Edward Wetenhall, M.D., an eminent Physician, who died August 29, 1733. His father was Dr. Edward Wetenhall, who was first advanced to the See of Cork, in Ireland, but was afterwards translated from thence to Kilmore and Ross. He died November 12, 1713, aged seventy-eight.
Dr. Stephen Hales.—Here are two beautiful figures in relief, Religion and Botany; the latter holds a medallion of this great explorer of nature to public view; Religion is deploring the loss of the divine; and at the feet of Botany, the winds are displayed on a globe, which allude to his invention of the ventilator. The Latin inscription is to the following effect:—“To the memory of Stephen Hales, Doctor of Divinity, Augusta, the mother of that best of Kings, George the Third, has placed this monument, who chose him, when living, to officiate as her chaplain; and after he died, which was on the 4th of January, 1761, in the eighty-fourth year of his age, honoured him with this marble.
“About the tomb of Hales, whose fair design
And polish great Augusta caus’d to shine,
Religion, hoary Faith, and Virtue wait,
And shed perpetual tears in mournful state.
But of the preacher, render’d to his clay,
The voice of Wisdom still hath this to say—
He was a man to hear affliction’s cry,
And trace his Maker’s works with curious eye.
O Hales! thy praises not the latest age
Shall e’er diminish, or shall blot thy page;
England, so proud of Newton, shall agree
She had a son of equal rank in thee.”—Wilton, sculptor.
Thomas Triplett, D.D., who was born near Oxford, and educated at Christ Church, where he was esteemed a wit, a good Grecian, and a poet. In 1645, he was made Prebendary of Preston, in the Church of Sarum, and had also a living, which being sequestered in the Rebellion, he fled to Ireland, and taught school in Dublin, where he was when Charles I. was beheaded. Not liking Ireland, he returned to England, and taught school at Hayes, in Middlesex, till the Restoration, when he was made Prebendary of Westminster, and of Fenton in the Church of York. He died at a good old age, July 18, 1670, much beloved and lamented.
A bust of Dr. Isaac Barrow, representing this truly great man, who, as the inscription shows, was Chaplain to Charles II., Head of Trinity College, Cambridge; Geometrical Professor of Gresham College, in London, and of Greek and Mathematics at Cambridge. His works have been said to be the foundation of all the divinity that has been written since his time. He died May 4, 1677, aged 47.
Above this monument the arch is plastered and painted with the figure of a stag, which was done by order of Richard II.; the following motto was on the collar:—
“When Julius Cæsar first came in,
About my neck he put this ring;
Whosoever doth me take,
Use me well for Cæsar’s sake.”
It is said he lived three or four hundred years.
William Outram, D.D.—The Latin inscription sets forth that he was born in Derbyshire, fellow of Trinity and Christ Church Colleges in Cambridge, Canon of this Abbey, and Archdeacon of Leicester; an accomplished divine, a nervous and accurate writer, an excellent and diligent preacher, first in Lincolnshire, afterwards in London, and lastly at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, where he finished his life with great applause, August 23, 1679, aged fifty-four. The inscription on the pedestal shows farther, that after a long and religious life, and forty-two years of widowhood, Jane, his wife, died Oct. 4, 1721.
A fine figure of Joseph Addison, Esq., on a circular basement, about which are small figures of the nine muses. The Latin inscription is to the following purport:—“Whoever thou art, venerate the memory of Joseph Addison, in whom Christian faith, virtue, and good morals, found a continual patron; whose genius was shown in verse, and every exquisite kind of writing; who gave to posterity the best examples of pure language, and the best rules for living well, which remain, and ever will remain sacred; whose weight of argument was tempered with wit, and accurate judgment with politeness, so that he encouraged the good, and reformed the improvident, tamed the wicked, and in some degree made them in love with virtue. He was born in the year 1672, and his fortune being increased gradually, arrived at length to public honours. Died in the forty-eighth year of his age, the honour and delight of the British nation.”—He was buried in front of Lord Halifax’s monument, north aisle of Henry the Seventh’s Chapel.—Sir Richard Westmacott, sculptor.