YOU SEE OLD SCARLETTS PICTURE STAND ON HIE
BUT AT YOUR FEETE THERE DOTH HIS BODY LYE
HIS GRAVESTONE DOTH HIS AGE AND DEATH TIME SHOW
HIS OFFICE BY THEIS TOKENS YOU MAY KNOW
SECOND TO NONE FOR STRENGTH AND STURDYE LIMM
A SCARBABE MIGHTY VOICE WITH VISAGE GRIM
HEE HAD INTER'D TWO QUEENES WITHIN THIS PLACE
AND THIS TOWNES HOUSEHOLDERS IN HIS LIVES SPACE
TWICE OVER: BUT AT LENGTH HIS OWN TURNE CAME
WHAT HE FOR OTHERS DID FOR HIM THE SAME
WAS DONE: NO DOUBT HIS SOUL DOTH LIVE FOR AYE
IN HEAVEN: THOUGH HERE HIS BODY CLAD IN CLAY.

On the floor is a stone inscribed "JULY 2 1594 R.S. ætatis 98." This
painting is not a contemporary portrait of the old sexton, but a copy
made in 1747.

The sentiment expressed in the penult couplet is not uncommon, the idea
of retributive justice, of others performing the last offices for the
clerk who had so often done the like for his neighbours. The same notion
is expressed in the epitaph of Frank Raw, clerk and monumental mason, of
Selby, Yorkshire, which runs as follows:

Here lies the body of poor FRANK RAW
Parish clerk and gravestone cutter,
And this is writ to let you know
What Frank for others used to do
Is now for Frank done by another[48].

[Footnote 48: _Curious Epitaphs_, by W. Andrews, p. 120.]