But peculiarly pathetic is the will of Henry Mabank. It is a letter to his mother, in the country, perhaps, and dreading every hour to hear that her son was stricken. It was proved on May 4, 1666. “Dear Mother, my duty to you remembered, and my love to my brothers and sisters and to Mr. Rudd and Mistress Rudd and Billy and to Henry Chandler, hoping you are all in good health as I am at this present writing, thanks be to God. Dear Mother, my desire and will is, that if you never see me more that my brother George and sister Betty and sister Ann shall have £100 which is upon bond equally divided between them.... Dear Mother, if it please God that I live till the 7th of August there will be £10 due to me from my master and £3 due the 20th of August upon bond. This £13 I will leave to your disposing. I am not afraid of the sickness, yet it is very near our house. I pray excuse me from writing every week; you shall hear of my welfare in Mrs. Rudd’s letters. So in haste I rest, Your dutiful son till death, Henry Mabank. July the 20th, 1665.”
Finally, the horrors of the plague and its attendant heroisms are recalled by the will of Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey, proved April 14, 1679. His will is otherwise remarkable, consistent with his fine independent character, and this opportunity may be taken for quoting it in part. How little his wishes were observed students of his life will know, and they will know also how peculiar were the circumstances of his death, which are briefly related at the close of the following essay. “I desire my executors ... to cause my body to be privately buried in the meanest place of burial belonging to that parish or place wherein I shall die but not in the Church, this to be performed without pomp or pageantry, not to be accompanied with numerous attendants either of friends or relations the which as I affected not in my lifetime I would not have imposed on me being dead: to that end, and to avoid being troublesome to the world and especially to the streets when dead, I desire to be buried very early in the morning or very late at night with as much privateness as may be, without any solemn invitation of my acquaintances or kindred as also without any funeral sermon or other harangue, which I do hereby forbid, any monument or other memorial of stone or brass to be made for me, hoping that my failings will be buried with me in the grave without any partial remembrance of evil or good actions, if any such have been, which are so called at the relator’s pleasure. As for the Charity which I have for some years bestowed on the poor of the parish of St. Martin’s in the Fields aforesaid, viz. 10/-in bread on every Lord’s Day or on some day at the beginning of each week, my will is that my executors ... do jointly and severally take care and continue to do the same by themselves for the space of ten years from and after the time of my decease.... And I do further will that the Charity by me given of 2/-per week in bread to the poor of the parish of Selling being the place of my birth[1] ... be weekly continued to be given ... in the same manner during the same time and on the like terms as are already mentioned in the behalf of the poor of the parish of St. Martin’s in the Fields aforesaid, and be continued after the determination of twenty-one years on the same terms therein expressed at the discretion of my executors their heirs or executors and no otherwise. Item: I give unto my brother Mr. Peter Godfrey, if he shall be living at the time of my death and not else, one hundred pounds instead of my great silver flagon once intended him whereon are engraven His Majesty’s Royal Arms with my own adjoined, and was so given unto me by order of the King and Council in memory of the service which God enabled me to perform towards the visited poor in that dreadful year of plague 1665, the which I am always to remember with humility and true thankfulness.... And I do particularly give unto my brother Mr. Michael Godfrey my great flagon aforementioned of the King’s gift.”