There are no traces of any such monument now, and it was therefore probably destroyed when the church was rebuilt about 1730.
The Kingstons took no part apparently in the contests which occurred in the neighbourhood between the Royalists and Parliamentarians, but confined their attention to their own affairs and the management of their iron-works. The only member of the family who suffered was a Sir Francis Crawley, who, about the year 1642–3, was deposed for a judgment in favour of the King on the question of ship-money, or something of a similar kind. The family possess one of King Charles’s rings as a memento of such a decision. Edmund died in 1621, and was father of William, who, pursuant to his father Edmund’s will, made a settlement between himself, William, and James Boevey on one part, and William Jones, of Nass, on the other. He left an only son, Anthony, who, having no issue, disposed of the estate to Abraham Clarke, Esq., who
died here in 1683, as also his wife Joana, from whose son Abraham, dying in 1682, it passed, in virtue of certain complex devises, to a near relative, William Boevey, Esq. Mr. Boevey married Catharina (in her sixteenth year), daughter of John Riches, Esq., an affluent London merchant. She was left at the age of twenty-two a widow, which she inexorably remained until her death, on the 3rd January, 1726, in her fifty-seventh year, leaving a name for benevolence and ability which the neighbourhood venerates to this day. Dr. Geo. Hickes calls her, in the preface to his ‘Thesaurus,’ published in 1702–3, “præstantissima et honestissima matrona Catharine Bovey,” and was most probably one of her personal friends, agreeably to a traditionary account in the family, that “she was very friendly to the nonjuring clergy, and that she had frequently received and protected them.”
There are several pictures of clergymen at Flaxley, which have always been believed to be portraits of Mrs. Boevey’s nonjuring friends. Amongst these are two in episcopal habits, one of which is ascertained to be the portrait of the deprived Dr. Frampton, Bishop of Gloucester, since an exactly similar painting exists in the Palace at Gloucester. Flaxley is mentioned as her residence by Sir R. Atkyns in 1712, where, he tells us, “she hath an handsome house and pleasant gardens, and a great estate, a furnace for casting of iron, and three forges,” as also appears by Kip’s view of it. In 1714 Steele dedicated to her the second volume of ‘The Ladies’ Library,’ the frontispiece to which Mr. Kerslake describes as “representing a young lady, dressed in widow’s weeds, opening a book upon a table, on which also lies a skull; her admirers, in long wigs and swords, are thronging round the door.” In one of his letters to Lady Steele, dated the 17th January, 1717, he writes—“I have yours in a leaf of the widow’s.” Such incidents seem to prove that this highly-gifted lady was the original of the character so graphically delineated by Steele in his description of “the perverse widow.” The
numbers of the ‘Spectator’ in which she is introduced generally bear his name, and she probably was more intimate with him than with Addison (although both are said to have visited the Abbey), since he would naturally pass near Flaxley whenever he travelled between London and his house at Llangunnor, near Caermarthen. Nothing less than such a familiar acquaintance could have enabled him to give so exact and real a description of her as occurs in No. 113.
