August 10.
This is the festival day of St. Lawrence.
Chronology.
Old Anthony Munday, the pleasant continuator of Stow’s “Survey,” renders this day remarkable by a curious notice.
Coya Shawsware’s Tomb.
Coya Shawsware’s Tomb.
This is an exactly reduced fac-simile representation of the wood-cut in Stow, and the following is Anthony Munday’s story:—
“This monument, or that of which this is a shadow, with their characters engraven about it, stands in Petty France, at the west end of the lower churchyard of St. Botolphes, Bishopsgate, (not within, but without the walls, the bounds of our consecrated ground,) and was erected to the memory of one Coya Shawsware, a Persian merchant, and a principal servant and secretary to the Persian ambassadour, with whom he and his sonne came over. He was aged forty-four, and buried the tenth of August, 1626: the ambassadour himselfe, young Shawsware his sonne, and many other Persians (with many expressions of their infinite love and sorrow) following him to the ground betweene eight and nine of the clocke in the morning. The rites and ceremonies that (with them) are done to the dead, were chiefly performed by his sonne, who, sitting crosse-legged at the north end of the grave, (for his tombe stands north and south,) did one while reade, another while sing; his reading and singing intermixt sighing and weeping: and this, with other things that were done in the grave in private (to prevent with the sight the relation) continued about halfe an houre.
“But this was but this dayes businesse: for, as this had not beene enough to performe to their friend departed, to this place and to this end (that is, prayer, and other funerall devotions) some of them came every morning and evening at sixe and sixe, for the space of a moneth together; and had come (as it was then imagined) the whole time of their abode here in England, had not the rudenesse of our people disturbed and prevented their purpose.”