And did appoynte before he dyed,
A special yearlie rent,
Which should be every Whitsontide
Among the poorest spent.
Et obiit Anno Dni 1534.
Although this benefaction is written in brass, the good man’s successors have found enough of the same metal to pervert it; for it is now lost, and no person can give any account of it. It needs not brass to outlive honesty; a mere breath will often destroy her. There are, however, several substantial charities belonging to Lavenham, the disposal of which has fallen into better hands.
In the churchyard is a very old gravestone, which formerly had a Saxon inscription. Kirby, in his account of the monasteries of Suffolk, says that here, on the tomb of one John Wiles, a bachelor, who died in 1694, is this odd jingling epitaph:—
Quod fuit esse quod est, quod non fuit esse quod esse
Esse quod est non esse, quod est non erit esse.
But as the point and oddity may not be directly evident to all, perhaps some of our readers will furnish us with a pithy translation for our next.