Doctor Charles Burney.—A tablet with the following inscription, written by his daughter:—“Sacred to the memory of Charles Burney, Mus. D., F.R.S., who, full of years and full of virtues, the pride of his family, the delight of society, the unrivalled chief and scientific historian of his tuneful art—beloved, revered, regretted, breathed in Chelsea College his last sigh; leaving to posterity a fame unblemished, raised on a noble basis of intellectual attainments. High principles and pure benevolence, goodness with gaiety, talents with taste, were of his gifted mind the blended attributes; while the genial hilarity of his airy spirits animated or softened his every earthly toil: and a conscience without reproach, prepared in the whole tenor of his mortal life, through the mediation of our Lord Jesus Christ, his soul for heaven. Amen. Born April 7, O.S., 1726; died April 12, 1814.”
John Blow, Doctor in Music.—Under the tablet is a canon in four parts, set to music, with enrichments, cherubs, and flowers. In the centre is an English inscription, by which it appears he was Organist, Composer, and Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal thirty-five years, and Organist to this Abbey, fifteen years; that he was scholar to Dr. Christopher Gibbons, and Master to the famous Mr. Purcell, and to most of the eminent masters of his time. He died Oct. 1, 1708, in his sixtieth year.
William Croft.—On the pedestal of this monument, in bas-relief, is an organ, and on the top a bust of the deceased, who was Doctor in Music, Master of the Children, Organist and Composer of the Chapel Royal, and Organist of Westminster Abbey. He died August 14, 1727, aged fifty.
Dr. Monk, Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol.—This ecclesiastic is represented in a fine brass in the centre of the aisle, holding a crosier surmounted with the paschal lamb, the four corners representing the evangelical emblems, while the inscription informs us that he was Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, Canon of Westminster, Dean of Peterborough, and Regius Professor at Cambridge, and died June 6, 1859, aged seventy-four.—Hardiman.
On your left, on the choir side, against the column, is a small tablet to the memory of Henry Purcell, Esq., with the following inscription:—“Here lies Henry Purcell, who left this life, and is gone to that blessed place, where only his harmony can be exceeded.” A short, but comprehensive epitaph, expressive of his great merit. He died Nov. 21, 1695, in his thirty-seventh year.
Sacred to the memory of Captain George Bryan, late of His Majesty’s Coldstream Regiment of Foot Guards, son of the Rev. John Bryan and Eliza Louisa, his wife, of Hertford, in the island of Jamaica. He fell in the month of July, 1809, in the twenty-seventh year of his age, at the battle of Talavera, in Spain, so glorious in the annals of British valour, but so deeply afflicting to a widowed mother. His remains were interred, with every military honour, in the garden of the convent of St. Jeronimo, when even the officers of the enemy joined in evincing respect to his memory and sympathy for his untimely fate. The monument represents a mourner reclining on the basement of a column that holds an urn, over which is the name of Talavera. Military trophies and implements of war are introduced.—Bacon, jun., sculptor.
Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles: his figure is seated on a handsome moulded pedestal in serious contemplation; the following inscription underneath:—“To the memory of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, LL.D., F.R.S., Lieutenant-Governor of Java, and first President of the Zoological Society of London; born in 1781, died in 1826. Selected at an early age to conduct the Government of the British conquests in the Indian Ocean, by wisdom, vigour, and philanthropy, he raised Java to happiness and prosperity unknown under former rulers. After the surrender of that Island to the Dutch, and during his government in Sumatra, he founded an emporium at Singapore, where he established freedom of person as the right of the soil, and freedom of trade as the right of the port, he secured to the British flag the maritime superiority of the Indian Seas. Ardently attached to science, he laboured successfully to add to the knowledge and enrich the museums of his native land: in promoting the welfare of the people committed to his charge, he sought the good of his country and the glory of God.”—Chantrey, sculptor.
Almericus de Courcy, Baron of Kinsale.—His Lordship is here represented in full proportion, reposing himself, after the fatigues of an active life, under a rich canopy, finely ornamented and gilt. He was descended, as his inscription shows, from the famous John de Courcy, Earl of Ulster, who, in the reign of John, in consideration of his great valour, obtained that extraordinary privilege to him and his heirs, of standing covered before the King. This nobleman was greatly in favour with Charles II. and James II., and commanded a troop of horse under the latter. He died Feb. 9, 1719, aged fifty-seven.
“To the memory of William Wilberforce, born in Hull, August 24, 1759, died in London, July 29, 1833. For nearly half a century a member of the House of Commons, and for six parliaments during that period one of the two representatives for Yorkshire. In an age and country fertile in great and good men, he was among the foremost of those who fixed the character of their time; because to high and various talents, to warm benevolence, and to universal candour, he added the abiding eloquence of a Christian life. Eminent as he was in every department of public labour, and a leader in every work of charity, whether to relieve the temporal or the spiritual wants of his fellow men, his name will ever be specially identified with those exertions which, by the blessing of God, removed from England the guilt of the African Slave Trade, and prepared the way for the abolition of slavery in every colony in the empire. In the prosecution of these objects, he relied not in vain on God: but in the progress, he was called to endure great obloquy and great opposition. He outlived, however, all enmity, and in the evening of his days withdrew from public life and public observation to the bosom of his family. Yet he died not unnoticed or forgotten by his country: the Peers and Commons of England, with the Lord Chancellor and the Speaker at their head, in solemn procession from their respective houses, carried him to his fitting place among the mighty dead around, here to repose, till, through the merits of Jesus Christ his only Redeemer and Saviour, whom in his life and in his writings he had desired to glorify, he shall rise in the resurrection of the just.” His figure is seated on a pedestal, very ingeniously done, and truly expressive of his age, and of the pleasure he seemed to derive from his own thoughts.—Joseph, sculptor.
Above is Dr. Plenderleath.—A medallion of the deceased is fixed up with ribbon, under which is Hygeia, the cup of health, a serpent twining round, and a bough of cypress lying on it. Below is written in a book—“He healed—‘many that were sick of divers diseases.’” (St. Mark, i. 34.) Under the book is an Æsculapius as an emblem of physic. “In memory of Dr. John Plenderleath, third son of John Plenderleath, Esq., of Glen, in Tweedale, Scotland, Physician to the forces serving under the Marquis of Wellington in Portugal, who died at Coimbra, of a typhus fever, on the 18th of June, 1811, aged twenty-eight years. He was eminently distinguished by the strength of his mental faculties, his great classical and professional knowledge; and no less by the humanity of his heart, which manifested itself on all occasions, and especially towards the numerous sick and wounded, both of his countrymen and of the enemy, which were committed to his care. In commemoration of his public virtues, and of his many amiable qualities in private life, this monument is erected as a small tribute of parental affection.”—Bacon, jun., sculptor.