This memorial appears to have been carved from stone but has recently been coated with black paint. The inscription reads:
"Here / lived / Topham / Beauclerk / Born 1739 Died 1780 / Lady / Diana Beauclerk / Born 1734 Died 1808"
The top and bottom of the memorial has some detailed carved scroll-work. Above the inscription, in relief, are two cherubs, with wings, in differing poses. Between them, and being held by them, is a wreath also in relief.
The memorial is about one meter (3 feet) high and slightly less across.
============================================================
============================================================
Topham Beauclerk (pronounced 'Bo-Clare') (22 December 1739 – 11 March 1780) was a celebrated wit and the only son of Lord Sidney Beauclerk; he was the great-grandson of King Charles II. He was a friend of Dr Johnson and of Horace Walpole.
Beauclerk was christened on 19 January 1740 in St James', Westminster and attended Trinity College, Oxford.
On 12 March 1768, he married Diana, the daughter of Charles Spencer, 3rd Duke of Marlborough and they had four children together:
Anne Beauclerk (born c. 1764)
Elisabeth Beauclerk (20 August 1766 – 25 March 1793); married Robert Henry Herbert, 12th Earl of Pembroke and 9th Earl of Montgomery.
Mary Day Beauclerk, twin of Elisabeth (20 August 1766 – 23 July 1851)
Charles George Beauclerk (20 January 1774 – 25 December 1846)
Topham Beauclerk entertained Dr. Johnson at his home in Old Windsor for a number of weeks. He appears several times in Boswell's Life of Johnson. As Bennet Langton records: 'His affection for Topham Beauclerk was so great, that when Beauclerk was labouring under that severe illness which at last occasioned his death, Johnson said, (with a voice faultering with emotion,) "Sir, I would walk to the extent of the diameter of the earth to save Beauclerk"' (Boswell 1672).
Text source: (
visit link)
==========================================================
Lady Diana Beauclerk was the daughter of the Honourable Elizabeth Trevor (d. 1761) and Charles Spencer, 3rd Duke of Marlborough (1706–1758). Her siblings were George, Charles, and Elizabeth. She was raised at Langley Park, Buckinghamshire, where she was introduced to art at an early age. Joshua Reynolds, an artist, was a family friend.
She married Frederick St John, 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke (1734–1787) in 1757, and from 1762–1768 was lady of the bedchamber to Queen Charlotte. Her marriage was unhappy and Bolingbroke was notoriously unfaithful. In February of 1768 he petitioned for divorce on grounds of adultery. The petition required an act of parliament, which was passed the next month. Within two days she married Topham Beauclerk of Old Windsor. They had four children: Anne (born around 1764, and did not survive infancy), twins Elisabeth (20 August 1766 - 25 March 1793) and Mary Day Beauclerk (20 August 1766 - 23 July 1851), and Charles George Beauclerk (20 January 1774 - 25 December 1846).
Their circle of friends included Samuel Johnson, Georgiana Cavendish — who maintained a glittering salon — Edward Gibbon, David Garrick, Charles Fox, James Boswell and Edmund Burke.
Beauclerk illustrated a number of literary productions, including Horace Walpole's tragedy The Mysterious Mother, the English translation of Gottfried August Bürger's Leonora (1796) and The Fables of John Dryden (1797). After 1785 she was one of a circle of women, along with Emma Crewe and Elizabeth Templetown (1746/7-1823), whose designs for Josiah Wedgwood were made into bas-reliefs on jasper ornaments.
Her husband died in 1780 and, due to restricted finances, she began to lead a more retired life. She died in 1808 and was buried in Richmond.
Text source: (
visit link)