Epitaph [The Monument of a Fair Maiden Lady]

Context. Mary Frampton (1677-1698) was the third daughter of Richard Frampton (1630-85) of Biddestone, Wilts, described as a ‘prominent papist’ in the area (see J. Anthony Williams, Bath and Rome: The Living Link (1963) 112, citing House of Lords Record Office: Main Papers, 321, c. 66, 61). She died on 6 or 8 September 1698 (there is a discrepancy between the monument and the Bath Abbey Register, edited by A. J. Jewers (1900-1) ii 395) at ‘Mr Hussie’s House’, Bath. This was The Bell Tree House, a lodging held in trust by the Hussey family of Marnhull, Dorset, and administered by the Benedictine Order for the benefit of Catholics visiting Bath (see Williams 25-6). Mary Frampton had family connections with the Pastons of Norfolk, and thence with the family of D.’s wife. Her eldest sister Jane married Edward Paston of Barningham after the death of his first wife Margaret Paston, née Eyre, the subject of D.’s ‘Epitaph on Mrs Margaret Paston’ (see, further, headnote to that poem, and Anne Cotterill in John Dryden: A Tercentenary Miscellany, edited by Susan Green and Steven N. Zwicker (2001) 201-26). Mary Frampton’s elder sister Catharine, who erected the monument, was married to Charles, third son of William, 11th Earl of Stourton.