In Ballard’s ‘Ladies,’ first printed in 1752, and on her monument in Westminster Abbey and in Flaxley Church, her more public virtues are displayed; but the value of her home life, which many of the poor Foresters had experienced in her bounties, is best related in the words of her faithful attendant, Mrs. Rachel Vergo, “who always waited particularly on her mistress, and was the only servant who sat up, as she spent an hour or two every night in her closet. She did the same in the morning, and was a very early riser. Mrs. Vergo had the care of the family under Mrs. Mary Pope, a relation of Mrs. Bovey, who came for a visit of a month, and stayed nearly forty years. The regularity and economy in the family was great. The maids were kept to work till eight o’clock at night, and the rest was their own time. Mrs. Bovey frequently called for her charity account book to see if it kept pace with her expenses in dress, which was always very handsome. Mrs. Vergo was often sent to Ross and Mitcheldean to buy materials to make garments for the poor. The old table-linen and sheets were made into childbed linen, which, together with shirts and shifts of all sizes, were kept in a closet. It was Mrs. Vergo’s business to give them out as her lady ordered. Two ladies came to visit Mrs. Pope at the time the epidemic fever raged in Gloucestershire in 1719. One of them, Mrs. Cowling, died of it at the Abbey. The other, Mrs. Grace Butler, agreed with Mrs. Bovey and Mrs. Pope all to lie in the same vault with the deceased. The vault was built accordingly in Flaxley churchyard. Mrs. Bovey died first at the Abbey, and was laid by
her friend. Mrs. Pope was brought from Twickenham in Surrey, and Mrs. Grace Butler twenty years afterwards from Worminghurst in Sussex. Every afternoon during her lady’s life Mrs. Vergo was ordered to wear a silk gown. Six of the poor children who were kept at school at Flaxley dined by turns regularly every Sunday at the Abbey, when Mrs. Bovey heard them say their Catechism. She was very often in the habit of lending money to poor clergymen, which was frequently repaid to her in small sums, but more often given to them. She did the same, too, by other distressed people whom she believed to be honest and industrious. During the Christmas holidays before Mrs. Bovey died she had the thirty children who were taught at her expense, to dine at the Abbey upon beef and pudding. Mrs. Vergo sat at the head of the table, and two of the housemaids waited upon them. After dinner Mrs. Bovey had them all into the parlour, where she was sitting dressed in white and silver. She showed them her clothes and her jewels, talked pleasantly and with great good nature to them, and having given to each of them sixpence she dismissed them. When they left her they had a harp and fiddle playing in the great hall, where they danced two hours and went away in good time. When Mrs. Bovey was dressing before dinner she said to Mrs. Vergo, ‘Rachel, you will be surprised that I put such fine clothes on to-day; but I think that these poor children will remember me the longer for it.’ She was then to all appearance very well, but she died that very day month of a bowel complaint.”—“Upon Wednesday morning,” wrote Mr. MacBarrow, “she was as well at breakfast as usual; between eleven and twelve she was seized with a most violent colic. We sent to Gloucester for Greville, as the nearest at hand; that night for Lane, but he was not to be met with. The extremity of pain continued, and, notwithstanding all means that could be used, nothing would pass. She apprehended death approaching the first day, and said what her illness was: we sent to Oxford and
Hereford, but no physician until it was too late. Upon Friday morning she had a little ease, which gave us great hopes; but very soon the exquisite pain returned, and never left her until death had performed its great office, betwixt eleven and twelve on Saturday morning. She was sensible all along, and expressed great satisfaction in being here, where she said she always wished to die. She was buried in the same vault with Mrs. Cowling on 23rd January, 1726.”—“Of her personal beauty,” observes the Rev. C. Crawley, “although highly extolled, it really appears that very little can be said or seen, if we may form our opinions from the three portraits of her at Flaxley Abbey. They all represent a broad surface of a benevolent and good-natured countenance; and though they were evidently painted at different periods of her life, yet they bear so great a resemblance to each other that we may reasonably infer they were all good likenesses—in each of them the mole on the cheek has been defined with all due minuteness.”
Mrs. Boevey bequeathed £1200 to augment the living of Flaxley, the interest of £400 to apprentice poor children, and a similar sum towards putting them out. Lastly she designed the rebuilding of the church, “which pious design was speedily executed by Mrs. Mary Pope.” This work was effected about the year 1730, but report says not “speedily,” as the parishioners found it necessary to institute a suit in Chancery to secure its accomplishment. The site of the old chapel was retained, only the size was increased, if we may judge from the view that Sir R. Atkyns gives of the former building, which he says was “very small, and had a low wooden tower at the west end.” Most of the old monuments were transferred to it, and the new church, although rather plain, was “peculiarly neat” and substantial. Upon Mrs. Boevey’s death the estate passed by will to Thomas Crawley, Esq., of London, merchant, in tail male, upon the condition of adding the name of Boevey to Crawley. Thomas, a lineal descendant, succeeded to the baronetage on the death of Sir Charles Barrow in
January, 1789, by limitation of the patent. [189] Part of the mansion having been destroyed by fire, it was rebuilt by him in 1777, with extensive additions. This house yet remains, and is a capacious structure.