Jethro Tnll : his Life, Times, and Teaching. 
39 
■of battle : but in our arable fields the master of them must be a 
slave to those people who are under the greatest obligation to 
serve him ; and slavery is opposite to victory." 
Tull's will was made on the 24th of October, 1739, some 
months before his death. The preamble recites : " I Jethro Tull 
of Shalbourn in the county of Berks Esquire being veiy sick 
and weak in body but of sound mind and memory praised be 
God for it do make this my last will " &c. His sister-in-law, 
apparently a helpful woman, Ann Smith, of Burton-Dassett, 
spinster, is made sole executrix : his real and personal property 
to be sold and divided in five equal shares, one share each to his 
four daughters, the fifth to his executrix. He states that, as his 
wife had a jointure, he did not think it reasonable to make any 
addition thereto. For some reason or other, Mrs. Tull — any 
way, in his later years — scarcely seems to have been a helpmate 
meet for her husband, to succour, help, and comfort him in his 
clanger, necessity, and tribulation. 
The " very sick and weak body '' could no longer uphold the 
" sound mind " — the never-resting, energetic spirit. Death 
came — not Death the enemy, the morbid creation of a mediaeval 
brain, but the beneficent Angel of Death — Azrael — the friend of 
poor Tull, friend of all suffering worn-out humanity, the friend 
of all those whose strength is but labour and sorrow. Jethro 
Tull died early in the month of March in the year 1740, at the 
age of sixty-six years. 
"No man can tell where the remains of Jethro Tull, the 
benefactor of his kind, were deposited." So wrote Chambers' in 
his biographical sketch. No loving, no lingering, local tradition, 
no known record pointed to the hillock of mortality in the dull 
churchyard beneath which rested all that was mortal of one who 
by common consent is deemed worthy to be called a " benefactor 
of his kind." Mr. Cuthbert Johnson, F.R.S., offered a reward 
for the discovery of Tull's grave, but in vain. After twenty 
years of pious care, the diligence of a learned and well-known 
antiquary ^ of the Eoyal County was, in 1889, rewarded, and his 
discovery thus published ' to the world : — 
A cursory glance at the registers of the church of this parish (Basildon) 
shows that they contain many names of historical importance and interest, 
and hy their means the writer has been able to solve a problem which has 
hitherto baffled all the inquiries and researches of the professional genealogist 
^ Genl. Bio. Die. By Alex. Chambers. New ed. London: 1815. 
' Stray Kotes of the Parish of Basildon in Berhihire. By Walter Money, 
F.S.A., Herborough House, Newbury. I am under great obligation to this 
learned and agreeable gentleman for all that he has done, and endeavoured to 
do, to assist me in regard to this biography of a worthy of the lloyal County.— C, 
» Times, August 24, 1889. 
