Whose stone is this I do not know. It is so degraded as to prove something of a puzzle. The stone is flaking away. It is embedded into the South wall of Salcombe Regis church and has presumably been in the church since the seventeenth century. I think the verse must have been composed by Philip Avant, the parson poet whom I have already blogged under the title A GLORIOUS DAY with reference to his long published poem welcoming King Billy whose ships sailed up the Exe in 1688.
The verse, here 'modernised' is in parts illegible but must, I think, read:
We within this earthly shell
for a time with worms may dwell
till the morning when the just
shall be awaked out of their dust.
Our bless'd redeemer then will raise
us up, his glorious name to praise.
With saints and angels we shall sing
hosannas to the heavenly king.
The memory of such are blessed
and precious to him is their dust.
This is a memorial to a man and his wife. The man died in 1674, his wife in the March of a subsquent year. His name seems to begin ELI (Elias perhaps?) and his surname to end in P (a Clapp perhaps?) These are wild guesses.
