42 
ILLUSTRATIONS OF 
However^ as has been quaintly enough observed^ she 
long enjoyed the jointure which she long contended 
for." — Lo7ig, long, indeed ! the case was decided in 
her favour in 1722, and in 1798 she died, having 
received her jointure of £500 only 76 times, or 
reckoning from her husband's death 79 times, 
amounting to the sum of £49,500. After being 
a widow 33 years, she married in 1752, Edmund 
Pytts, Esq, of Kyre, M. P. for the county. The 
lady's success with her jointure, it is not improbable, 
was a means of extending her life, since it has become 
a subject of general remark, that persons who live 
upon annuities, live longer than other people equally 
circumstanced in other respects ; and it is thought 
that this is occasioned by the certainty of their 
means of existence, and their exemption from the 
cares and perplexities that so frequently harass the 
minds of men of the world. Yet this can hardly 
be entirely the case, unless united with carefulness, 
temperance, and sobriety. 
In Arely church, near Stourport, is the following 
curious inscription — " Here lyeth the body of William 
Walsh, gentleman, who died the third day of Novem- 
ber, 1702, aged 88, son of Michael Walsh of Great 
Shelsley, who left him an estate in Shelsley, Hartle- 
bury, and Arely ; who was ruined and undone by three 
quakers and three lawyers, and a fanatick to help 
them out." Whether his being " ruined and undone" 
shortened his life, it seems hard to say, but at any 
rate he left a friend who has inscribed his wrongs for 
the information of posterity, and this friend was 
