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V.: Ricardo’s Will - David Ricardo, The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Vol. 10 Biographical Miscellany [1795]

Edition used:

The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, ed. Piero Sraffa with the Collaboration of M.H. Dobb (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2005). Vol. 10 Biographical Miscellany.

Part of: The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, 11 vols (Sraffa ed.)

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


V.

Ricardo’s Will

Ricardo’s will was made three years before his death; it is dated 4 April 1820, with codicils of 25 June 1821 and 11 July 1822. It is a long impersonal document, full of legal jargon and obviously drawn up by a solicitor.3

The main feature of the will is the discrimination that it makes between sons and daughters, the portion of a son being no less than eight times the value of that of a daughter. (In striking contrast with the equality of treatment of the children in Abraham Ricardo’s will.)4 After distributing the estate to his children and his wife and providing for poor relatives, the only latitude that he allowed himself was to make a uniform bequest of £100 each to his brothers and sisters and a few intimate friends.

To his eldest son, Osman, he left the Manors of Bromesberrow5 and Bury Court and the Whiteleaf Oak Estate,1 also the manor lands of Pauntley Court and the estates adjoining it. To his second son, David, he left Gatcomb Park and other properties in Minchinhampton and Avening, and also the Manor of Brinsop Court. And to his youngest son, Mortimer, he left the Manor of Dalchurst, near Tonbridge in Kent, an estate at Minster in the Isle of Thanet, and the estate of Berrow. To his three sons he also left the residuary personal estate, to be divided equally between them.

As regards his daughters he left £20,000 each to Birtha and Mary, who were unmarried, and £5000 each to Henrietta Clutterbuck and Priscilla Austin (each of these two having had £10,000 settled upon her at marriage and a further gift of £2,000).2 These bequests were increased by £5000 in the case of each daughter by a codicil of 11 July 1822 (the day before he sailed for his Continental tour). To his wife he left a life annuity of £4000 and in addition a bequest of £4000, a carriage-and-pair and the furniture and household effects at Upper Brook Street.

He also bequeathed a sum of £100 each to his brothers Moses, Jacob, Francis, Joseph, Ralph, Benjamin and Samson; to his sisters Hannah Samuda, Rebecca Keyser, Abigail Ricardo, Rachel Ricardo, Esther Wilkinson and Sarah Porter; to his brothers-in-law, David Samuda, Josiah Henry Wilkinson (and also to Sarah his wife), and George Richardson Porter; also to his friends George Basevi, James Mill and Thomas Robert Malthus.

A number of life annuities to poor relatives included: £200 to his brother Moses (in lieu of an allowance which he had hitherto made to him) and £100 to Moses’s wife Fanny if she survived him; £50 to Joseph Ricardo and £35 to Hannah Ricardo, two cousins living in Holland (in place of the allowances he had been making to them); £50 each to three of his aunts Delvalle, namely Esther Lindo, Leah Delvalle and Sarah Nunes; and £50 each to Joseph and Isaac Delvalle, his uncles.

He appointed as executors his wife, his son Osman and his brother Francis, leaving to the latter a further bequest of £200 as compensation for his trouble.1

A SELECTION OF FAMILY AND PRIVATE LETTERS

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[3 ]The will is in fact witnessed by Thomas Crosse the solicitor and by his clerks, as is also the first codicil. The second codicil, however, of 11 July 1822, is witnessed by Wm. Pike, ‘Butler to Mr Ricardo’, and by John Drysdale, ‘Footman to Mr. Ricardo’.

[4 ]Cp. the remarks on the practice of equal division of property among children prevailing in bourgeois families, above, II, 386.

[5 ]Since there was the possibility of the title to this property being contested, the will directed that £50,000 should be set aside to indemnify Osman against any loss therefrom.

[1 ]This estate was probably part of the purchase of Bromesberrow and Bury Court, since the will describes it as lately owned by W. H. Yate, who was one of the vendors of those properties.

[2 ]The other daughter, Fanny Austin, received both in the will and in the marriage settlement the same treatment as her married sisters, but did not receive the gift of £2000 (on the reason for this see below, p. 163). She died, however, in 1820, before Ricardo.

[1 ]For help with legal points in connection with the will the editor has to thank Mr S. F. C. Milsom of Trinity College, Cambridge.