"Testamentary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was legalised, and in 1866, native converts to Christianity were enabled to obtain a divorce from wives or husbands who abandoned them in consequence of their religious change. Another Act of 1865, drawn by the Indian Law Commission, regulated the law as to succession to property and the testamentary powers of persons who were not members of any of the native religious communities, and thus recognised that such people had a legitimate legal status. From another application of the same principles arose a proposal in regard to which Fitzjames had to take a conspicuous part. It formed ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... trusts and powers the same as a single woman; that the statute in respect to a married woman's property be changed so that her property could descend as though she had been unmarried; that married women should be entitled to execute letters testamentary, and of administration; that married women should have power to make contracts and transact business as though unmarried; that they should be entitled to their own earnings, subject to their proportional liability for support of children; that post-nuptial acquisitions should belong equally ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... Greeks. The French have been a military nation, but they fought for a chivalrous ideal, for adventure, for humanity. Even Napoleon's wars of conquest were really wars for the establishment of democracy. The Corsican was the champion and the testamentary ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... making thereof, divers inconveniences and dangers not provided for plainly by the said statutes, have risen and sprung by reason of appeals sued out of this realm to the see of Rome, in causes testamentary, causes of matrimony and divorce, right of tithes, oblations, and obventions, not only to the great inquietation, vexation, trouble, costs, and charges of the King's Highness, and many of his subjects and residents in this his realm; but also to the delay and let of the speedy determination of the ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... his opinion in my study. Mere declamation! nothing else. Your answer is sound, legal, and argumentative, and then the testamentary disposition is so plain that it cannot be set aside. If you were inclined to make ...
— The Lawyers, A Drama in Five Acts • Augustus William Iffland
... that none suffered pecuniary detriment, much or little, through his fault or negligence. When that was assured, he next longed to clear his fame, in death, of every slur and taint. In November, for discharge of his conscience, he gave to Wilson a testamentary note, that he had never let to Captain Caulfeild land near Sherborne Castle, which John Meere claimed by a counterfeit grant of his to Caulfeild. He mentioned further that, before his departure from Cork to Guiana, he had written in prejudice of H. Pyne's lease ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... If the Court decides that he is presumably dead, then he is presumably dead. As a mere irrelevant, physical circumstance he may, it is true, be alive. But legally speaking, and for testamentary purposes, he is dead. You fail to ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... deceased husband's heirs cannot contend that the impairment of the widow's waiver by subsequent legislation deprived his estate of property without due process of law. Rights of succession to property are of statutory creation. Accordingly, New York could have conditioned any further exercise of testamentary power upon the giving of right of election to the surviving spouse regardless of any waiver however ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... Apjohn had been sent for on such occasions, and had returned after a day or two, accompanied by two clerks. It was quite understood that the clerks were there to witness the will. The old butler, who would bring in the sherry and biscuits after the operation, was well acquainted with all the testamentary circumstances of the occasions. Nothing of that kind had occurred now; but old Joseph Cantor, who had been a tenant on the property for the last thirty years, and his son, Joseph Cantor the younger, had been called in, and it was supposed ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... nearing its end made testamentary provision for its heir. After much wrangling and vacillation, it fixed upon New York as the seat of the new Government and summoned the States to choose presidential electors, Senators, and Representatives. The new national legislature was to assemble on the first Wednesday in March, which ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... allodial right is acquired only by the uninterrupted possession of the same person, his descendants or his wife, during a period of at least twenty years, and it is lost if the property has been in strange hands for three years. Testamentary dispositions, in the case of persons leaving issue, are now limited to one quarter of the testator's property; whereas before 1854, a testator could not bequeath anything individually. Since the year 1860, also, there is perfect equality ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... on the death of Alfonso the Magnanimous in 1458, had been separated from Sicily, and passed by testamentary appointment to his natural son Ferdinand. The bastard Aragonese dynasty was Italian in its tastes and interests, though unpopular both with the barons of the realm and with the people, who in their restlessness were ready to welcome any foreign deliverer ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... owner. This personal representative discharged his personal obligations so, far as there might be personal estate or rights of property sufficient for the purpose. He was styled an executor if designated by will; an administrator if there were no testamentary appointment. A man's lands, however, went upon his death straight to his heirs unless he had by will conveyed them to some one else. That when he died they were part of his estate did not charge them with the fulfillment of his personal obligations. For the discharge of these the creditor ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... 1848, not less than many of its predecessors, has had strange bedfellows and successors. The very people who put it down have become, as Karl Marx used to say, its testamentary executors. Louis Napoleon had to create an independent and united Italy, Bismarck had to revolutionise Germany and to restore Hungarian independence, and the English manufacturers had to ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... perfectly ready to enter on. I am ready to take your instructions, and will draw up the instrument to-morrow or the next day. Thank God there is no cause for hurry. And that is one of the advantages of arranging all testamentary dispositions while we are in health. My own will, Signor Marchese, has been made these ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... of habeas corpus, mandamus, prohibition, and certiorari to all inferior tribunals; issue writs of mandamus in all matters arising from or appertaining to the action of the board of supervisors; determines the probate of wills and testamentary cases; may appoint guardians, ...
