Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 7.djvu/372

266 SEPULCHIIAL MEMORIALS AT ETCHINGHAM, SUSSEX, the word to be oept, not "sept," as it at first appeared.^ The inscription is beneath the figure on the chancel floor, innnediately before the altar, where it was customary to bury the fi^under of a church, or the person who had built the chancel more especiall}^, which Wilham de Echyngham had done ; it is as follows : — " De ' terre fu fet et fourme, Et en terre fu retourne, William de Echingh'm estoie noin^, Dieu de malme eiez pitee ; Et vous qi par ici passez Pur lalme de moy pur dieu priez, Q,i de Januere le. xviii jo'" De ey passai, I'an u're seignour Mill' trois Centz quat'vintz oept, Come dieu volait ento' my noet." French inscriptions, I believe, are not very common of so late a date, nor is it customary to put the time of the day or night of the person's decease ; this was probably added here to suit the rhyming measure in which it is written. It has been conjectured that engraved brasses and inscrip- tions were kept in stock, and supplied to order, as articles of manufacture, or of export. Certain it is these rhyming couplets are common. Thus in Weever, p. 328, we find the same first two lines upon the tomb of John Lord Cobham, at Cobham, Kent, whilst the memorial of Ralph de Cobham de Kent, Esquier Qi morust le xx jour de Janier indicates the practice still existing in 1400. The slab with the brass of William de Echyngham was laid over a stone coffin, to which it was the cover : it was 8 feet 8 inches long, by 2 feet 9 inches in breadth, and represented the figure of a knight dressed in the armour of the period, with his hands raised in prayer, his feet resting on a lion couchant. The escutcheons on each side are now destroyed ; the}'" bore, on the right hand fretty of six pieces, on the left the same, impaling on a bend three horse-shoes. Above the head, which had been destroyed, prior to 1778, when Hayley visited the church, (an act of spoliation I have elsewhere remarked to ' « Ocpt, eight. Ocptaz, &c. octavo. numental Brasses of England." Ocptisme, eighth." Kelham's Norman ■ On the plate erroneously engraved— Dictionary. " Oct, huit, octo." Lacombe, Cc trrrc It is remarkable tiiat errata of Roquefort, &c. The Rev. C. Boutell has this kind arc of very rare occurrence in given an accurate representation of this scpuldira! inscriptions, brass and curious inscription, in liis " Mo-