Another reason for money remaining unclaimed for a number of years, is through missing wills.  Hence many a family forfeits its claim to certain property on account of the testator’s last wishes not being forthcoming.  Thackeray makes one of his plots hang in a most ingenious way upon a missing will, which is discovered eventually in the sword-box of a family coach, and various curious instances are on record of wills having been discovered years after the testator’s death in the most out-of-the-way and unlikely hiding places.  In some cases, also, through a particular clause in a will being peculiarly or doubtfully worded, heirs have been deprived of what was really due to them, a goodly part of the property having been squandered and wasted in prolonged legal expenses.

Then, again, it is universally acknowledged that there is an immense quantity of money, and other valuables, concealed in the earth.  In olden days, the householder was the guardian of his own money, and so had to conceal it as his ingenuity could devise.  Accordingly large sums of money were frequently buried underground, and in excavating old houses, treasures of various kinds are oftentimes found underneath the floors.  The custom of making the earth a stronghold, and confiding to its safe-keeping deposits of money, prevailed until a comparatively recent period, and was only natural, when it is remembered how, in consequence of civil commotions, many a home was likely to be robbed of its most valuable belongings.  Hence every precaution was taken, a circumstance which accounts for the cunning secretal of rich and costly relics in old buildings.  According to an entry given by Pepys in his “Diary,” a large amount was supposed to be buried in his day, and he gives an amusing account of the hiding of his own money by his wife and father when the Dutch fleet was supposed to be in the Medway.  Times of trouble, therefore, will account for many of the treasures which were so carefully secreted in olden times.  Many years ago, as the foundations of some old houses in Exeter were being removed, a large collection of silver coins was discovered—­the money found dating from the time of Henry VIII. to Charles I., or the Commonwealth—­and it has been suggested that the disturbed state of affairs in the middle of the 17th century led to this mode of securing treasure.

This will account in some measure for the traditions of the existence of large sums of hidden money associated with some of our old family mansions.  An amusing story is related by Thomas of Walsingham, which dates as far back as the 14th century.  A certain Saracen physician came to Earl Warren to ask permission to kill a dragon which had its den at Bromfield, near Ludlow, and committed great ravages in the earl’s lands.  The dragon was overcome; but it transpired that a large treasure lay hid in its den.  Thereupon some men of Herefordshire went by night to dig for the gold, and had just succeeded in reaching it when