If Bishops and Kings must write with such vehemence, how shall the humble citizen fare? The possibility of the deceased’s wishes being neglected or overridden was so real that old writers advise the charitable to exercise their charity in their lifetime, and not to trust to executors or friends. Their faithlessness had even passed into a proverb: “three executors make three thieves.” Thus John Stow, in his “Survey of London,” remarks how often wills were proved but not performed: “Thus much for famous citizens have I noted their charitable actions, for the most part done by them in their lifetime. The residue left in trust to their executors. I have known some of them hardly (or never) performed, wherefore I wish men to make their own hands their executors, and their eyes their overseers, not forgetting the old proverb:
“Women be forgetful, children be unkind, Executors be covetous, and take what they find. If any body ask where the dead’s goods became, They answer, So God help me and holydom, he died a poor man.”
Jeremy Taylor, in “The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying,” has the same thought and the same proverb in his mind: “He that gives with his own hand shall be sure to find it; but he that trusts executors with his charity, and the economy and issues of his virtue, by which he must enter into his hopes of heaven and pardon, shall find but an ill account when his executors complain he died poor: ‘think on this.’”
This interesting proverb was written upon a wall in St. Edmund’s Church, Lombard Street, and is thus quoted in Weever’s “Funeral Monuments”:—
“Man, the behoveth oft to have this in mind, That thow geveth wyth thin hond, that sall thow fynd. For widowes be sloful, and chyldren beth unkynd, Executors beth covetos, and kep al that they fynd. If eny body ask wher the deddys goodys becam, They answer, So God help me and Halidam, he died a poor man. think on this.”
Other proverbial lines are quoted by Thomas Fuller, and a fresh turn is given to the thought, in his “Cambridge History.” “It is the life of a gift, to be done in the life of the giver; far better than funeral legacies, which, like Benjamin, are born by the loss of a parent. For, it is not so kindly charity, for men to give what they can keep no longer: besides, such donations are most subject to abuses.