Thomas’s wife Frances, who died on 26th December 1805, at No 36 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, was interred in a large enclosed vault on the west side of Hampstead Church. A monument, by ‘Mr Bacon junior’ was erected in her memory by Thomas. According to the Gentleman’s Magazine May 1817 the monument was ‘simple and chaste; consisting of a female figure on one side, supporting a scroll with an inscription (which forms the centrical object); on the other side a figure of Hope; the scroll surmounted by a sepulchral urn.
The inscription is as follows:
“Near this place
lies buried
the Honourable Frances Erskine,
the most faithful and
most affectionate of women.
Her Husband,
Thomas, Lord Erskine
an inhabitant of this parish,
raised this Monument
to her lamented Memory
A.D. 1809”
He also erected a marble tablet in the chancel of the church to the memory of his grandfather, the Earl of Buchan, who had died in Hampstead in 1745.
Below is an extract from a letter from the Hon Thomas Erskine dated at Pensacola, Sept 8, 1765
taken from St. James's Chronicle or the British Evening Post December 3, 1765 - December 5, 1765. 17th and 18th Century Burney Collection. Web. 17 Oct. 2016.
