Richard Heaton Solley

This article was originally published in the November 1993 edition of Soul Search, the journal of The Sole Society.

This inscription is on a stone behind The Boutique in Sea Street, St Margarets near Dover, Kent.

The epitaph was commissioned by Richard Heaton Solly when his father died at Deal, and is a bitter attack on his step‑mother, whom he accuses of swindling him out of half his father’s estate. The vicar and church‑wardens at Deal refused to allow the stone to be erected in the churchyard, and so it remained at St Margarets, where it was put in a corner of Solly's garden behind the present Sea Street cottages.

Raptus in Anuis was R S ‑‑‑

Usque ad Finem much oppressed

By a fly yet ‑‑‑‑ ‑‑‑‑ jade

That did him kiss and ‑‑‑‑ persuade

Must not she then be very forward

For to do more seven hundred borrowed

Of English Coin thus was her fun

Oh half the Estate did trick her son

The Goods to share and House to possess

All Harpy like the Heir will scorn

For twenty kindred then has He

They'l truly very pleased be

To him and all his family

And banish unto place forlorn

This ‑‑‑‑ beg‑‑‑ d‑‑

At Sandwich August the fourth

Seventeen hundred forty six and so forth

Lo these are they too oft by fate designed

Are born to plunder and delude Mankind