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Notes on Lacock Abbey. 43 
first in the fifteenth century, as it has evidently held a brass of 
Perpendicular character. The inscription, which is incised round 
the edge of the slab, is now partly obliterated, but it is given in 
full and probably correctly, as follows :—' 
INFRA SVNT DEFOSSA ELH VENERABILIS OSSA 
QV “DEDIT HAS SEDRES SACRAS MONIALIBVS DES 
ABBATISSA QVIDEM QV SANCTE VIXIT IBIDEM 
ET COMITISSA SARVM VIRTVTVM PLENA BONARVM. 
Translation :—Beneath are buried the bones of the venerable 
Ela, who gave this sacred spot to the nuns, for an abode; who, as 
Abbess, lived here a holy life; Countess also of Salisbury ; full of 
virtues. 
The slab was probably despoiled of its brass at the dissolution, 
and I believe it to have been discovered,’ on its original site, and 
removed to the cloisters for preservation as a curiosity, in the last 
century. 
The following list of fourteen Abbesses of Lacock is more com- 
plete than any that has been hitherto published :— 
1. Ela Longespee, Countess of Salisbury, the foundress, elected 
1240. 
9. Beatrice of Kent, elected 1257. 
8. Alicia. 
4, Juliana, abbess in 1288 and 1290. 
ope RE B46 ae en 
-1 (Bowles and Nichols, p. 5). The reading agrees with all that remains legible 
of the original inscription. 
2 By John Ivory Talbot, who was owner of Lacock Abbey from 1714 to 1772. 
There are two volumes of drawings, by Grimm, 1790, in the British Museum 
(vols. x. and xi. of Additional MSS., No. 15, 546). One of these drawings, 
which I believe to be in vol. x., fol. 169, represents “ beads and cross, found in 
the Foundress’s tomb at Lacock” and described as being, at that time, fastened 
to a pilaster in the cloisters. What became of them afterwards, I do not know ; 
but I infer that, not very long before 1790, Ivory Talbot, who took an intelligent 
though not always judicious interest in antiquities, must have discovered and 
opened the tomb of Ela, identified by the inscription on the stone, and have 
taken out the beads and cross, and placed them, with the slab, in the cloisters. 
T had the slab shifted, a few years ago, from the centre of the pavement up to 
the wall, and an iron rail put to protect what remains, and I took that opportunity 
of ascertaining that there is no interment on the spot. 
