A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Gethin, Lady Grace
GETHIN, LADY GRACE,
Was the daughter of Sir George Norton, of Abbots-Leith, in Somersetshire, and born in 1676. She was liberally educated, and married Sir Richard Gethin, of Gethin-grott, in Ireland. Lovely and beloved, and possessed of many and great accomplishments, both natural and acquired, she did not live long enough to display them to the world; for she died in her twenty-first year. She was buried in Westminster Abbey, where a beautiful monument is erected over her; and, moreover, for perpetuating her memory, provision was made for a sermon to be preached in the Abbey, yearly, on Ash-Wednesday, for ever. She wrote, and left behind her in loose papers, a work which, soon after her death, was published under the title of "Reliquiæ Grethineanæ; or some remains of the most ingenious and excellent lady. Lady Grace Grethin, lately deceased; being a collection of choice Discourses, pleasant Apothegms, and witty Sentences, written by her, for the most part by way of Essay, and at spare hours, 1700." This work consists of discourses upon friendship, love, gratitude, death, speech, lying, idleness, the world, secresy, prosperity, adversity, children, cowards, bad poets, indifferency, censoriousness, revenge, boldness, youth, age, custom, charity, reading, beauty, flattery, riches, honour, pleasure, suspicion, excuses, etc. It is now very scarce.