“She was a Dorcas
Whose curious Needle turn’d th’ abused Stage
Of this leud World into the golden Age;
Whose Pen of Steele, and silken Inck enroll’d
The Acts of Jonah in Records of Gold.”
Then it is claimed for her that she discovered the Gunpowder Plot, in these words—
“Whose Arte disclos’d that Plot, which, had it taken,
Rome had tryumph’d and Britan’s walls had shaken.”
Moreover—
“She was
In heart a Lydia; and in tongue a Hanna.
In Zeale a Ruth: In Wedlock a Susanna.
Prudently simple, prouidently Wary;
To th’ World, a Martha: and to heauen, a Mary.
| Who put on Immortality | } in the yeare of her { | Pilgrimage 69 March 15. Redeemer 1641. |
O rare and most estimable dame, paragon and phœnix, and very Gorgon of all the virtues, how little are your qualities hid in this, your epitaph!
She looks all those things and more, in her marble bust, that with thin, sharp-pointed nose, and with drawn-down mouth, gives her a very vinegary expression. There can be little doubt of it, the old lady was that terrible creature, the Superior Person.
There is, opposite this worthy lady’s monument, the stone effigy of a very much earlier inhabitant of the Mote—Sir Thomas Cawne, who died in 1374. He is represented in armour, his calm face peering out of his hauberk and chain mail. The window to his memory, over his tomb in the north chancel wall, made according to the directions in his will, still remains.