— Civil Government of Virginia • William F. Fox
... wished. No custom, privilege, or statute was allowed to have force against this. Those who opposed it were made incapable of testing. Down to the sixth century[165] we find no law of the Church touching the testamentary dispositions of Christians. Justinian is the first of whom we know that he entrusted the execution of wills specially to the supervision of bishops. That he did this shows the great trust which he placed in ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... the vaguest notion of French testamentary law, she was dismayed to learn that the compulsory division of property made it impossible for a father to benefit his eldest son at the expense of the others. Raymond was therefore little richer than before, and with the debts of honour of a troublesome younger brother to settle, and Saint Desert ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... yet in her cradle, she had been the destined bride of a cousin, who was no less passive in the betrothal than herself. Their future union had been projected, as the means of uniting two rich estates, and was rendered highly expedient, if not indispensable, by the testamentary dispositions of the parents on both sides. Edgar Vaughan, the promised bridegroom, had been bred from infancy in Europe, and had never seen the beautiful girl whose heart he was to claim as his inheritance. But already, for several ...
— Sylph Etherege - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... (the soul) is the cause of birth, and others who affirm, 'I' (the soul) is the cause of death. There are some who say, 'Birth comes from nothingness, and without any plan of ours we perish.' Thus one is born a fortunate child, removed from poverty, of noble family, or learned in testamentary lore of Rishis, or called to offer mighty sacrifices to the gods, born in either state, untouched by poverty, then their famous name becomes to them 'escape,' their virtues handed down by name to us; yet if these attained ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... excellent one. The Squire's will had been dictated in fullest confidence in his wife's goodness and discretion; and doubtless also with the soothing idea common to most hale and healthy men, that it must be a long time before their testamentary arrangements can come into effect. It was a holograph will, and the Squire's own composition throughout. "He would have no lawyer's finger in that pie," he had said. The disposal of his estate had cost him many hours of painful thought before he rang the bell for his bailiff and his butler, ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... transferred, given, or devolve to the crown of France, or to any other but the successor of the German dominions of the house of Austria, either by donation, sale, exchange, marriage-contract, heritage, testamentary succession, nor under any other pretext whatsoever; so that no province, town, fortress, or territory of the said Netherlands shall ever be subject to any other prince, but to the successor of the states of the house of Austria alone, excepting what has been ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... to make your better acquaintance," she said, with her head still averted, "there are reasons...." It came suddenly into my head that she had an idea of testamentary dispositions, that she felt she was breaking up, that I had my rights. I didn't much care for the thing, but the idea of being the heir of Etchingham was—well, was an idea. It would make me more possible to my pseudo-sister. It would be, as it were, a starting-point, would make me potentially ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... with the hectic brilliancy of his gaze it was not the less impressive. His extraordinary excitement was certainly due to Deronda's presence: it was to Deronda that he was speaking, and the moment had a testamentary solemnity for him which rallied all his powers. Yet the presence of those other familiar men promoted expression, for they embodied the indifference which gave a resistant energy to his speech. Not that he looked at Deronda: he seemed to see ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... refutes the conjecture that he had set aside any portion of it under a previous settlement or jointure with a view to making independent provision for his wife. Her right to a widow's dower—i.e. to a third share for life in freehold estate—was not subject to testamentary disposition, but Shakespeare had taken steps to prevent her from benefiting—at any rate to the full extent—by that legal arrangement. He had barred her dower in the case of his latest purchase of freehold ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... marriage is, legally as well as socially, considered to be the most important event in his life; that it destroys the validity of any will which he may have made as a single man; and that it renders absolutely necessary the entire re-assertion of his testamentary intentions in the character of a husband. The statement of this plain fact appeared to overwhelm Mr. Vanstone. Declaring that his friend had laid him under an obligation which he should remember to his dying day, he at once left the cottage, ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... last to go to bed that night, and finishing his pipe over the dying fire, sat for some time in deep thought. He had from the first raised objections to the presence of Mr. Bodfish at the farm, but family affection, coupled with an idea of testamentary benefits, had so wrought with his wife that he had allowed her to have her own way. Now he half fancied that he saw a chance of getting rid of him. If he could only enable the widow to catch him searching her house, it was highly ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... then," he went on in yet more biting tones. "At the risk of seeming intrusive, I at once knocked up two Irish gentlemen on the landing above who had been audibly making a night of it while I sat here endeavouring to compose my thoughts to the calmness proper for framing a testamentary disposition. Although perfect strangers to me, they cheerfully granted what you have denied me; consented with alacrity—nay, with enthusiasm—to act as my seconds in this affair; and started to