Famous Last Will and Testament Edward Wortley Montagu

About the last will and testament of famous English traveler Edward Wortley Montagu.

WHERE THERE'S A WILL

EDWARD WORTLEY MONTAGU, English traveler, died 1776

Last Will: A wonderful eccentric who proudly boasted, "I have never committed a small folly." He used to wear iron wigs and diamond-studded coats, and once advertised for a wife, requesting that she be of "genteel birth, polished manners and five, six, seven or eight months gone in her pregnancy." His will was characteristically amusing: "To my noble and worthy relation, the Earl of--, I do not give his lordship any further part of my property because the best part of that he has contrived to take already.

"Item: to Sir Francis--I give one word of mine, because he has never had the good fortune to keep his own.

"Item: to Lord M--I give nothing, because I know he'll bestow it on the poor.

"Item: to--the author, for putting me in his travels, I give five shillings for his wit, undeterred by the charge of extravagance, since friends who have read his book consider five shillings too much.

"Item: to Sir Robert W--I leave my political opinions, never doubting he can well turn them into cash, who has always found such an excellent market in which to change his own.

"Item: my cast-off habit of swearing oaths I give to Sir Leopold D--in consideration that no oaths have ever been able to bind him yet."