“And I do hereby give and bequeath unto my loving Wife, Frances Purcell, all my Estate both reall and personall of what nature and kind soever, to her and to her assigns for ever.  And I doe hereby constitute and appoint my said loveing Wife my sole Executrix of this my last Will and Testament, revokeing all my former Will or Wills.  Witnesse my hand and scale this twentieth first day of November, Annoq.  Dni.  One thousand six hundred ninety-five, and in the seventh yeare of the Raigne of King William the Third, &c.

H. Purcell.”

As to Hawkins’s theory that Purcell left his wife in needy circumstances, Cummings, his biographer, believes the thought refuted by the will left by the widow herself, who outlived her husband by eleven years, and on St. Valentine’s Day, 1706, was buried at his side.  In her will she says that:  “According to her husband’s desire she had given her deare son (Edward) a good education, and she alsoe did give him all the Bookes of Musicke in generall, the Organ, the double spinett, the single spinett, a silver tankard, a silver watch, two pair of gold buttons, a hair ring, a mourning ring of Dr. Busby’s, a Larum clock, Mr. Edward Purcell’s picture, handsome furniture for a room, and he was to be maintained until provided for.  All the residue of her property she gave to her said daughter Frances.”

Cummings also assails Hawkins’s story that Purcell was dissipated and caught his death from being locked out.  But Runciman objects that if Purcell had not been dissipated in those days, he would have been called a Puritan, and says:  “I picture him as a sturdy, beef-eating Englishman, a puissant, masterful, as well as lovable personality, a born king of men, ambitious of greatness, determined, as Tudway says, to excel every one of his time.”

The love Frances Purcell bore her husband was kept green by her anxiety for his fame.  She was, in her littler way, a Cosima Wagner.  In 1696 she published a collection of harpsichord lessons by her husband; three editions being sold quickly.  The next year she issued ten sonatas and a “Collection of Ayres.”  In 1698 she issued (or reissued) the “Orpheus Britannicus.”  In all of these she wrote dedications breathing devotion to her husband.  In an ode printed in the second volume of the “Orpheus,” in 1704, Purcell’s personality is thus limned: 

  “Nor were his Beauties to his Art confin’d
  So justly were his Soul and Body join’d
  You’d think his Form the Product of his Mind. 
  A conquering sweetness in his Visage dwelt,
  His Eyes would warm, his Wit like lightning melt. 
  But those must no more be seen, and that no more be felt. 
  Pride was the sole aversion of his Eye,
  Himself as Humble as his Art was High.”