carry my cartel—which, having gone to bed in their boots, they ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... daughter's hand, although unquestionably a son of the wealthy banker Van Haubitz, is excluded beyond redemption from the good graces of that respectable pillar of Dutch finance, who has further announced his irrevocable determination to take not the slightest notice of him in his testamentary dispositions. The excellent Herr Bratenbengel, whose succulent dinner we are now digesting, and whose very laudable Rudesheimer stands before us, had unwittingly laid the foundation of my success; it was for me to raise the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... in my hand;" but in practical effects, as distinct from mere name and renown, it would be even truer to say that his code will go down to history with his hand set to it in signature—somewhat illegibly. Thus his testamentary law has broken up big estates and encouraged contented peasants in places where his name is cursed, in places where his name is almost unknown. In his lifetime, of course, it was natural that the annihilating splendour of his ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... his hat, and kissing the two fore-fingers of his right hand beaver glove, 'my name is Brass—Brass of Bevis Marks, Sir. I have had the honour and pleasure, Sir, of being concerned against you in some little testamentary matters. How do ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... be King in the United States, and Stadtholder in England; but it declined gradually; and an attempt by him to obtain the succession to the stadtholderate for John Friso, Prince of Nassau and Hereditary Stadtholder of Frizeland, absolutely failed. He made, by his will, that prince his testamentary heir. ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... consideration, to take the medicine you left, and I appeal to H——here, if it was after that, anything more than a reasonable precaution to be prepared for any contingency that might happen. Your medicines, Doctor, and the testamentary disposition of a man's worldly effects, are very ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... he fight out successfully, but his greatest struggle was on a question of testamentary jurisdiction with Peckham, Archbishop of Canterbury, by whom he was ultimately excommunicated and obliged to leave the country, attended by Swinfield, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher
... recognized by the people, sanctioned by repeated investitures of the papal suzerain, and admitted by all the states of Europe. If all this did not give validity to their title, when was the nation to expect repose? Charles's claim, on the other hand, was derived originally from a testamentary bequest of Rene, count of Provence, operating to the exclusion of the son of his own daughter, the rightful heir of the house of Anjou; Naples being too notoriously a female fief to afford any pretext for the action of the Salic law. The pretensions of Ferdinand, of Spain, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... being a very clever man, and of excellent discernment in the chamber practice of the law. I suspect his knowledge did not amount to much. When a case of difficult disposition of money, testamentary or otherwise, came before him, he ordinarily handed it over with a few instructions to his man Lovel, who was a quick little fellow, and would despatch it out of hand by the light of natural understanding, of which he had an uncommon share. It was incredible what repute for talents S. enjoyed ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... provided with a residence. Eventually, after rejecting many plans and proffers of houses, they decided to enlarge and improve the original Buonarroti mansion in Via Ghibellina. This house continued to be their town-mansion until the year 1852, when it passed by testamentary devise to the city of Florence. It is ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... shortly a declared lover—that their intimacy from childhood had accustomed his eye to her want of personal charms—she had become endeared to him by her mild and submissive temper. So little was she aware of her father's testamentary dispositions in her favour, that the interested nature of Lord Robert's views did not occur to her mind; and, little accustomed to protestations of attachment, Selina's heart was not very difficult to soften ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... spoke one word of the matters which came to their knowledge through the letters they were from time to time called upon to write. Almost every surrounding family had in some sort or another intrusted them with some family secret or testamentary deposition, and would on this account alone have been averse to quarrelling with them, for fear they ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... chance of that colossal fortune if she could help it. It was but a poor chance at the best, for Mr. Meeson might not be dying, after all. And if he did die, it was probable that his fate would be their fate also, and no record would remain of them or of Mr. Meeson's testamentary wishes. As things looked at present, there was every prospect of their all perishing miserably on that ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... Wife controls own earnings. Dower exists, but not curtesy. Wife may sell or transfer her separate real estate without husband's consent. Father is legal guardian of children, but cannot apprentice them or create testamentary guardianship for them without wife's consent. At husband's death wife may be guardian of persons of children, but not of their ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... to her that this could not be, as there were to be no women in the expedition, she brought her heaviest artillery to bear upon me; she reminded me of our deceased mother, who, on her deathbed, had commissioned my sister never to leave me—a testamentary injunction to which I ought religiously to submit. As I still remained obdurate, daring for the first time in my life to remark that our good mother had plainly committed me to my sister's care only during the period of my ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... place. "Coralie," said he to me, as he was scraping the mud off his trousers with his pocket-knife, "if I fall, you will do well. I leave you as a legacy to General Vallee—he will appreciate you. Do not forget to let him know my testamentary dispositions." ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... of which is," Thorndyke added, "that testamentary dispositions should not be mixed ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... has shown himself not a little curious about my late absence from the joint domicile. I again resorted to the Dorking fiction,—my aged aunt breaking fast, and requiring much propitiation from a dutiful nephew with an eye to her testamentary arrangements. I had been compelled to endow my shadowy relative with a comfortable little bit of money, in order to account for my devotion; since the powerful mind of my Horatio would have refused to grasp the idea of disinterested ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... to the church by the piety of Constantine and his sons. The proud system of clerical honors and immunities, which had been constructed with so much art and labor, was levelled to the ground; the hopes of testamentary donations were intercepted by the rigor of the laws; and the priests of the Christian sect were confounded with the last and most ignominious class of the people. Such of these regulations as appeared necessary to check the ambition and avarice of the ecclesiastics, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... The testamentary arrangements of eccentric people must, from time to time, have put their legatees in possession of some very queer property. I call to mind an old gentleman who bequeathed to a distant relative the products of a lifetime of indiscrimate ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... vice-admiral, and as such might preside in the courts of chancery, probate, and admiralty—courts whose common bond was that their jurisprudence was derived from the civil (or Roman) law, and not from the common law. Most of his judicial action was in testamentary cases. It was therefore not unnatural that the few admiralty cases and cases of piracy tried in these early days should be recorded in the same volume as the wills, though distinguished by the simple process of turning the book end for end and recording them at the back. ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... owing the admission of a power of testamentary bequest at Athens in all cases in which a man had no legitimate children. According to the preexisting custom, we may rather presume that if a deceased person left neither children nor blood relations, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... character. Arcadius, the emperor of the East, finding his end approaching, and anxious to secure a protector for his son Theodosius, a boy of tender age, instead of committing him to the charge of his uncle Honorius, or selecting a guardian for him from among his own subjects, by a formal testamentary act, we are told, placed his child under the protection of the Persian monarch. He accompanied the appointment by a solemn appeal to the magnanimity of Isdigerd, whom he exhorted at some length to defend with all his force, and guide ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... taking possession of the place on Duchess street. His fortune chiefly consisted of an income of five hundred pounds sterling per annum, secured on real estate situated in Gloucestershire, England. This income lapsed upon his death, and it had thus been unnecessary to make any testamentary provision respecting it, except as to the portion which should accrue between the last quarter-day and the death of the testator. This portion was bequeathed to an elder brother residing in Gloucestershire. All the other property of the ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... belonged to his marriage day; this he adverts to with even more solemnity of sorrow, and with more pointed energy of moral reproof, in the very last drama which is supposed to have proceeded from his pen, and therefore with the force and sanctity of testamentary counsel. The Tempest is all but ascertained to have been composed in 1611, that is, about five years before the poet's death; and indeed could not have been composed much earlier; for the very incident which suggested the basis of the plot, and of the local scene, viz., the shipwreck of Sir George ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... and how radically a woman | |can exercise her inalienable prerogative | |and change her mind is shown in the | |testamentary disposition made of her | |estate by Mrs. Jennie L. Ramsay. She made | |a will on July 4 last, at 3 o'clock in | |the afternoon, leaving her property to | |her husband, and at 7 o'clock in the | |evening of the same day she made another | |will in which she took the property away | |from ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... methodical secretary; "'I, Wycherly Wychecombe, Bart., of Wychecombe-Hall, in the county of Devon, being of sound mind, but of a feeble state of health, and having the view of death before my eyes, revoking all other wills, codicils, or testamentary devises, whatsoever, do make and declare this instrument to be my last will and testament: that is to say, Imprimis, I do hereby constitute and appoint —— —— of ——, the executor of this my said will, with all the powers and authority ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... held A. D. 1287. Open wooden benches or pew-work are rarely, if at all, met with of an earlier era than the fifteenth century, when the practice of pewing the body of the church with open wooden seats, if not then introduced, began to prevail. In 1458 we meet with a testamentary bequest of money "to make seats called puying," and several of our churches still retain considerable remains of the ancient open seats of the fifteenth century. At Finedon, in Northamptonshire, the body of the church and aisles ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... elbow chair, being above an hundred years old. This happened at Padua, the 26th of April, 1566. His lady, almost as old as himself, survived him but a short time, and died an early death. They were both interred in St. Anthony's church, without pomp, pursuant to their testamentary directions. ...
