An English Coat of Arms With an American Connection

Not having taken any trips recently to photograph and identify coats of arms and post them here, I have been reduced to going through pictures from previous trips to find and identify heraldry that I haven't posted here before.

Fortunately for me, and I hope for you, I've been able to do some of that.

And beginning today, we're going to look at some heraldry that I photographed, but did not research or post on this blog, found in Temple Church, London.

Today's is especially fun, as I discovered when researching it, that there is an American connection.

But first, here's the memorial to Thomas Lake (1656-1711), Utter Barrister of the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple.

Now, you'd think that with an impressive memorial like this, and his position in the world of the time, that there would be a lot of biographical information easily available about him.

You would be incorrect.

Still, using multiple sources, I have been able to gather the following information about Thomas Lake, Jr.

Thomas Lake was a Boston (Massachusetts Bay Colony)-born English-educated lawyer, who was a barrister of the Middle Temple, London.

He was the son of Captain Thomas Lake, a wealthy Bostonian who was the younger half-brother of Sir Edward Lake, 1st Baronet. Captain Lake bought Arrowsic, Maine, in 1660, and was killed aged 61 in a fight with Native Americans at his trading post, now the Clarke and Lake Company Archeological Site, on August 14, 1676. He is buried in Copp's Hill Burying Ground, Boston, and I found a photograph of his gravestone there.*

Sir Edward Lake died without issue aged 77 on April 18, 1674, and his estate subsequently devolved to Thomas Lake, the son of Captain Lake.

The arms at the top of the monument may be blazoned: Quarterly: 1, for a coat of augmentation granted to Edward Lake by King Charles I, for services at Edge Hill, to be borne in the first quarter, Gules an arm embowed in armor issuing from the sinister side of the shield holding in the hand a sword erect all proper thereto affixed a banner argent charged with a cross between sixteen escutcheons gules, on the cross a lion passant guardant or; 2, Sable on a bend between six crosses crosslet argent a mullet [gules] for difference; 3, Argent a chevron between three boar’s heads couped sable; 4, Quarterly argent and sable on a bend sable three fleurs-de-lis argent; impaling Per fess indented argent and sable three ravens counterchanged (Story/Storey). 

Thomas Lake, Jr.'s wife was Elizabeth Storey; they married November 30, 1676 in Kniveton, Derbyshire.

At the base of the monument, we find a repetition of the coat of augmentation granted by King Charles I.

So, a wonderful armorial memorial to a man with a very interesting family history! Even if it was a little hard to track down.

* In an interesting (at least to me!) coincidence, my 10th great grandmother, Judith (or Goodeth) Copp, née Itchenor, and the wife of the man for whom Copp's Hill is named, is also buried in Copp's Hill Burying Ground. Her gravestone is not very far from that of Capt. Thomas Lake.