Monmouthshire
Chepstow
Here or elsewhere (all’s one to you or me),
Earth, air, or water, gripes my ghostly dust,
None knows how soon to be by fire set free;
Reader, if you an old try’d rule will trust,
You’ll gladly do and suffer what you must.
My time was spent in serving you and you.
And death’s my pay, it seems, and welcome too.
Revenge destroying but itself, while I
To birds of prey leave my old cage and fly;
Examples preach to the eye—care then (mine says)
Not how you end, but how you spend your days.
For thirty years secluded from mankind,
Here Marten lingered. Often have these walls
Echoed his footsteps, as with even tread
He paced around his prison. Not to him
Did Nature’s fair varieties exist,
He never saw the sun’s delightful beams,
Save when through yon high bars he poured
A sad and broken splendour.
In the passage leading from the nave to the north aisle in this church, is interred the body of Henry Marten, one of the Judges who presided at the trial of Charles 1st with the following Epitaph over him, written by himself:—
Here Sept. 9th 1680,
was buried
A true born Englishman.
Who, in Berkshire was well known
To love his country’s freedom like his own,
But being immured full twenty years,
Had time to write as doth appear.