— Discourses on a Sober and Temperate Life • Lewis Cornaro
... kind of testamentary paper, addressed 'To ——,' a friend, we presume, containing his wishes as to what his friend should do for him when he (the poet) shall be dead—not, as we shall see, that he quite thinks that such a poet can ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... money-bags. Her son had but little personal fortune. He had reached the age of forty-five without being able to marry. Marriage unauthorized by Madame Coquereau meant immediate poverty and the testamentary assignment of Madame Coquereau's fortune to various religious establishments. None of the objects of Monsieur Coquereau's matrimonial desire had pleased Madame Coquereau, and none of Madame Coquereau's blushing candidates ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... dignity, for the honor of my ancestors was concerned, "that is a traditional trunk—a testamentary bequest from my grandmother—who was revolutionary ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... made it impossible he should have any brothers and sisters, he succeeded, by will, to three-fourths of the late Mr. Jonathan Stubbs's property, and, by oxalic acid, to the remaining fourth;[5] the affair being too sudden to permit of any further testamentary dispositions, or of any of those benevolent codicils, which sometimes have the effect of tapering down primary bequests, like Prior's Emma, "fine by degrees and beautifully less." Upon a fair computation, after a few trifling legacies were paid, and all ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... not naturally deficient in patience and industry, have been misled by idle pride in the legal system of their country, and by consequent unwillingness to confess its obligations to the jurisprudence of Rome. But these unfavourable influences have had comparatively little effect on the province of Testamentary Law. The barbarians were confessedly strangers to any such conception as that of a Will. The best authorities agree that there is no trace of it in those parts of their written codes which comprise the customs practised by them in their original seats, and in ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... nobility counted its quarterings; a girl is judged to have made a good, bad, or indifferent match by the number of teaspoons she 'marries into'; and the extreme act of disinheritance is symbolised, not by the testamentary shilling, nor by erasing a name from the Family Bible, but by alienating the family plate-basket. In short, teaspoons are to the Covers what the salt-cellar was to the ancient ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... entrusted to them. Their consent was esteemed indispensable to the validity of a title to the crown, and this prerogative, or at least the image of it, has continued to survive the wreck of their ancient liberties. [38] Finally, they more than once set aside the testamentary provisions of the sovereigns in regard ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... of the hour might turn out to be. One thing only was certain, that it would be something improbable, unguessable, not to be foretold. Who, for instance, in search of relaxation, would ever dream of choosing the drawing-up of a testamentary disposition of property? Yet this was the form taken by Harold's latest craze; and in justice this much had to be said for him, that in the christening of his amusement he had gone right to the heart of the matter. ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... was not very old, and his great-grandmother, who was such a wonderful age entirely that no one could say how much longer she mighn't live. Even the wildest of dreams are not quite easy to scare away, and it was this chiefly that marred his content with Mr. Polymathers's testamentary dispositions. Still, when he heard his grandfather's doubts, and saw his brother's downcast looks, he became almost as anxious as Nicholas himself that the neighbours might talk away the old man's scruples and ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... anciently was only promised and typically foreshadowed; and in the passage before us he figures Christ the author of the Christian covenant as the maker of a will by which believers are appointed heirs of a heavenly immortality. He then following the analogy of testamentary legacies and legatees describes those heirs as "entering on possession of that eternal inheritance" "by the death of the Testator." He was led to employ precisely this language by two obvious reasons: first, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... by a few words derived from the valuable life of our great naval hero lately published by Mr. Pettigrew. Besides his last will, properly so called, which had been some time executed, Lord Nelson wrote and signed another paper of testamentary character immediately before he commenced the battle of Trafalgar. It contained an enumeration of certain public services performed by Lady Hamilton, and a request that she might be provided for by the country. "Could I have rewarded those services," Lord ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.11.17 • Various
