"I likewise desire that 300l. may be laid out to purchase a handsome monument, made in London, to the memory of my late aunt, the Lady Carteret, to be erected in the church where she is interred, and a due epitaph, enumerating her exemplary virtues and life, to be inscribed on it in French and English, and recorded to posterity; and this I desire my brother John will see duly performed, as well as my other executors, with expedition; this piece of gratitude to her memory having been neglected by all her relations.
"In case it should not be attended with any inconvenience, the surgeon to preserve and embalm my corpse, to be interred in a military manner on shore, in whatever port the ship may put in; and the surgeon to be presented with 30l. for his trouble. I bequeath to my brother officers, Captains Thomas Coates, Martyn, Keppel, Rodney, and Timothy Brett, a mourning ring of 10l. value each; the same to Mr. Logie, first lieutenant of the Nottingham.
"To the poor of the parish in the island of Guernsey, where I was born, 100l. to be distributed: the remainder of what fortune I may have to bequeath, to my honoured father. And I do hereby constitute and appoint my worthy friend Pussey Brook, Esq., James Wallace, Esq., and my eldest brother John Saumarez, Esq., executors of this my last will and testament, revoking all former wills by me heretofore made. In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and seal, at sea, this 30th day of June, and in the twenty-first year of the reign of our sovereign Lord George the Second over Great Britain, France, and Ireland, &c., and in the year of our Lord 1747.
"Philip Saumarez." (L.S.)
"Signed in the presence of,
Robert Richards, Master.
Alexander Gray, Gunner."
The wishes expressed in the will of this brave officer were implicitly complied with; his body was embalmed and sent to Plymouth by the admiral, in the Gloucester, commanded by Captain Durell, (afterwards Admiral Durell,) his brother-in-law, and was buried in the church at Plymouth with military honours. A neat tablet is erected in the said church, with the following inscription: "Near this place lies the body of Philip Saumarez, Esq. commander of H.M.S. Nottingham. He was the son of Matthew de Saumarez, of the Island of Guernsey, by Anne Durell, of the island of Jersey, his wife, families of antiquity and respectability in those parts. He was born 17th November 1710, and gloriously but unfortunately fell by a cannon-ball, 14th October 1747, pursuing the ships of the enemy that were making their escape, when the French were routed by Admiral Hawke."
Out of respect to his memory, his brothers and sisters caused a plain monument to be erected to him in Westminster Abbey, with the following inscription:
ORBE CIRCUMCINTO,
"Sacred to the memory of Philip De Saumarez, Esq., one of the few whose lives ought rather to be measured by their actions than their days. From sixteen to thirty-seven years of age, he served in the navy, and was often surrounded with dangers and difficulties unparalleled: always approving himself an able, active, and gallant officer. He went out a lieutenant on board His Majesty's ship Centurion, under the auspicious conduct of Commodore Anson, in his expedition to the South Seas: he was commanding officer of the said ship when she was driven from her moorings at the island of Tinian.
"In the year 1747, being captain of the Nottingham, a sixty gun ship, he (then alone) attacked and took the Mars, a French ship of sixty-four guns.