An unusual bequest

In the early 1730s a Steventon man, Mr Hopkins, died and left his entire estate – worth £200 per year - to a man he had not met for many years but who had been a school friend. This left his two sisters in what was described as ‘indigent circumstances. When the beneficiary, who lived in Woodstock, found this out he traced the sisters and settled the estate on them, saying that ‘it was an unjust bequest and that he would have nothing to do with it’