Title:

Countess

First Name:

Christiana

Last Name:

Cavendish

Memorial Type:

Memorial - Funerary

Does the monument still exist?

No

Installation Date:

after 1628 or 1674

Inscription:

not known. See Christian's will: My Bodie I commite to the Earth as aforesaid, Willing and desiring that the same together with that of my deare Sonne Charles Cavendish…(which at present is deposited in the Church of Newarke, hee being slayne not farer from that place in his Majesties Service) may…be carried by the way of Newarke aforesaid be thence removed, and both together interred at the same tyme in the Vault of St Alhallowes Chancell in the Towne of derby next to the Corps of my deare Lord and husband the late Earle of Devonshire.(The Will of Christian Countess of Devonshire, Dowager, PROB 11/348/99, Public Record Office, The National Archives, Kew, fols. 73v-74r.)

Allegiance:

Royalist

Condition:

Average

Condition Description:

--

Memorial Notes:

Freestanding monument approximately twelve feet high in the form of a temple, supported by four pilasters forming angled corners. Under the domed roof, full-length marble figures of William and Christian stood upright in anticipation of the Last Judgement. The corners of the monument were ornamented with busts of their four children: William, 3rd Earl of Devonshire; Charles, lieutenant general in the Civil War; Henry, who died in infancy; and Anne, wife of Robert Rich, 3rd Earl of Warwick. (from: Lauenstein, Eva, The Funeral Monuments of the Cavendish Family, pp.387-407) Remains of a once elegant free-standing memorial to the second earl and countess of Devon shire (terminus post quem l628, by Edward Marshall), dismantled in 1876...In 1655, the second countess, Christiana, obtained a bishop's licence for the erection of a memorial chapel for herself and her ancestors, to be erected on the south side of the chancel and to measurc 24' x 22' (Chatswonh Archives). This chapel was removed in Gibbs' rebuilding of 1723-5. (from: Morris, Richard K. and Butler, Lawrence (1994) The Cavendish vault, Derby Cathedral. Derbyshire Archaeological Journal, 114. pp. 14-28)