Page:Surrey Archaeological Collections Volume 1.djvu/123

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THE WARHAM MONUMENT, ETC.
57

IV.

THE WARHAM MONUMENT IN CROYDON CHURCH.

By GEORGE STEINMAN STEINMAN, Esq., F.S.A.


Against the south wall of the Chantry of St. Nicholas, in Croydon Church, is a Monument erected to the memory—as the arms upon it testify—of a member of the Warham family.

On 3rd September, 1478, one Thomas Warham, citizen and carpenter, of London, whose residence was at Croydon, dated his will, and in it directed his body to be buried in the parish church of St. John the Baptist, at Croydon, in the Chapel of St. Nicholas, "before the ymage of our Lady of Pitie;" and as the monument in question is without inscription, it has not unnaturally been assigned to him.

His epitaph, as copied and carried down to us in one of the Ashmolean MSS. ran as follows:—"Hic jacet Thomas Warham, civis et carpentarius London, et Margareta Uxor ejus, qui quidem Thomas obiit 3 Augusti, 1481." But the name of the wife appears from the citizen's will to have been Ellen.

The Monument, however, was certainly not placed to the memory of this person,—who, it is important to observe, died without issue,—or to one of his humble station. It commemorates Hugh Warham, Esq., of Melsanger, in the parish of Church Oakley, county Hants, and of Haling, in Croydon, as we are now about to prove, by the identity of the arms, and by the appro-