CONTENTS
During my research I have found other snippets of information which I am including on this page.
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1. EPITAPHS AT BRIDGERULE
In Devon Notes and Queries 1925 Volume 13 a correspondent enquires about an epitaph in Bridgerule church and asked who it refers to. He quotes Page's Rivers of Devon with the following:
"A dark slab of slate let into the South wall near the organ bears the following:
"My marriage and
my funerall,
Few months asunder, may cause all
My friends to mourne, none blameth that,
Yet Mary sings magnificat. - Luke i,46.
Mary I. E. Exalted
Removed from this world exalted high
To that pure life of immortality;
Blest soule thou art, what then meanes this weeping,
The mayden-wife she'es not dead, but sleeping?"
A de C Glubb responds to this query, pointing out that the slate slab has an esutcheon bearing the husband and wife's coat of arms. He suggests the husband was one of the Mill family whose coat of arms is a mill rind. The wife's arms (a fesse between three crescents) indicate she was a member of the Gilbert family, whose manor pew once stood where the slab is. Mr Glubb adds "Which Gilbert it was, whose untimely fate is here recorded, I have been unable to discover."
The parish registers, as recorded by Baring-Gould, supply the missing facts with these entries:
St Bridget's Church, Bridgerule.
Photo from www.bridgerule.info
with kind permission of Cliff Smith
14 Jul 1659 John Mill & Mary Gilbert married
Mary, wife of John Mill the younger of Shernick, daughter Richard Gilbert, Gent of Tackbeare died 1 Dec 1659
On a tablet over the slate slab is the inscription:—
In memory of Roger Kingdon of this parish Gent: son of John Kingdon of Eastleigh in the parish of Coleridge in County of Devon gent: obiit 27 November 1778. ætat 74. Also in memory of Judith Kingdon his wife daughter of John Cory of Holsworthy, mercer, and granddaughter of Samuel Gilbert of Jackbear in this parish Esq: obiit 13 Oct 1780. ætat 70.
2. RICHARD GILBERT (1678-1695)
Samuel Gilbert and Grace baptised their first-born son, Richard, on 29 May 1678. The heir to Tackbear Manor was sent to Oxford to further his education. The Registers of Wadham College, Oxford (From 1613 to 1871) contain the entry below. It seems likely that he died at Oxford as his burial is not recorded in the Bridgerule registers.
Richard's younger brother, Samuel, inherited Tackbear on his father's death. He was an active magistrate for the counties of Devon and Cornwall and was High Sheriff for the latter county in 1732. He died in 1751; the last of the Tackbear Gilberts.