LEICESTERSHIRE EPITAPHS.
Having seen only one epitaph from this county among those which have appeared in "N. & Q.," I annex a few specimens, which you may perhaps deem worth inserting in your pages.
Burbage:
"These pretty babes, who we did love,
Departed from us like a dove;
These babes, who we did much adore,
Is gone, and cannot come no more."
Hinckley:
"My days on earth they were but few,
With fever draughts and cordials few,
They wasted like the morning dew."
Braunstone:
"All triumph yesterday, to-day all terror!
Nay, the fair morning overcast ere even:
Nay, one short hour saw well and dead, War's mirror
Having Death's swift stroke unperceived given."
Another:
"An honest, prudent wife was she;
And was always inclin'd
A tender mother for to be,
And to her neighbours kind."
Belgrave. This I quote from memory; it may not be verbally, but it is substantially correct:
"Laurance Stetly slumbers here;
He lived on earth near forty year;
October's eight-and-twentieth day
His soul forsook its house of clay,
And thro' the pure ether took its way.
We hope his soul doth rest in heaven.
1777."
Newtown Linford, adjoining Bradgate Park. In this churchyard is a tombstone on which is engraved only the letters of the alphabet and the simple numerals. The story goes, that he who lies below, an illiterate inhabitant of the village in the last century, whose name, I believe, is now forgotten, being very anxious that, after death, a tombstone should be erected to perpetuate his memory, and being fearful that his relatives might neglect to do so, came to Leicester to purchase one himself. Seeing this stone in the mason's workshop (where it was used by the workmen as a pattern for the letters and figures), he bought it "a bargain," supposing it would serve his purpose as well as a new one, and after his decease it was placed at the head of his grave, where it now appears.
All Saints' churchyard, Leicester. On two children of John Bracebridge, who were both named John, and died infants:
"Both John and John soon lost their lives,
And yet, by God, John still survives."
Throsby (Hist. of Leic.) relates that Bishop Thurlow, at one of his visitations, had the words by God altered to thro' God.
William Kelly.
Leicester.