| Notes |
- --- "Oxford Journal" 9 Feb 1760, page 3
Oxford, February 9.
Last Tuesday died, at his Seat at Whaddon-Hall, near Fenny-Stratford, the learned Browne Willis, Esq. L.L.D. senior Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, of which he was one of the Revivers in the Year 1708, and Author of many useful and valuable Works relating to the Ecclesiastical History and Antiquities of this Kingdom: A Gentleman remarkable for his Hospitality, extensive Charity to the Poor, and great Affability to the Rich; by which good Qualities he justly gained Affability to the Rich; by which good Qualities he justly gained the Esteem of Mankind, and died universally beloved, in the 78th Year of his Age.
--- Some Account of Browne Willis, Esq; L.L.D. Late Senior Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, Volume 8, by Andrew Coltee Ducarel, 1760, page 5:
After a useful and well spent life, this good and worthy person left the world, Feb. 5, 1760. He died at Whaddon-Hall, with great ease, and without the usual agonies of death, and was buried in a decent manner, on Monday, Feb. 11, 1760, in Fenny-Stratford Chapel. He left particular directions as to his funeral, and desired, that no persons might be invited to it, except the Mayor and Aldermen of Buckingham, to each of whom he left his first Volume of Notitia Parl. and a small legacy beside. Mr. Cole, Rector of Bletchley, Mr. Francis, the Minister of Fenny-Stratford, and Mr. John Gibberd, Curate of Whaddon, attended in a Mourning Coach, and near 60 of his neighbours and tenants on horseback. The last offices were, by particular desire, performed by Mr. Gibberd. The following inscription (drawn up by Dr. Willis) on a white marble stone, enchased with black, is directed to be put over him.
Hic situs est
Browne Willis, Antiquarius,
Cujus avi clmi. aeternae memoriae
Thomae Willis, archiatri totius Europae celeberrimi
Defuncti die Sancti Martini, A.D. 1675,
Haec capella exiguum monumentum est.
Obiit 5 Die Feb. A.D. 1760,
Aetatis suae 78.
O Christe, soter et judex,
Huic peccatorum primo,
Misericors et propitius esto.
--- "The History and Antiquities of the County of Buckingham" Vol. 4, George Lipscomb, 1847, page 12-13:
The following memoranda, respecting the early days of Willis, and those of some of his children, in the hand-writing of the Antiquary, may not be considered void of interest:
"I, Browne Willis came to school at Westminster, when Thomas Sprat was Captain or Head King's Scholar there. Next after him was R. Frewin, Captain; and then Charles Aldrich; in which time (1699, 1700) I left the school, staying three years. My eldest son, Thomas, and my third son, Henry Willis, were both of this school. My second son, John, was of Eton. My eldest son went thither 1725 or 1726. My son Henry went about 1728 or 1729; and my son John, about the same time to Eton."
Of his personal appearance, so often described and ridiculed, Mr. Cole has given, in his way, some amusing accounts. In one of them, he says:
"When I knew him first, about thirty-five years ago, he had more the appearance of a mumping beggar than of a gentlman; and the most like resemblance of his figure that I can recollect among old prints, is that of old Hobson, the Cambridge Carrier. He then, as always, was dressed in an old slouched hat, more brown than black, a weather beaten large wig, three or four old fashioned coats, all tied round by a leathern belt, and over all an old blue cloak, lined with black fustian, which he told me he had new when he was elected Member for the Town of Buckingham, about 1707. I have still by me, as relics, this cloak and belt, which I purchased of his servant. He wrote the worst hand of any man in England, such as he could with difficulty read himself, and what no one except his old correspondents could decypher. His boots, which he almost always appeared in, were not the least singular parts of his dress; I suppose it will not be falsity to say they were forty years old, patched and vamped up at various times: they are all in wrinkles, and do not come up above half-way of his legs. The chariot of Mr. Willis was so singular, that from it he was himself called "The Old Chariot". It was his wedding chariot, and had his arms on brass plates, about it, not unlike a coffin, and painted black. He was as remarkable probably for his love to the walls and structures of Churches, as for his variance with the Clergy in his neighbourhood. He was not well pleased with any one, who, in talking of, or with him, did not call him Squire. I wrote these notes when I was out of humour with him for some of his trick. God rest his soul, and forgive us all. Amen."
. . . The annexed communication, on the same subject, is from the MS. Letters in the Collection at Penshurst, in Kent:\
From Miss Catherine Talbot to the Hon. Miss Campbell:
"You know Browne Willis, or, at least it is not my fault, that you do not, for when at any time some of his oddities have particularly struck my fancy, I have written you whole volumes about him. However, that you may not be forced to recollect how I have formerly tired you, I will repeat, that with one of the honestest hearts in the world, he has one of the oddest heads that ever dropped out of the moon. Extremely well versed in coins, he knows hardly anything of mankind; and you may judge what kind of education such a one is liely to give to four wild girls, who have had no female directress to polish their behaviour, or any other habitation than a great rambling mansion-house in a country village. As. by his little knowledge of the world, he has ruined a fine estate, that was when he first had it 2000 l. per ann. his present curcumstances oblige him to an odd-headed kind of frugality, that shews itself in the slovenliness of his dress, and makes him think London much too extravagant an abode for his daughters, at the same time that his zeal for antiquities makes him think an old copper fathing very cheaply bought with a guinea, and any journey properly undertaken that will bring him to some old Cathedral on the Saint's-day to which it was dedicated. As. if you confine the natural growth of a tree, it may shoot out in the wrong place: in spite of his expensiveness, he appears saving in almost every article of lige that people would expect him otherwise in; and, in spite of his fugality, his fortune I believe grows worse and worse every day. I have told you before, that he is the dirtiest creature in the world, so much so, that it is quite disagreeable to sit near him at table: he makes one suit of clothes serve him at least two years, and as to his great coat, it has been transmitted down I believe from generation to generation every since Noah. On Sunday he was quite a beau. The Bishop of Gloucester is his idol, and if Mr. Willis were Pope, St. Martin (as he calls him) would not wait a minute for canonization. To honour last Sunday as it deserved, after having run about all the morning to all the St. George's Churches, whose difference of hours permitted him, he came to dine with us in a tie wig, that exceeds indeed all description. It is a wig (the very colour of it is inexpressible) that he has had, he says, these nine years; and of late it has lain by at his barber's, never to be put on but once a year, in honour of the Bishop of Gloucester's birth-day. Indeed, in this birth-day tie wig, he looked so like the father in the farce Mes. Secker was so divered with, that I wished a thousance times for the invention of Scapin, and I would have made no scruple of assuming the character for our diversion."
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1682 - 1760 (77 years)
[1] 
Married