Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

A Yorkshire Almanac Comprising 366 Historical Extracts, Red-letter Days and Customs, and Astronomical and Meteorological Data

15 February 1647: “A stranger and pilgrim in the world,” Adam Eyre of Thurleston makes his funeral arrangements in his will

Adam Eyre. 1877. Will of Adam Eyre. Yorkshire Diaries and Autobiographies in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Ed. H.J. Morehouse. Durham: Surtees Society. Get it:

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Excerpt

And first of all beseeching God my heavenly Father to have mercy on my sinful soul, and the same into His favour to receive, I commend my body to the earth, desiring that the same may be decently covered with earth without outward pomp or great congregating of people, but if my executor be mindful to carry the same to the common sepulture at Penistone, if I shall die within the parish, or to any other common burying-place, I leave to his discretion, only as I have lived a stranger and pilgrim in the world, so I shall desire that no more may be invited to attend my corpse to the grave then may be thought necessary to carry the bier without too much burden, and in lieu of vain pomp and frivolous expenses so to be made I do hereby give to the poor indigent people of this town of Thurlston, where I now live, the sum of twenty pounds to be disposed at the discretion of my executor within one month after my death.

To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Abbreviations:

  • ER: East Riding
  • GM: Greater Manchester
  • NR: North Riding
  • NY: North Yorkshire
  • SY: South Yorkshire
  • WR: West Riding
  • WY: West Yorkshire

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Original

And first of all beseeching God my heavenly Father to have mercy on my sinful soul, and the same into His favour to receive, I commend my body to the earth, desiring that the same may be decently covered with earth without outward pomp or great congregating of people, but if my executor be mindful to carry the same to the common sepulture at Peniston, if I shall die within the parish, or to any other common burying-place, I leave to his discretion, only as I have lived a stranger and pilgrim in the world, so I shall desire that no more may be invited to attend my corpse to the grave then may be thought necessary to carry the beare [bier] without too much burden, and in lieu of vain pomp and frivolous expenses so to be made I do hereby give to the poor indigent people of this town of Thurleston, where I now live, the sum of twenty pounds to be disposed at the discretion of my executor within one month after my death.

179 words.

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