Drift (n.): A term used in navigation for heading in one direction and ending up in another.

I’m looking at the transcription of a sailor’s will from 1656 and thinking - not for the first time - that, despite my very landlubber background, we have quite a lot in common. Like him, I am somewhat prone to ‘drift’ - not just in storytelling, but (as I am increasingly discovering) both in researching the songs I am writing based on early modern wills (there are a seemingly infinite number of rabbit holes to hop down) as well as starting off looking at the story from one angle, or person’s point of view, and ending up looking at it from quite another.

Rear Admiral Thomas Trenchfield’s will is fascinating for many reasons - not least because of its slightly puritanical tone, in which he mentions that his grandmother was a protestant who was martyred at the stake for her beliefs by ‘Bloody Mary’. He starts with a religious preamble (so far, so good) before launching into a some salty stories of derring do on the high seas (here we go), various scrapes with Turkish pirates (rogues, varmints), a tempest in which he was saved by the divine providence (it was God, I tell you), and one or two other anecdotes… Then resuming his religious vein, listing a series of somewhat disjointed bequests to his wife and children, before finally leaving ten per cent of his estate to found some almshouses for poor seamen. Quite the voyage - but also the makings of a spirited, uptempo song, again with musical drift applied. I started out by looking for a shanty and ended up with what is essentially a prayer:

God, who made me in your likeness
Through your suffering and bitter pain
You gave me good health and honest parents
And a lifetime upon the main

Of fifty-six years last December
Thirty-seven I have spent at sea
Great deliverance in times of danger
And many mercies bestowed on me

With the tiller in your hand
You have guided me to land
Every time I ventured forth upon the sea
And when I’m steering to your haven
I pray
The fairest winds will carry me

Jane, from our group of fantastic researchers, kindly sent me the will of a certain gentleman named Edward Betenson from 1699. How on earth do I tackle this one, I muse. Here, we don’t just have drift: instead, we seem to have a continental divide. The will feels like it’s been written by two opposing sides of the same person’s character. The essential narrative within the will is that the testator, a wealthy lawyer from my home town of Wimbledon (I used to pass his house, still standing, on my daily walk to school), is accusing his wife of serial adultery and claiming (through various evidences) that their only son, and his heir, is not in fact his own child.

On one side, we hear the voice of the professional and cautious lawyer, embedding lengthy cooperative and subjunctive clauses within his meticulous instructions and bequests; on the other, a scandalised, cuckolded husband whose outrageous claims and protests against the sensational (or sensationalised) actions of his wife (we don’t know if they were true or not) reads, with its particularly fruity language, like an extract from a Jilly Cooper novel. There are so many aspects of this single will to unpick that it’s hard to know where to begin, or even which story to follow: the husband; the wife; or the ‘base-born’ son? It’s unusual enough to have a single narrative within a will. Here, with some artistic licence, we have three. Hmm. Like Oedipus at the trivium, I’m really not sure which path to take.

Meanwhile, while pursuing the notion that a sexton might themselves have some interesting ideas as to burial rites for their own funeral, our research fellow Emily came up trumps with the will of James Liddell, a sexton from Lacock, Wiltshire. By sheer coincidence, not only did I know the church where he was buried but also remembered the house adjoining it which probably belonged to him. Prior to writing her excellent blog on the will, Emily asked us for our thoughts on it, being rich in detail (including listing the names of all the pallbearers!). With a passing interest in numerology, I was immediately drawn to the way he had left a bequest of £6 to be divided between 120 poor people. It’s quite a powerful number in the Old Testament, I pondered… before Laura wisely pointed out that it means that they can simply get a shilling each. Maths over magic.

