English: Detail from the Fortescue mural monument, Weare Giffard Church, Devon, showing kneeling effigies of John Fortescue (d.1605) of Filleigh and of Weare Gifford Hall, lord of the manors of Filleigh and Weare Gifford, both in Devon, and of his wife Mary Speccot (d.1637), a daughter of Humphry Specott of Specott in the parish of Merton, Devon. (
Vivian, Lt.Col. J.L., (Ed.) The Visitations of the County of Devon: Comprising the
Heralds' Visitations of 1531, 1564 & 1620, Exeter, 1895, p.354). In the roundels at left are relief-sculpted medallions portraits of the faces of the couple's five sons, and in the adjacent oval roundels similar reliefs of each son's own children (one only surviving). At right are similar columns of roundels showing the couple's six daughters and their own children. Inscribed across the monument at the top of the lower (second) tier is the following Latin text:
Memoriale Hugonis Fortescue arm(igeris) et Elizabethae ux(oris) filiae Joh(anni)s Chichester Equit(is) itemque Joh(ann)is Fortescue eorum fil(ii) arm(igeris) et Mariae ux(oris) filiae Humphredi Speccot de Thornbury arm(igeris) Sunt hi ab Joh(ann)e Fortescue Equite Duce castri de Meaux in Gall(ia) sub H(enrico) 5.o (Quinto) oriundi qui praesepia Fortescutorum de Wimeston Devon ortus habuit fil(ium) Joh(ann)em Summum Justic(ium) et Cancell(arium) sub H(enrico) 6.o (Sexto) sepultum Ebertoniae Glocest(ria) Familia quidem perantiqua et etiamnum felici subole propagata sepulti sunt: Hugo, Aug. 2 1600; Joh(ann)es April 5, 1605: Elizabetha May 7, 1630; Maria April 11, 1637.
Which may be translated literally as:
"In memory of Hugh Fortescue, Esquire, and of Elizabeth his wife, daughter of John Chichester Esquire and also of John Fortescue, the son of them, Esquire, and of Mary his wife, daughter of Humphrey Speccot of Thornbury, Esquire. These arose from
John Fortescue, Knight, Captain of the Castle of Meaux in France, arisen under Henry the Fifth a scion of the Fortescues of Wympstone, Devon. He had a son John, Chief Justice and Chancellor under Henry the Sixth. He was buried at Ebrington in Gloucestershire. Indeed the very ancient family even now is happy with fruitful issue and are buried here: Hugo, Aug. 2 1600; John April 5, 1605: Elizabeth May 7, 1630; Mary April 11, 1637