Funerary Pomp

I went to the Woodbridge Civic Service today, and, sitting in St Mary's, spared a thought for the Pitmans kneeling decoratively and dressily en famille on the east wall of the south aisle.

It is - as you can see - a seventeenth century monument - and it commemorates in alabaster the person and family of one Jeffrey Pitman (tanner, haberdasher, churchwarden and, in 1625, High Sheriff of Suffolk).

He's the one at the top, facing out. His two wives are underneath - Alice to the left an Anne to the right.

Kneeling beneath them are Jeffrey's two lawyer sons WIlliam, who died in 1615 and Jeffrey, who died five years before his father, in 1622.

Once I stood where thou dost now,
And viewed the dead as thou dost me,
Ere long thou'lt lie as low as I
And others stand and look on thee.