Of the memorials, the most interesting is the tomb of Benbow, of dark
blue slate, in the chancel, the inscription on which is curiously
inaccurate. He was not, we learn in his life in the “Dictionary of
National Biography,” an admiral of the white, but vice-admiral of the
blue. He was not fifty-one years old at his death, but forty-nine; and
the arms carved on it are not his. The arms are: Palewise, two bent bows
between two sheaves of arrows; the crest, on an esquire’s helmet, a
harpy. The following is the inscription:
Here Lyeth Interred the Body of John Benbow Esq: Admiral of the White:
a true Pattern of English Courage who Lost his life In Defence of his
Queene & Country, November ye 4th 1702 In the 52nd year of his age by
a wound In his Legg, Receeiu’d In an Engagement with Monsr. du Casse,
Being Much Lamented.
Of the monuments, there are only four of artistic merit—three by John
Bacon, all similar in style, figures carved in high relief against a
pyramidal background of marble; and one without the sculptor’s name, in
the north wall of the inner north transept, to Edward Maiming. It
consists of a bust in mezzo-relievo. If executed shortly after Manning’s
death in 1756, it is too early for a work by Bacon. It is a good example
of English sculpture of that time, and it is possibly by Roubiliac, by
whom there is a monument of the year 1754 to Lieutenant Stapleton in
Port Royal church, or more probably by John Cheere (brother of Sir Henry
Cheere, Roubiliac’s instructor for some time), by whom there is a
monument of the year 1733 to the Hon. James Lawes (eldest son of Sir
Nicholas Lawes) in Halfway-Tree church. Cheere’s work resembles more
closely the Manning bust than does that of the more florid Roubiliac. As
was the case with Bacon, one commission for Jamaica sometimes led to
others. The arms on the Manning monument are wrongly blazoned in
Lawrence-Archer’s “Monumental Inscriptions of the British Indies.” They
are: Gules, a cross fleurie [not moline] or between four [not three]
trefoils slipped or.
Of the monuments by Bacon, that to Malcolm Laing and his wife (1794)
represents a female figure seated, emblematic of grief; the phœnix, of
which Bacon was fond, is introduced in the background.
The monument to Dr. Fortunatus Dwarris, member of the House of Assembly
for St. George (which is now merged in Portland), and his stepdaughter
(1792), represents a recumbent female figure resting on an urn, gazing
at an angel conducting the soul of the departed upwards. In it the
poetry on the urn descriptive of the scene represented is hardly equal
to Bacon’s art:
Ascend to Bliss ye gentle Spirits
Where yon Angel soars above:
Their Virtue her Reward Inherits
Crowne’d with Heav’n’s eternal love.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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