Sir Richard MUSGRAVE Knight

  General Notes:

from: A Tour In Westmorland by Sir Clement Jones, published 1948


In the Musgrave chapel on the south side is a plain altar-tomb to Sir Richard Musgrave, who died 1464, Elizabeth his wife and Thomas his son, with the Musgrave shield-of-arms (Azure six ring or) on the edge of the slab. In this chapel there is another and earlier altar-tomb assigned to Sir Richard de Musgrave, grandfather of the above Sir Richard. When this tomb was removed, on the rebuilding of the chancel in 1847, skeletons were found in a walled grave underneath the tomb; and in the grave was also found a boar's tusk, confirming the local tradition that this knight killed the last wild boar on Wild Boar Fell.
Kirkby Stephen Church is one of the two largest in the county. Before the dissolution of the monasteries in the reign of Henry VIII it belonged to St. Mary's Abbey, York, but afterwards, unlike Kirkby Lonsdale, Heversham and Kendal in the same county whose advowsons were all given to Trinity College, Cambridge, the rectory of Kirkby Stephen was sold in 1547 by Edward VI to Sir Richard Musgrave who in turn re-sold it to Thomas, Lord Wharton, in whose family it remained until the first and last Duke of Wharton sold it to his steward, Matthew Swales. Subsequently it was bought by an ancestor of the present patron, Lord Lonsdale.

Richard married Elizabeth BEETHAM, daughter of Sir Thomas BEETHAM and Unknown. (Elizabeth BEETHAM was born circa 1390 in Beetham, Westmoreland, England.)