... awestruck I consented to listen, and sat still. "It is well that you do so, for my time is short. Here is my will, legally drawn up, and you will see that I have committed an immense property to your discretion. Here, again, is a paper still more important in my eyes; it is also testamentary, and binds you to duties which may not be so easy to execute as the disposal of my property. But now listen to something else, which concerns neither of these papers. Promise me, in the first place, solemnly, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... (Halle, 1783-1789), i. 306, ? NUSSLER. Some distracted fractions of Business Correspondence with this Bar, in Memoirs of Sophia Dorothea, —unintelligible as usual there.] "to set up a Wax-Bleachery at Cassel:"—and the said Count von Bar was off with it, Testamentary Paper and all; gone to the REICHSHOFRATH at Vienna, supreme Judges, in the Empire, of such matters. Who accordingly issued him a "Protection," to start with: so that when the Hanover people attempted to lay hold of the questionable wax-bleaching Count, at Frankfurt-on-Mayn,—secretly ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the way you've got used to it," Andora Macyhad wailed in the first days of her friend's transfigured fortune, when Lizzie West had waked one morning to find herself among the heirs of an old and miserly cousin whose testamentary dispositions had formed, since her earliest childhood, the subject of pleasantry and conjecture in her own improvident family. Old Hezron Mears had never given any sign of life to the luckless Wests; had perhaps hardly been conscious of including them in the carefully drawn will which, following ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... that General, serving under old Wurmser, of whom the tale is told that being shot and lying grievously wounded on the harsh Rivoli ground, he obtained the help of a French officer in as bad case as himself, to moisten his black tongue and write a short testamentary document with his blood, and for a way of returning thanks to the Frenchman, he put down among others, the name of his friendly enemy's widow; whereupon both resigned their hearts to death; but the Austrian survived to find the sad ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... were, as a matter of fact, suggested by the interested parties themselves, and chiefly by the Church. Thus a privileged land-tenure was created—bookland; the rules as to the succession of kinsmen were set at nought by concession of testamentary power and confirmations of grants and wills; special exemptions from the jurisdiction of the hundreds and special privileges as to levying fines were conferred. In process of time the rights originating in royal grants of privilege overbalanced, as it were, folk-right ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... brave and strenuous labour. On December 9th, 1674, he breathed his last. His son, Lord Cornbury, was present at his deathbed, having been summoned when the end was near. The French Court had granted him the privilege of making testamentary provisions, which otherwise would not have been possible to him as a foreigner on French soil. His will was dated on December 11th (French style [Footnote: December 1st, according to the English calendar.]), but ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... false—but because the good town of Manhattan, even in 1803, was tant soit peu addicted to dollars, and Lucy's charms would not be likely to attract so many suitors, in the modest setting of a poor country clergyman's means, as in the golden frame by which they had been surrounded by Mrs. Bradfort's testamentary devise, even supposing Rupert to come in for quite ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... being removed, the discords of life broke in upon her, and asserted themselves. Scarcely was the beloved form cold, when Aurore's mother arrived, to wake the echoes of the chateau with wild abuse of its late mistress. By testamentary disposition, Madame Dupin had made Aurore her heir, and had named two of her own relatives as guardians; but the mother now insisted on her own rights, and, after much acrimonious dispute and comment, carried Aurore from her beloved solitudes to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... testamentary directions of Colonel McKee are to accumulate the rents and income of his estate until the decease of all his children and grand-children, meanwhile improving (under certain conditions) his unimproved real estate. Upon the death of all his children and grand-children, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... kind is the Dutch tax upon successions. {See Memoires concernant les Droits, etc. tom i, p. 225.} Collateral successions are taxed according to the degree of relation, from five to thirty per cent. upon the whole value of the succession. Testamentary donations, or legacies to collaterals, are subject to the like duties. Those from husband to wife, or from wife to husband, to the fiftieth penny. The luctuosa hereditas, the mournful succession of ascendants to descendants, to the twentieth penny only. Direct successions, or those of ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... giving a boy his mother's name— preceded and strengthened by a male name, as Charles Anne, Victor Victoire. In cases where a mother's memory has been unusually dear to a son, this vocal memento of her, locked into the circle of his own name, gives to it the tenderness of a testamentary relic, or a funeral ring. I presume, therefore, that La Pucelle must have borne the baptismal name of Jeanne Jean; the latter with no reference, perhaps, to so sublime a person as St. John, but simply to some relative.]) D'Arc was born at Domrmy, a village on the marches of Lorraine and Champagne, ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... own chamber, gave his rede and master Justice Andrews, sitting without a jury in the probate court, weighed well and pondered the claim of the first chargeant upon the property in the matter of the will propounded and final testamentary disposition in re the real and personal estate of the late lamented Jacob Halliday, vintner, deceased, versus Livingstone, an infant, of unsound mind, and another. And to the solemn court of Green street there came sir Frederick the Falconer. And he sat him there ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... unfortunate men of genius derived support from his bounty. Ardent in temperament, he was severe in resenting a real or fancied wrong; but among those to whom he gave his confidence, he was found to be possessed of affectionate and generous dispositions. He has complained, in a testamentary document, that his course of procedure was often misunderstood, and the complaint is probably well-founded. He was personally of a handsome and agreeable presence, and