Undeterred, I continued to drift. One will jumped out at me, because of the very unusual repetitive number patterns which were cited over and over again in the list of bequests - not to people who existed, but who might exist in the future - the potential children of his beneficiaries (who as yet had none). John Allen of Knightsbridge, Gentleman, was clearly a very cautious and meticulous man:

The rhythm of the words reminded me of both some early biblical lists, as well as the folk-song tradition of cumulative songs (like ‘The Dilly Song’ and ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’). It was only once I had this chorus in my head that I realised when the will was written: 31st December 1666. Of all the days in the year, and bearing in mind what had come over the preceding 30 months - a meteor (never good), plague (ditto) and then the whole of London burning down - it’s little wonder that Mr Allen was giving some thought to getting his affairs in order. ‘It’s a miracle I’m still here’, I imagined him thinking:

Against all odds, I’m still around
I’m hale and hearty and my mind is sound
So, before they put me in the cold, cold ground
I’ve a little more life to live

It could be a fever, it could be the pox
A flood or a fire or a plague of frogs
But before they lay me in a six foot box
There are things I’d like to give

And I will give them to the 1, 2, 3, 4
Sons of the body and the daughters of the body
And the 5, 6, 7, more
Heirs of the body, with my body and soul

Onwards we drift. After many meanderings and a few changes of tone (not least musical), I finally complete the song ‘Month’s Mynde’, inspired by Elizabeth, the wife of the Exeter Alderman, Thomas Hunte. After starting off by looking at both his possessions (he was a draper, and had a shop at the bottom of his house - and, unusually, there is a substantial inventory attached to his will) as well as his careful instructions for performative rituals to commemorate his death, I ended up focusing on the aspect of ‘time’. One of his commands to his widow was for her to hold a ‘Month’s Mynde’ supper, for the council chamber (20 aldermen, including the mayor, and optionally for some of their wives too). All of this, while she was trying to raise their five children single-handedly, in their house near the church of St Petroc. I imagined her quiet frustration and sense of immobility while she acted out the expensive and laborious wishes of her late husband, despite the pressing needs of her own family and situation:

I dress the table
For your month’s mind
Await the guests
As I digest
What’s left behind
Our restless nation
Swelters in the sun
And a month has passed
Since you breathed your last
And the Lammas tidings
Have just begun
Every ending has a beginning
If I only knew where to start
When you gained the key to the city
Then you lost the key to my heart

It was therefore reassuringly ‘material’ and drift-free to finally complete the longest song (in terms of lyrics) to come from the project - ‘The House of Denton, O!’, a full nine-verse broadside ballad inspired by William Denton (1604) and his many objects, often included with spectacular detail of their ‘provenance, purchase and purpose’. It was great fun (as well as incredibly useful) to head to London’s superb Victoria and Albert Museum to meet Laura and peruse their fantastic collection of material culture and household goods, jewellery, watches and much else besides from the Early Modern period. To actually see in person the very kinds of beds, bolsters, chairs, trunks, rugs, rings and the like which are mentioned in the will really helped me to root the song in reality, as well as to respect the value that Denton himself accorded his worldly goods - not just from monetary perspective, but also the meaning accorded to heirlooms while he was himself carefully leaving his own belongings to others for posterity:

The great chair of walnut that stands in the hall
The best cupboard cloth and silk lining withal
The coffers and pillows and bedding and all
I so often have dreamt on, O!
The spoon with my crest
The great cypress chest
One half of my pewter (but only the best)
And all the sawn timber that’s stowed with the rest
In the House of Denton, O!

The debt from Dick Blanchard for which he is bound
To settle a sum of some three hundred pound
My late mother’s seal ring and all of my grounds
With an annual rent on, O!
And with no remorse
I’ll leave you perforce
My gelding called Butcher, so handsome a horse
Who’s been my companion for many a course
‘Round the house of Denton, O!

The taffeta curtains of blue and of white
That I bought at Charleton one January night
The great tester hanging so richly bedight
With such artful invention, O!
And safe in my drawer
The pride of my store
The ring with a turquoise my own father wore
Who swore it was worn by his father before
In the House of Denton, O!

One of his houses is long since demolished; another, I cannot trace; the last has been heavily rebuilt and is now a private school for autistic children. All of his belongings, so carefully listed, have been scattered to the four winds and are, in all probability, no longer in existence. His ‘gelding called Butcher’ trotted off to horse heaven many moons ago. But his will, with all of its rich detail, has seen all of these items reincarnated, four hundred years later, into a song.

I hope, in some small way, it would bring him satisfaction, building as it does - in a rather different fashion - on the foundations of legacy which were so dear to him.