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Elmsley
Castle
St
Mary
Despite
the name this is a village not a castle.
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The
Savage Monument
William & Giles Savage
(ob 1631) & the latter's wife, Mary.
Note:
lady Mary holding a baby, four children
kneeling at the feet, the stag's head (also
at the feet) with an
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piercing the neck. There are two back plates
to this monument: one is shown on the right.
The
colour photographs were supplied by John
Davis.
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Left:
First Earl of Coventry (ob 1699)
Marble by William Stanton (shortly
after 1700)
The second earl refused to have
this monument erected in Croome d'Abitot church, the funerary chapel of the
Coventry family. His reason is revealed by the improper achievement of arms and
false epitaph on the monument.
'Or, on a chief sable, three escallops of the field a crescent gules for
difference'. These are quite legally the arms of the Grahams of Norton Conyers
co. York, but are implaed with those of Coventry, implying that his second wife
was gentry, a Graham, and armigerous.
The second earl maintained that his fathers second wife was the daughter of
Richard Grimes a common waterman, and that she had been a servant of the
Coventries, and maid to the Lady Winifred his mother. Apparently Gregory King,
Lancaster Herald of the College of Arms had directed the arms to be placed on
the monument, and it is interesting that he married for his second wife Frances
Grimes the Countess’s sister!
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So by this ‘scam’ both the earl’s second wife, and Lancaster himself by
association, had a meteoric rise in the Social Register.
From the 'Historical Register' April 12th, 1724
“Dy’d Elizabeth Countess Dowager of Coventry, relict of Thomas, Earl of
Coventry, after whose death she marry’d Thomas Savage esq.,. She was a
fortunate lady, being but of mean extraction, daughter [ it should be sister]
of .... Grimes, a lighterman on the river Thames, and household sevant to the
earl who marry’d her”
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