In the cross aisle, under the arms and crest of Holman, is the following inscription, on a white marble:
Hicjacet Carolus Holman, flius Georgii Holman, de Warkworth, Armigeri, et Anastasia, filiæ Gulielmi, Vicecomitis de Stafford, qui obiit Calebs die ix Aprilis, anno ætatis xxv. salutis MDCCXVII.
Cujus animæ propitietur Deus. Amen.
The mansion was last inhabited by Mr Eyre, (the antagonist of Churton,) but about five years since was pulled down, materials sold, the ponds filled up, and the garden, with a pigeon-house at a small distance, is all that remains to mark the scite of it."
From the epitaph on George Holman, Esq. it appears, that he died in 1698; and that he had by his lady nine children. Dryden became a Catholic in 1684, and I think it probable, that Mr Holman's marriage took place that same year, or the following; which consequently fixes the date of the poem.
And fair St Lucy with the borrowed light
Of moon and stars, had lengthened night.
Dryden here shows his knowledge of the Roman calendar, and martyrology. The feast of St Lucy, Virgin, and Martyr, is kept on the 18th of December, which is within eight days of the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year.
P. 207. l. 9.From her their glorious resurrection came.
Anastasia, in Greek, means resurrection. The feast of St Anastasia, martyr, is kept on Christmas day, probably from the circumstance, that the popes anciently said their second mass of Christmas night, or rather that of the morning, in the church of St Anastasia, in Rome; whence, a commemoration of her is made in the second mass.—(Butler's "Saints' Lives," vol. xii. p. 336.)
l. 13.And she, to marriage then, her second birth was born.
From this line, I think, we may infer that the marriage was celebrated on Christmas day.
When we combine all these circumstances, that the lady, her husband, and the poet, were Roman Catholics, for which religion Lord Stafford had lately
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