his countenance wore the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... autumn of 1788 the Congress of the old Confederation made testamentary provision for its heir by voting that presidential electors should be chosen on the first Wednesday in January, 1789; that these electors should meet and cast their votes for President on the first Wednesday in February; and ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... his income rose. Hence spiritual and temporal landlords favored marriage among their vassals. The matter lay otherwise, particularly for the Church, if, by the prevention of marriage, the prospect existed of bringing land into the possession of the Church by testamentary bequests. This, however, occurred only with the lower ranks of freemen, whose condition, due to the circumstances already mentioned, became ever more precarious, and who, listening to religious suggestions and superstition, relinquished ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... law allows a parent to appoint guardians in his will for those children in his power who have not attained the age of puberty, without distinction between sons and daughters; but a grandson or granddaughter can receive a testamentary guardian only provided that the death of the testator does not bring them under the power of their own father. Thus, if your son is in your power at the time of your death, your grandchildren by him cannot have a guardian given ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... picture Ovid himself draws of his weak constitution and indolent temper prevents us from thinking that he ever followed his profession with perseverance, if, indeed, at all. He became, however, one of the Triumviri Capitules; and he was subsequently made one of the Centumviri, or judges who tried testamentary, and even criminal causes. Till his 50th year he continued to reside at Rome, where he had a house near the Capitol, occasionally taking a trip to his Pelignian farm. He not only enjoyed the friendship of a large circle of distinguished men, but the regard and favor of ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... About the same period, vast domains belonging to the crown, the clergy, and the nobility, were sequestrated and sold in small parcels; so that there sprang up almost at once a proprietary of quite a new description. Had the law of equal partition been extended only to cases in which there was no testamentary provision, it could not have inflicted serious damage, and would at all events have been consistent with reason and expediency: but it went the length of depriving a parent of the right to distribute ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... me for my kindness; and after a little reflection, as if he was resolving certain doubts in his own mind, he desired me to summon his uncle and his wife by themselves, in order that he might acquaint them with his testamentary dispositions. I told him that this would shock them. "No, no," he answered, "I will cheer them by making out my case to be better than it is." And then he inquired, whether we were not all much ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the witness should release, as he had offered to do. "It appeared on this trial," says Justice Blackstone, "that a black conspiracy was formed to set aside the gentleman's will, without any foundation whatever." A prosecution against three of the testamentary witnesses was recommended, who were afterwards convicted of perjury.[62] Had strict formalities with regard to evidence been adhered to in any part of this proceeding, that very black conspiracy would have succeeded, and those black ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... will dispute that") "do publish and devise this to be my last will and testament as follows: First, I direct that all my just debts will be paid." . . . ("That's easy," said Sage, "because I haven't any.") "Also my funeral expenses and testamentary expenses." ("Make the funeral simple. I dislike display and ostentation, and especially at funerals," said Sage.) "Next," said the lawyer, "I give, devise, and bequeath" . . . (Sage shouted: "I won't do it! I won't do ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... indulgently; there it is; no mortal eye had fallen on it in the course of three and a half centuries; and how can we be expected to judge its value or quality by the ordinary standard—on an ordinary critical principle? It has come to us like an unlooked-for testamentary windfall. We are not to look at it in the mouth too curiously or fastidiously, or we deserve to have lost it; and it is the very same thing with scores of remains of the kind, brought to light in various directions and ways from season ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... affections of her friends, though she was awake to every external mark of attention. She was content, as Mr. Palmer before others always treated her with marked deference, and gave her no reason to apprehend any alteration in his testamentary dispositions. When settlements were talked of for the intended marriages, Mr. Palmer seemed to consider Mrs. Beaumont first in all their consultations, appealed for her opinion, and had ever a most cautious eye upon her interests. This she observed ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... Now let me consider this Will again—'I, David Helmsley, being in sound health of mind and body, thanks be to God, do make this to be my Last Will and Testament, revoking all former Wills, Codicils and Testamentary Dispositions. First I commend my soul into the hands of God my Creator, hoping and believing, through the merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour, to be made partaker of life everlasting'—Dear me, dear me!" and Mr. Owlett took off his spectacles. "You must be a very old-fashioned man! This ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... confusion of passengers—Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins have but now exchanged congratulations