Inscriptions in St. Paul's Church, 

 Malacca. 



The inscriptions on the tomb-stones in the old church of 

 St. Paul at Malacca are of considerable antiquity, the dates rang- 

 ing- from A.D. 1568 to the early part of the eighteenth century, 

 and are of no little interest to the student of the past history of 

 the Settlement. 



In some cases, the lettering of the inscriptions and the out- 

 lines of the coats of arms are as fresh and sharply-detined to-day 

 as they were on the day when they were first cut. In other 

 cases, on the contrary, the inscriptions are either entirely illegi- 

 ble, or can only be deciphered with difficulty. I therefore seized 

 the opportunity afforded by a temporary residence in Malacca 

 to make copies of all the inscriptions which are still legible, with 

 a view to placing them on record in the journal of the Society, 

 before time and the action of the weather have wrought any 

 further havoc among them. 



Curiously enough, while I was engaged in this work, the 

 Acting Col. Chaplain (Mr. J. Hardy) discovered among the old 

 Dutch records a list of the inscriptions on the tomb-stones made 

 in 1713 by one Michiel de Bruyn. the Sexton, which was of con- 

 siderable use to me in deciphering some of the more illegible in- 

 scriptions. The list is not complete, however, as the worthy 

 Sexton left the Portuguese inscriptions and some of the Dutch 

 ones, which are difficult to decipher, severely alone. A transla- 

 tion of the document is annexed (C). 



I have drawn up a list of the inscriptions in brief (A), giving 

 the names and the dates of birth and death, and I also give the 

 inscriptions in full (B), with a translation of each in parallel 

 columns. I further had a plan of the church made, showing the 

 positions of the different stones, which are marked with numbers 

 corresponding to those in the list of inscriptions. 



