The reading of Peter Featherstone's wills is the decisive reversal in the Featherstone inheritance plot: at Stone Court, relatives expecting to benefit discover that the dead man’s several testamentary decisions have divided the estate in unexpected ways. The sequence first seems to reward Fred Vincy with a fortune, then reveals Joshua Rigg as the principal beneficiary and executor, and finally places the residue in a charitable foundation. The public reading converts private expectations into a bewildered argument over what counts as a final wish, a valid document, or a just disposition.

Causes and Background

Featherstone had made several wills, and the documents represented changing intentions rather than a single settled plan. Earlier, he had confronted Fred over the young man’s expectation that Featherstone’s land might eventually secure his debts. He pointed out that Fred had been paying ten per cent for money supposedly to be repaid by mortgaging the land after Featherstone’s death, and warned that he could still alter his will. Fred denied borrowing on that security, but knew he had spoken confidently about inheriting the land as a means of paying present debts. The exchange establishes how inheritance had already entered Fred’s financial calculations before any will was read.

The private intervention that shaped the later proceedings belonged to Mary Garth. She alone knew what had happened on Featherstone’s final night, and the narration identifies her as having virtually determined that a second will would be produced. Her knowledge gives the assembly’s suspense a hidden cause: the people in the room are trying to infer Featherstone’s intentions from documents, while Mary understands that the sequence of documents has itself been affected by an act of refusal. The reading therefore unfolds not only as a legal disclosure but as the consequence of an earlier moral decision.

The Documents and Their Reading

Mr. Standish arrived expecting to read the last of the three wills he had drawn up for Featherstone. He maintained his usual even-handed civility, discussing the hay crop and the King’s bulletins as though the family’s competing hopes were not about to be overturned. Featherstone had imagined Standish’s eventual surprise; the lawyer was indeed surprised when he discovered a later instrument, and took a quiet pleasure in the prospect of the family’s amazement.

At the table, Standish identified the first will as executed on 9 August 1825. He then announced a subsequent instrument dated 20 July 1826, previously unknown to him, and a codicil to that later will dated 1 March 1828. The dates immediately made the matter more complicated: the group could not assume that the document being read first expressed Featherstone’s last intention, nor could they yet tell which provisions had been revoked. Standish began with the earlier will because Featherstone had not destroyed it.

Its smaller legacies provoked resentment before the principal bequests were known. Featherstone had left £200 apiece to his brothers and sisters and £100 apiece to his nephews and nieces; Mrs. Vincy and Rosamond were each also to receive £100. Mr. Trumbull was allotted a gold-headed cane and £50, and other relatives received similar sums. These legacies amounted to roughly £3,000, while leaving the assembly unsure where the rest of the money and the land would go. The uncertain status of each provision made every reaction provisional: apparent disappointment might yet be reversed, and apparent good fortune might prove temporary.

Fred Vincy’s Fortune and the Reversal

The first major disclosure appeared to fulfill the family’s expectation that Fred would receive the substantial inheritance. The earlier will left him £10,000 in specified investments. His mother was elated, while Fred bit his lip and struggled not to smile; the possibility that the land might also come to him remained open. For a moment, the reading seemed to transform his existing debt and his reliance on Featherstone’s favor into a secure future.

That prospect collapsed when the will named Joshua Rigg as sole executor and residuary legatee, leaving him the remaining personal property as well as the land. Rigg was also to take the name Featherstone. The room reacted with a rustle like a shudder, while Rigg himself displayed no apparent surprise. Mr. Trumbull reminded the company that a further document remained to be heard, and Mary knew that even this apparent clarification did not disclose the final arrangement.

The Later Will and Its Consequences

The second will revoked everything except the small legacies to the less favored relatives, with some alterations accounted for by the codicil, and the bequest to Rigg of all the land in Lowick parish, together with the stock and household furniture. The residue was assigned to the erection and endowment of almshouses for old men, to be built on land near Middlemarch that Featherstone had already purchased. The institution was to bear his name; the will declared that he wished to please God Almighty. Under this later disposition, the substantial fortune expected by the assembled family did not pass to Fred, and the charitable purpose displaced their hopes of inheriting the residue.

Mr. Vincy responded with loud indignation, arguing that Featherstone had not been in his right mind and that the last will should be void. Standish answered that Featherstone had always known what he was doing and pointed to a letter from the Brassing solicitor who had drawn up the document, describing him as respectable. Mr. Trumbull called the disposition eccentric, but the dispute in the room did not itself undo the testament. The scene distinguishes the family’s sense of grievance from the formal standing of the documents: outrage and appeals to personal obligation have force as social reactions, but the lawyer presents the later instrument as regular.

Significance

The reading makes inheritance a fragile basis for conduct and expectation. Fred’s earlier assumption that Featherstone’s land could answer his debts is echoed in the public revelation that neither confidence nor family connection guarantees a bequest. The estate’s successive allocations also expose competing standards of obligation: kin expect preferential treatment, the lawyer attends to the documents’ formal execution, and Featherstone’s final will invokes religious purpose in directing wealth toward almshouses.

The scene’s suspense depends on the difference between what the room believes it is hearing and what Mary knows has happened outside it. Standish’s measured announcement of dates, the relatives’ changing hopes, and the successive reversals give the reading the structure of a disclosure whose meaning must repeatedly be revised. Its outcome is not simply that one heir loses and another gains: the documents reveal the limits of interpreting affection, kinship, and apparent promise as secure claims on another person’s property.