Memorial in Gittisham Church - "born of what honourable race...."

How things change.

The text reads:-

OBIJT APRILIS PRIMO 1591

Enterred here w[ith]in this tombe doth Henry Beaumont rest

A man of iust and vpright life with many graces blest

Who learnd to knowe God's Holy Will all wicked waies defyed

And as he learnd so did he lyve and as he lyved he dyed

What good he might he gladly did and never harmed any

Courteous he was in all his life and frindly unto many

But most of all his liberall giftes, abounded to the poore

A worthy practize of that worde that he had learned before.

Borne of what honorable race is nedeles for this verse

Since French and Englishe chronicles so oft his name reherse

Which ancient bloude wt in himself by want of issue spent

The sinkinge line thereof he corckt by one of that descent

He lived thrise tenn yeres and nine with his most Godly wife

Who yelded him his honor due voyde of unkindly strife

And for true witness of her love which never was defaced

As dutie last this monument she caused here be placed.

…………..

Box 14-099 - Note of Memorial for Henry Beaumont, Gittisham, near Honiton, Devon

Caroline, Edward, Richard, and Sam called at Gittisham in May 1991 and noted down the inscription (E&OE!!). Also in the church was a board about the charitable fund founded by the same Henry Beaumont and / or by his widow. 

Will of Elizabeth Beamont, widow, Gittisham 1614 (PCC Wills). The text on the Monument does not say whether she was buried there too. Her side of the Monument appears to show an infant child.

Henry seems to be the last, or one of the last, of the old line of Beaumonts of Devon.  His is said to have left his estates to a member of the namesake family in Leicestershire. 

My own forebear Rev Thomas Beaumont of East Bridgford, in his fantastically inaccurate genealogical notebook (Box 1-232 in this Archive), written before 1820 I think, wrote of this in terms of it offering substantive proof not only that the Devon and Leicestershire Beaumonts were related to one another, but the Yorkshire ones as well. Mmmmmm.

EMB 20 February 2021