Notes on Four Palimpsest Brasses in Westminster Abbey

Extract

Immediately within the gates of the North Ambulatory of the Abbey Church, and west of the table-tomb of Abbot Estney, is the marble slab which is assumed to cover the remains of Sir Thomas Parry, treasurer of the household of Queen Elizabeth and steward also of the manors of the newly re-created dean and chapter of Westminster. Thomas ap Harry was the son and heir of Henry Vaughan of Tretower. He married Anne, daughter of Sir William Reade of Boarstall in Buckinghamshire, was knighted in 1558, died in 1560, and was buried in the Abbey Church on 15th December in that year. In 1562 his widow, Dame Anne, surrendered her lease of ‘one great mansion house within the precinct’ known as ‘Vaughan's House’, and was granted in return a lease of what in an older day had been the prior's house, which the dean had just vacated and which now is built up in the later Ashburnham House.