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Bray Church
Monument to William Goddard, 1609

North Wall of Chancel

William Goddard, who died in 1609, was the founder of Jesus Hospital in Bray. He has a second effigy over the entrance of these almshouses.

This memorial, on the north side of the chancel in Bray Church, is a large tablet with two frontal three-quarter figures flanked by black columns, with a wide open pediment. The inscription reads:

If what I was thou seekest to know,
These lynes my character shall show,
Those benefits that God me lent,
With thankes I tooke, and freely spent:
I scorned what plainess could not gett,
And, next to treason, hated debt;
Loved not those that stirr'd up strife:
True to my friend and to my wife.
The latter here by me I have,
We had one bed, and have one grave.
My honesty was such that I
When death came, feared not to dye.

The Monument of William Goddard, Esq.,
and of Joyce Mauntsell his wife,
of Philliberts, in this Parish.
The former departed this life A.D. 1609; the latter A.D. 1622.
Their better monument and one that will survive when brass and marble fail,
are the neighbouring alms houses in this place called Jesus Hospital.
Which William Goddard being a citizen of London
and a member of the ancient Guild or Mistery of Fishmongers of that City
did at his sole charge found and endow
for the benefit of forty inmates being aged infirm and suitable objects of the charity
constituting the aforesaid Guild or Mistery of Fishmongers
the perpetual trustees and governor.

 

    © Nash Ford Publishing 2004. All Rights Reserved.