Page:Devon & Cornwall Notes & Queries.djvu/56

 VUHuX ..-i^nKY.: m Devon Notes dnd Queries. 33 Verj little indeed is known of the founder of the tomb but bis riches. He appears to have been of humble extraction, of which he or his descendants had the merit not to be ashamed, AS will be seen by the description of his father as *' blacke- smith ** of Crediton en the tomb itself, and in whose memory lie set up a monument in Crediton Church. He left a legacy by his will to a nephew whom he therein described as a tanner, of Crediton. One of his two uncles, however, also .achieved a position for himself and died Chancellor of Exeter Cathedral, from whom are descended the Leaches of Stoke Climsland. Local tradition ascribes these riches to the -•• blackesmith's ** acquirement, by purchasing bars of iron which turned out to be gold, as usual in such stories, from the wreck of the Spanish Armada. The Armada explains much in the West Country. Sir Simon had four sisters, all of whom married, and one brother, John. Sir Simon married twice, first, Elizabeth, daughter of Walter Burrough, of Exeter, by whom he had two children, both of whom he survived — Sir 'Walter and a boy who died young. He married secondly "Katharine, daughter of Nicholas Turberville, of Crediton, in whose honour he erected the tomb at Cadeleigh. By her he ^%ad three more sons (of whom another Simon was the ' ^VOtmgest), and four daughters, all of whom married — one, the xEector, for the time being, of Cadeleigh, while another 'Icnrdf and secondly Thomas Gifford, of Halsbury {Vivian). Curiously, on the tomb is what appears to be the effigy of a fiftb girl, but of this one there is no record, and it may . '{lossibly be of the grandson Simon, Sir Walter's only son, Ifbo was born five years before Sir Simon's death. • Local tradition again has it that these nine children kneeling on the plinth were all carried off together by scarlet ' Isver at the ages represented, and this affords another instance 4of a local habit of inventing a reason for an object of which . the real cause has been forgotten. Sir Simon served the ofBce of Sheriff of Devon in the year of Charles Ist's accession (Risdon), and was knighted at Ford Abbey, near Axminster, on the 26th September of that year {1625) by the King. Charles was on his first visit to the county to inspect the expedition fitting at Plymouth for the unfortunate enterprise at Cadiz, and Sir Simon had probably
 * 'QBurried twice, the first time Robert Burrington, of Sand-