Spencer of Lancaster, also, left by will ten thousand pounds of tobacco for the same purpose, the objects of his bounty, however, to be chosen from amongst the inhabitants of White Chapel Parish.[1] Corbin Griffin bequeathed fifteen pounds sterling to the poor of Richmond County, and ten pounds to persons in need in Middlesex.[2] John Linney devised his entire estate to the destitute inhabitants of Chiskiack in York. Richard Trotter, of the same county, left one thousand pounds of tobacco to the poor of Charles Parish, while Nathaniel Bacon, Sr., bequeathed twenty pounds sterling to the poor of Hampton Parish.[3] In 1698, Robert Scott willed the whole amount of the sums due him by different persons, in the form of tobacco or coin, to indigent persons in Isle of Wight County.[4] If reliance can be placed upon the statement of Beverley, there was little room for the exercise of charity by benevolent testators towards the close of the century; he declares that he was aware of one case in which a bequest for the benefit of the poor in one of the parishes in Virginia had remained untouched for nine years, because there was no one in the limits of the parish who came within the scope of the testators intention.[5]
- ↑ Records of Lancaster County, original vol. 1690-1694, f. p. 11.
- ↑ Will on file among records of Middlesex County.
- ↑ Records of York County, vol. 1694-1702, Linney, p. 10, Trotter, p. 194; Bacon, vol. 1690-1694, p. 154, Va. State Library.
- ↑ Records of Lower Norfolk County, original vol. 1695-1703, p. 123.
- ↑ Beverley’s History of Virginia, p. 223.
