Excerpt from A Collection of All the Wills: Now Known to Be Extant, of the Kings and Queens of England, Princes and Princesses of Wales, and Every Branch of the Blood Royal, From the Reign of William the Conqueror to That of Henry the Seventh Exclusive When the great Sobieski, to whose valour, not only Vienna, but the German empire, owed its preservation from the Turkish power, was asked in extremity to make his will, he laught in the face of the bishop, who had been obliged to take the most round-about method to make the proposal. " The misfortune of royalty, '' said the King, recollecting himself, "is, that we are not obeyed while, we are alive: and can it be expected we should be obeyed after we are dead?" Elective kings have not the power, and the kings of uncultivated northern nations have not the idea, of making provision for heirs, even though they are to sink at once into a private rank. The kings of England wanted no such monitor:: but, either from motives of justice or contrition, or in a mistaken zeal to fave their fouls by a momentary good deed, we find moll of them ready enough to engage in "the last great act of a wife man's life." The utmost of their ability was to dispose of their great treasures among their relations, servants, or ecclesiastics. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.