When the future lyrist was fifteen months old his father, Nicholas
Herrick, made his will, and immediately fell out of an upper window.
Whether or not this fall was an intended sequence to the will, the high
almoner, Dr. Fletcher, Bishop of Bristol, promptly put in his claim to
the estate, "all goods and chattels of suicides" becoming his by law.
The circumstances were suspicious, though not conclusive, and the
good bishop, after long litigation, consented to refer the case to
arbitrators, who awarded him two hundred and twenty pounds, thus leaving
the question at issue--whether or not Herrick's death had been his own
premeditated act--still wrapped in its original mystery. This singular
law, which had the possible effect of inducing high almoners to
encourage suicide among well-to-do persons of the lower and middle
classes, was afterward rescinded.
Nicholas Herrick did not leave his household destitute, for his estate
amounted to five thousand pounds, that is to say, twenty-five thousand
pounds in to-day's money; but there were many mouths to feed.
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