Jacob Smith, vicar in 1702, was a native of Scotland, and for conscientiously refusing to take the oaths of King William, he was (with a large family) reduced to all the hardships and miseries of an obscure and necessitous life; but on the resignation of Mr. Whiston, Bishop Moor presented him to Lowestoft. He was buried in the churchyard, close by the north side of the chancel, where a tomb was erected to his memory. And tradition reports that he was the first person ever buried on that side of the church. There was formerly a great partiality respecting burying on the south and east sides of the churchyard at Lowestoft. Many years after the interment of Jacob Smith there was not more than two or three graves on the north side of the church, though subsequently it became as general to inter on one side as on the other. This partiality may, perhaps, at first, have partly arisen from the antient custom of praying for the dead; for as the usual approach to this and many other churches is by the south, it was natural for burials to be on that side, that those who were going to divine service, might, in their way, by the sight of the graves of their friends, be put in mind to offer up a prayer for the welfare of their souls; and even now, since the custom of praying for the dead is abolished, the same obvious situation of graves may excite some tender recollection in those who view them, and silently implore the passing tribute of a sigh. The Rev. John Tanner, who was Vicar of Lowestoft many years, died in 1759; he was precentor of the Cathedral of Asaph, Rector of Kessingland, and also commissary and official to the arch-deaconry of Suffolk, (in 1725), which offices he resigned as soon as the infirmities of age rendered him incapable of performing them with that care and exactness he had always shewn in their discharge. Among his many antient acts of charity may be mentioned (exclusive of the active part which he took in the re-building of Kirkley church) his purchasing the impropriation of Lowestoft, for the benefit of his successors; his expending a large sum of money in repairing and beautifying the chancel; and also setting the first example in new-pewing the church. He was the third son of the Rev. Thomas Tanner, vicar of Market Leavington, Wiltshire; was educated at Queen’s College, Oxford; and obtained his preferment through the interest of his brother, Thomas Tanner, who was many years Chancellor of the Diocese of Norwich.