In Sunning Hill Churchyard is the following epitaph on the late Right Hon. Colonel Richard Fitzpatrick, written by himself:—
Whose turn is next? This monitory stone
Replies, vain passenger perhaps thine own;
If idly curious, thou wilt seek to know
Whose relicks mingle with the dust below,
Enough to tell thee, that his destin’d span,
On earth he dwelt, and like thyself a man.
Nor distant far th’ inevitable day
When thou, poor mortal, shalt like him be clay;
Through life he walk’d un-emulous of fame,
Nor wish’d beyond it to preserve a name.
Content, if friendship, o’er his humble bier
Dropt but the heart-felt tribute of a tear;
Though countless ages should unconscious glide,
Nor learn that even he had lived and died.
NEWBURY.
On Elizth Daughter of James Bond, 1659.
Low, here she is, deprived of lyfe,
Which was a verteous and a loving wife;
Until the graves again restore
Their dead, and Time shall be no more;
She was brought a-bed, but spous above,
And dyed to pay the living pledge of love.
On Mr. Hugh Shepley, sometime Rector of Newbvrye, 1596.
Full eight and twenty years he was your pastor,
As hee was taught to feede by Christ, his Master;
By preaching God’s Word, good life, good example,
(Food for your soules, fitt for God’s house or temple)
Hee loved peace, abandoned all strife,
Was kinde to strangers, neighbours, children, wife;
A lambe-like man, borne on an Easter daye,
So liv’d, so dide, so liv’s again for aye;
As one Spring brought him to this world of sinne,
Another Spring the Heavens received him in.
In the Parish Church of Aldermaston is the following:—
To the precious memorie of four Virtuous Sisters,
daughters of Sir H. Forster, 1623.Like borne, like new-borne, here like dead they lye,
Four virgin sisters, decked with pietie;
Beavtie and other graces, which commend
And make them all like blessed in their end.