Off in one corner of Canterbury Cathedral is St. Michael's Chapel (also called the Buffs' Chapel or the Holland Chapel), a place crowded with large memorials and closed to visitors walking in. However, having a good camera with a telephoto lens, I was able to take pictures of a number of the armorial memorials, and today will share the first of those.
This is a large memorial to, as you can see from the inscription immediately below, William Prude, Esq., Lieutenant Colonel in the Belgian Wars, slain a the siege of Maastricht on the 12th of July, 1632.
At the peak of the memorial is what truly caught my eye, of course.
I zoomed in to get a closer view of the coat of arms, helmet, mantling, and crest (as always, you can click on the image to see a larger picture):
The arms are blazoned: Quarterly: 1 and 4, Azure three otters in pale each with a sand-pride (fish) in its mouth or (Prude); 2 and 3, Gules on a chevron between three trefoils argent three pellets (Searle).
The crest is: An otter's head erased or bearing in its mouth a sand-pride proper(?) [should be argent].
It is a massive monument, erected by his surviving son Searles Prude.
I have, alas, been unable to find out anything about his life; almost every reference to him on the internet goes back to this ornately-carved monument in Canterbury Cathedral.
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