Relhan Collection : 193 Haslingfield church. Inscription on memorial stone to Thomas Stewart 1647-1641

Relhan, Richard, 1782-1844

Relhan Collection

<p style='text-align: justify;'><p>Transcribed on a bordered piece of paper, the inscription includes ‘<i>Here Lyeth the Body of Thomas Stewart Esq</i>r<i> who was Heire at Law to Sir Thomas Wendy K</i>t<i> of the Bath ...Tell us, ye dead; will none of you, in pity/ To those you left behind, disclose the secret;/ O that some courteous ghost would blab it out,/ What ’tis ye are, and we must shortly be’</i> Cole describes this as ‘a handsome black marble slab’. Thomas Stewart was the son of Susan, daughter of Francis and Elizabeth Wendy, and nephew and heir to Sir Thomas Wendy (<b>178</b>). His father was (also) Thomas Stewart of Barton Mills. The Thomas Stewart commemorated here married Lucy Hatton in order to pay his debts with her dowry, and included Haslingfield in her jointure. Reputedly, he drank himself to death in 1688 and she went insane, but she survived and continued to own Haslingfield Hall until 1728. She remarried and was probably not living much at the decaying Hall.</p></p>