me, in such use as might be to his plesauns, and profit to my soul, and all theirs that I am bounden to, I will that every parish church that my body resteth in a night, after it passeth from the place of my dying, be offered two cloths of gold and if it rest in any College or Conventual Church three cloths of gold and in every Cathedral Church, that the dean, abbot or prior have vi s, viii d. and every canon, monk, vicar, priest or clerk that is at the dirige at the mass in the morning shall have xii d ; also I ordain that anon after my burying there be done for my soul five thousand masses in all the haste that they may goodly ; and I bequeath to the house of said friars at Hereford in general ccc marks to find two priests perpetually to sing for my Lord my husband, my Lord my father, my Lady my mother and me. And I bequeath each friar of the same house in special for the day of my burying to pray for my soul iii s, 4 d ; and I devise c marks to be ' dalt pene-mele ' or more after the discretion of my executors among poor men and women that come to my burying ; and I ordain and devise to have five priests to sing for me twenty winters; and that of the most honest persons and good conversations that can be found. Moreover I devise cc marks to be departed among my poor tenants in England ; also I devise c pounds to be disposed of within half a year after my death among bed rid men and other poor people dwelling in the lordships that I have ; and also I devise that Bartholomew Brokesby and Walter Kebyll be every year at Hereford the day of my anniversary, seeing that my obit with the rem- nant of the obsequies be done in due wise to the profit of my soul, spending about the execution thereof at every time x pounds after their direction. Moreover I devise to the marriage of poor maidens dwelling within my lordships c pounds, and to the making and amending of ' fabul brugges ' [feeble bridges] and foul ways c pounds ; and to the finding and deliverance of poor prisoners that have been well conditioned xl pounds," &c. 1 Nicolas, Test. Vet. i. 224.