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I spent some time this morning deciphering the inscription on a wall monument I photographed last week in St Martin's, East Horsley. It turned out to commemorate a man called James Ffox (not a typing error) who was "kind to his dependents and affable to all his acquaintance"- but whose chief distinction (judging by the fact that it's placed before everything else) was to have been the grandson of a sister of the Earl of Dorset.
You get a lot of this sort of thing on monuments of a certain age. The kindly name for it is ancestor worship.
My favourite example is this- from St Bartholomew's, Maresfield- which disposes of the dear departed in a few non-commital lines and then goes on to tell us more than we could possibly want to know about his very distant relations.
The epitaph reads:
In memory of Edward Kidder, citizen of London, died 21st of June, 1817, aged 47. He married Maria Emery, of Potton, Bedfordshire and had issue two sons and six daughters. Descended from George Kidder of an ancient family in this parish whose son Vincent was a major in the army in Ireland in 1649 and resided at Bally Adam in the County of Meath. He married Ellen Loftus, daughter of Sir Thomas Loftus of Killian, in the same county, 4th son of Adam Loftus D D. Archbishop of Dublin and Lord Chancellor of Ireland. By the above mentioned Ellen Loftus he had three sons and six daughters: Vincent, the second son, distinguished himself in 1689 and also at the Battle of the Boyne: he was afterwards Colonel of the Dublin Militia and Assaymaster in the Goldsmith's Company and died in 1736.
I don't know who the chap in the roundel is supposed to be but I presume he's heraldic.
You get a lot of this sort of thing on monuments of a certain age. The kindly name for it is ancestor worship.
My favourite example is this- from St Bartholomew's, Maresfield- which disposes of the dear departed in a few non-commital lines and then goes on to tell us more than we could possibly want to know about his very distant relations.
The epitaph reads:
In memory of Edward Kidder, citizen of London, died 21st of June, 1817, aged 47. He married Maria Emery, of Potton, Bedfordshire and had issue two sons and six daughters. Descended from George Kidder of an ancient family in this parish whose son Vincent was a major in the army in Ireland in 1649 and resided at Bally Adam in the County of Meath. He married Ellen Loftus, daughter of Sir Thomas Loftus of Killian, in the same county, 4th son of Adam Loftus D D. Archbishop of Dublin and Lord Chancellor of Ireland. By the above mentioned Ellen Loftus he had three sons and six daughters: Vincent, the second son, distinguished himself in 1689 and also at the Battle of the Boyne: he was afterwards Colonel of the Dublin Militia and Assaymaster in the Goldsmith's Company and died in 1736.
I don't know who the chap in the roundel is supposed to be but I presume he's heraldic.
