Sacred to Memory. The grave of George Welstead, most faithful pastor of the church of Cosgrave, who put the immortal soul before the transitory body (what a happy change!) by leaving medicine for theology; becoming day by day more beloved not of his family alone but of all the neighbourhood, he preached the Gospel for three years with singular prudence and no less piety, until, when he was worn out by his ceaseless labours, the great Shepherd of Souls gave him to eternal rest, on the eighth day before the Ides of September, in the year of the Word Incarnate 1667.
Traveller, may you be fortunate to know who sent his bones hither, who left his remains to lie in this hollow. A cleric, and a medic, the two greatest works of heaven, to whom the pulpit gave disease, the altar death. Alas! By a double doom are we punished, for at the fall of this presbyter, our very souls receive a wound as well. Atropos, once feared in body alone, by this foul deed of fate has hurt the human race in both body and soul. The affection of his firstborn placed this.
He was presented to the living by William, Lord Maynard, instituted 8 March 1663/4, and died 6 September 1667. The verses were composed by the Revd. William Carpenter, a late worthy rector of Calverton in Buckinghamshire.
