Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Gethin, Grace
GETHIN, GRACE, Lady (1676–1697), learned lady, daughter of Sir George Norton of Abbot's Leigh, Somersetshire, was born in 1676, married Sir Richard Gethin, baronet, of Gethin Grott, Ireland, and died on 11 Oct. 1697. She was buried at Hollingbourn, Kent, and a monument was erected to her in Westminster Abbey. A sermon was founded to be preached in the abbey upon Ash Wednesday in memory of her. A collection of papers found after her death was published in 1699 as ‘Reliquiæ Gethinianæ;’ a second edition appeared in 1700, and a third, to which a portrait was prefixed, in 1703. The last includes a copy of verses by Congreve, and to it is appended a funeral sermon by Peter Birch [q. v.], published separately in 1700. The book is more creditable to the taste than to the knowledge of her executors. Many passages are from Bacon's ‘Essays,’ copied in her commonplace book and mistaken for her original composition by several of her biographers.
[Reliquiæ Gethinianæ, 1703; Ballard's Learned Ladies, 1775, pp. 252–3; Noble's Granger, i. 280; Stanley's Memorials of Westminster Abbey; Collinson's Somersetshire, iii. 153.]