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Sonning Church

North Wall: Marble Mural Monument with Bust

Lady Ann Clarke was the daughter of John Williams Esq. of Marnhull in Dorset and sister of Sir Edmund Williams, Bt. She married Sir John Clarke (dspc.1679), Bt., of Salford in Warwickshire, the son and heir of Sir Simon Clarke (cr. Bt. by James I in 1617) by his first wife, Margaret, daughter and coheir of John Alderford Esq. of Abbots Salford in Warwickshire. She died in 1653 and this monument was put up by her husband and another brother,  John, the following year. The latter also erected the adjoining monument to their brother, Carew. Thirteen years later, Lady Anne was joined by her widower's second wife, Anne the daughter of Leonard & Ursula Hooke of Erleigh Court, whose parents have memorial slabs in the floor nearby.

"Sacred to the Memory of Lady Anne Clarke wife of Sir John Clarke of Salford in the County of Warwickshire, bart., daughter of Sir John Williams, late of Marnhull in the County of Dorset, knight, HSE.
Reader give your tears at this tomb, but make them true like those which her husband and her brother, John Williams, bart. and MMP, shed in the Year of Our Lord 1654. For here her husband chose to lay her ashes, in an urn bearing violets. Maurice Williams, the golden knight of her extinct paternal line, also says an eternal farewell. She died 1st September in the Year of Our Lord 1653. Also in this tomb is buried Lady Anne Clarke, second wife of  Sir John Clarke, bart., and daughter of Leonard Hooke, gent. She was struck down, amid the lamentations of many good men, on 1st December 1667"