This singular epitaph points out the last resting place of Henry Marten, one of the judges who condemned King Charles I. to the scaffold. On the Restoration, Marten was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, Chepstow Castle being selected as the place of his incarceration. There he died in 1680, in the twenty-eighth year of his captivity, and seventy-eighth of his age. He was originally interred in the chancel of the church; but a subsequent vicar of Chepstow, Chest by name, who carried his petty party animosities even beyond the grave, had the dead man's dust removed, averring that he would not allow the body of a regicide to lie so near the altar. And so it was that Marten's memorial came to occupy its present position in the passage leading from the nave to the north aisle. We are told that one, Mr. Downton, a son-in-law of this pusillanimous parson, touched to the quick by his relative's harsh treatment of poor Marten's inanimate remains, retorted by writing this satirical epitaph for the Rev. Mr. Chest's tombstone:-- Here lies at rest, I do protest, One CHEST within another! The chest of wood was very good,-- Who says so of the other? Some doubt has been thrown on the probability of a man of Marten's culture having written, as is implied in the inscription, the epitaph which has a place on his memorial. The regicide was a son of Sir Henry Marten, a favourite of the first James, and by him appointed Principal Judge of the Admiralty and Dean of Arches. Young Henry was himself a prominent person during the period of the disastrous Civil War, and was elected Member of Parliament for Berkshire in 1640. He was, in politics, a decided Republican, and threw in his lot with the Roundhead followers of sturdy Oliver. When the tide of popular favour turned in Charles II.'s direction, and Royalty was reinstated, Marten and the rest of the regicides were brought to judgment for signing the death warrant of their monarch. The consequence, in Marten's case, was life-long imprisonment, as we have seen, in Chepstow Castle." Next is a copy of an acrostic epitaph from Tewkesbury Abbey:-- Here lyeth the body of THOMAS MERRETT, of Tewkesbury, Barber-chirurgeon, who departed this life the 22nd day of October, 1699. T hough only Stone Salutes the reader's eye, H ere (in deep silence) precious dust doth lye, O bscurely Sleeping in Death's mighty store, M ingled with common earth till time's no more, A gainst Death's Stubborne laws, who dares repine, S ince So much Merrett did his life resigne. M urmurs and Teares are useless in the grave, E lse hee whole Vollies at his Tomb might have. R est here in Peace; who like a faithful steward, R epair'd the Church, the Poore and needy cur'd; E ternall mansions do attend the Just, T o clothe with Immortality their dust, T ainted (whilst under ground) with wormes and rust.