Dear paul
Steve Dunn and Phil Brown start us off with a really interesting tomb they discovered in a church in Stoke Charity, which is a small rural village six miles north of Winchester in Hampshire.
The church is St Mary and St Michael in the parish of Stoke Charity and the church dates back to Norman times. It’s believed that the village got its name from an early Lord of the Manor, Henry de la Charite, in the 13th century.
The tomb in question is inscribed: Here Lieth the eldest daughter of Sr Thomas Phelyppes Baronet and The Ladye Charitie, his Wife.
Did you spot what was missing from the inscription? At first glance, I missed it, but there is no mention of the child’s name anywhere on the inscription.
Above the inscription for Thomas’s daughter is the tomb of Thomas himself, which is the largest tomb within the church, so he would have been a man of significance within the parish. Thomas Phelyppes (sometimes spelt Phelipps or Phillips) was made a baronet in 1620 by King James I. Two of his sons, Thomas (2nd Baronet), James (3rd Baronet) and his grandson James (son of James and the 4th Baronet) succeeded him as baronet, but the title became extinct in 1690 due to no male heirs when James 4th Baronet died.
The Hampshire Field Club has a reference to Thomas Phelyppes and his family pedigree link at http://familytr.ee/Phelyppes
On the last page, there is a pedigree tree, which shows that Thomas and Charity had three sons, Thomas, John and James, but no daughter. We of course know there was a daughter from
