Word: mompesson
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...realize that Mellamphy is not his real surname. Gradually, he comes to understand that his mother possesses something that a number of other people desperately want. It is the codicil to an old, disputed will concerning the immense Huffam estate. The present holder of that property, Sir Perceval Mompesson, wants to obtain the codicil so he can destroy it. But another, mysterious enemy can lay claim to the estate if he can 1) get his hands on the codicil and then 2) engineer the deaths of John and his mother...
...then that Village Rector William Mompesson spoke up. Knowing that the departing villagers would spread the disease, he exhorted them to quarantine themselves in Eyam to save the rest of Derbyshire. Such was the authority of the clergy, the power of faith and the eloquence of the 28-year-old rector that the people of Eyam agreed. A circle was marked out with stones around the town a half-mile in radius. The Earl of Devonshire agreed to provide most of the necessary food and other goods, which outsiders left nervously on the perimeter every week...
Figuring that indoor meetings were dangerous, Mompesson moved Sunday worship into a nearby field. When pious townspeople gathered to pray for deliverance, they stood at some distance from each other. The rector and a Nonconformist minister were the only visitors to console the sick, grieving and terrified residents...
...time the plague had run its course 259 of the 350 villagers had died. One of the last victims was Mompesson's wife Catherine. Assuming he was also destined to die, he wrote a farewell letter: "I thank God, I am content to shake hands with all the world, and I have many comfortable assurances that God will accept me." To avoid contamination, he dictated the letter by shouting on the moor to a visiting clergyman. Mompesson did not die. Three years after the plague subsided, he was reassigned to the village of Eakring, where the residents at first...
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