Highways and Byways in LondonCook, Emily Constance Baird
History
Highways and Byways in London
Cook, Emily Constance Baird
London (England) -- Description and travel
Many other curious tombs and epitaphs are in this church. One,
especially, of the latter, a tablet to a little girl of ten, Susanna
Barford,--a child the "Non such of the world for piety and vertue in
soe tender yeares,"--tells how:
"Such grace the King of Kings bestow'd upon her
That now shee lives with him a maid of honour."
And in the north transept, there is a curious monument to Dr. Lionel
Lockyer, the pill inventor--a large bewigged, reclining figure of
Charles II.'s time--suffering, apparently, despite his infallible
nostrums, from terrible internal spasms. Perhaps, however, these may
bear some mystic reference to the long accompanying epitaph about
"undying Pills," showing that already in the seventeenth century
advertisement could be strong even in death! Close to Lockyer's tomb
are heaped up a number of strange wooden painted gargoyles or
"bosses," preserved and brought here from the fallen-in
fifteenth-century roof of the nave, some of them bearing most weird
devices. One, conceived apparently in the Dantesque spirit, represents
a giant, or devil, "champing" a half-eaten sinner,--the lower half of
whom, dressed in gaudy colours, projects from the large vermilion
mouth,--in great enjoyment. Other "bosses" show the curious painted
"rebuses" of the period, commemorating a prior's name. The
seventeenth-century monument to the Austin family, also in this
transept, is full of quaint imagery and symbolism. The figures of its
sleeping angels with winnowing-forks, waiting on each side for the
great final harvest, are full of beauty.
"Edmund Shakespear, player," and brother of the poet,--Fletcher,--and
Massinger,--are buried here; three stones in the choir bear their
names; the exact place of their graves is not known.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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