Eccentric Testamentary Trusts. them equally, for preaching a sermon on the 1 4th day of May yearly, forever, the text to be taken out of the Common Prayer Book on these words, ' O, all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord, praise Him and magnify Him forever."" Everyone has heard of the celebrated "Dunmow Flitch." This was a prize insti tuted at the little village of Dunmow, in Es sex, England, in 1244, by bequest of Robert de Fitzwalter, on the following conditions : "That whatever married couple will go to the priory, and kneeling on two sharp pointed stones, will swear that they have not quar reled nor repented of their marriage within a year and a day after its celebration shall receive a flitch of bacon." A flitch is the entire side of a pig cured in one piece. Whether the people of Dunmow were too modest or that they found the conditions too irksome, it is a fact that no couple claimed the flitch for two hundred years after the be quest was made, and between 1 244 and 1751 only five couples had been able to comply with the conditions, and after the latter year a hundred and four years elapsed before the flitch was again claimed. Another man who wished to encourage matrimony was John Perram, of Newmarket, who directed, by his will dated 3Oth of May, 1772, that a sum of money properly invested should be held in trust, and that the trustees should "at least six weeks before Easter, cause notice to be given, as herein directed, that a marriage portion of £2 1 would be given to a parishioner of the said parish, who should, on the Thursday in the Easter week, be married at the church to a woman be longing to it; neither party to be under twenty, not to exceed twenty-five years of age, nor be worth ¿£20;. the trustees to at tend in the vestry of All Saints to receive claims, and pay the bequest to such couple as should be qualified to receive it. In case of two claims, the determination to be by ballot who should receive it." Then follows the strangest proviso : " In case of no claim
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ants, then the money, for that year to be paid by the trustees to the winner of the next town plate at the races." A strange mixture of matrimony and horse racing. This bequest received the sanction of the Court of Chancery in the year 1801. John Rudge, of Trysull, Staffordshire, evi dently suffered in mind through the listlessness of those who attended the services at the parish church, for by his will dated April 17, 1725, he bequeathed twenty shill ings a year to be paid at " five shillings a quarter, to a poor man, to go about the parish church of Trysull, during sermon, to keep people awake, and to keep dogs out of church." Another very eccentric bequest was that made by Henry Greene, in his will dated De cember 22, 1679, wherein he gave all his prop erty in the townships of Melbourne and New ton, Derbyshire, to his sister, and after her decease, to others in trust, upon condition that the " said Catherine Green should give four green waistcoats to four poor women every year, such green waistcoats to be lined with green galloon lace, and to be delivered to the said poor women on or before the 2 ist of December yearly, that they might be worn on Christmas day." The color of the waistcoats was evidently intended to keep his memory "green." Not in England alone do we find people bribed to remember the dead, for as recently as 1875 in the village of Croane-sur-Marne in France, one Thomas Heviant, among many singular bequests ordered that the sum of two thousand francs should be set apart as a prize to the lucky rider of the winning pig in a race between pigs ridden by men or boys. The bequest was not to be handed over, however, except on the winner giving bonds that he would wear mourning for the deceased dur ing two years after the competition. The municipality accepted the eccentric bequest and ordered a pig race to be run on the Sun day week after the funeral of the testator. In the days before science had lighted our