on the children being abed, and they still linger on a door-step over a few parting words. Mr. Krook and his lodger, and the fact of Mr. Krook's being "continually in liquor," and the testamentary prospects of the young man are, as usual, the staple of their conversation. But they have something to say, likewise, of the Harmonic Meeting at the Sol's Arms, where the sound of the piano through the partly opened windows ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... leaving her poorly off, in which case she was firmly resolved that she would have scarcely any weeper on her bonnet, and would cry no more than if he had been a second husband. But if he had really shown her any testamentary tenderness, it would be affecting to think of him, poor man, when he was gone; and even his foolish fuss about the flowers and garden-stuff, and his insistence on the subject of snails, would be touching when it was once fairly at an end. To survive Mr. Glegg, ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... The evil that excited so strong and painful an alarm in the mind of my dying friend was no idle dream. The Baronet was his heir at law. Mr. Evelyn had made no will: for not only was his death premature but, knowing the mischiefs that have arisen from disputes concerning testamentary bequests, he strongly doubted of the morality of making any. It was never his intention to hoard; and, hoping or I might rather say expecting to have a clear prospect of the approach of death, his plan ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... France, to detach England, by the temptation of a mercantile advantage, from her ancient alliance with Holland and her other continental connections—Mr. Burke bore testimony, as far as himself was concerned, by repeating the same opinions, after an interval of ten years, in his testamentary work, the ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... of the conspiracy was the decision to leave the 1896 will in existence. If Patrick had destroyed it and the relatives had succeeded in overthrowing the will of 1900, the estate would have been left without testamentary disposition and the relatives would have got more than was provided by either will. With the will of 1896 in existence, however, the relatives would get less if they overthrew the forgery. By retaining it, therefore, Patrick figured ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... thus gained, the papacy never surrendered it; some of the most important events in later history have been determined by its action in this matter. Perhaps even a greater power accrued from its assumption of the cognizance of wills, and of questions respecting the testamentary disposal of property. Though in many respects, at the time we are now considering, the papacy had separated itself from morality, had become united to monachism, and was preparing for a future alliance with political influences and military power; though its indignation and censures ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... Friedrich." Mecklenburg too has an interest. Among the lapsed fiefs is one to a Duchy called of Leuchtenberg;—in regard to which, says Mecklenburg, as loud as it can, "That Duchy is not lapsed at all; that is now mine, witness this Document" (of a valid testamentary nature)! Other claims were put in; but these three: Zweibruck endlessly important; Saxony important too, though not in such degree; Mecklenburg unimportant, but just,—were alone recognized in impartial quarters as authentic and worthy ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... and exclusively, in case of the absence of the testamentary executor, guardian, or lawful representative, the right to inventory, liquidate, and proceed to the sale of the personal estate left by subjects or citizens of their nation, who shall die within the extent ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... in the adjacent courts are still on the doors, but have, in each instance, 'All letters and parcels to be addressed' Belgravia, or to one of the western inns of court, as their accompaniment. The one court in which ecclesiastical, testamentary, and maritime law was tried alternately, and which, as we have seen, is now ending its days shabbily, but usefully, is through the further archway to the left. Here the smack Henry and Betsy would bring its action for salvage against the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... absolutely insane, he will not be in such mental condition that he can make a legal will. If he is of weak mind and it appears that he was imposed upon or unduly influenced, such facts will invalidate the will. A testator having testamentary capacity may dispose of his property in any manner, and to any person he may choose, and may deprive his heirs of any share in his estate, without any explanation or any express declaration of disinheritance. The fact that a will is unjust and unreasonable, in the absence of ...
— Legal Status Of Women In Iowa • Jennie Lansley Wilson
... point out means for correcting them. One of the most interesting works of Peter the Great's period was Pososhkoff's written "Plan of Conduct" for his son (who was one of the first young Russians sent abroad, in 1708, for education), entitled, "A Father's Testamentary Exhortation." His "Book on Poverty and Wealth" is also noteworthy, inasmuch as it affords a complete survey of Russia under ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... people were quite taken by surprise at the kindness of their master's heart, seeing themselves thus provided for in time to come, and they thanked him with tears in their eyes." The extracts given by Dies vary in some particulars from the following, because Haydn's final testamentary dispositions were made at a later date. But, as Lady Wallace says, it is not the legal but the moral aspect of the affair that interests us. Here we see epitomized all the goodness and beauty of Haydn's character. The document runs ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden |
