Next Up!

Moving along the Tremont Street fence fronting the King's Chapel Burying Ground in Boston, Massachusetts, we come to our third armorial tombstone, No. 6.

This one is a little tricky, because the sources describing it don't match.

What the arms look like to me, based on what can be seen on the top portion of the half-buried stone, is: A charged field, though it's difficult to make out the charges well, on a chief three delfs. No crest.

It was a little (but only a little) clearer when we were there back in 2008:

Preachers, Patriots & Plain Folks, Boston’s Burying Ground Guide says: ”Waine, E. … ae 13, 1787”, but dates the tomb to 1741. But the arms on this tombstone are not found in Burke’s General Armory under either Wain or Waine.

The Heraldic Journal, vol. II, pp. 20-21, says: 

The tomb bearing the following arms is inscribed, Capt. John Steel, and was no doubt the property of the gentleman who died July 18, 1768, ‘far advanced in years,’ as his will states. He was in in 1750 the Captain of the North Battery, and was doubtless the son of the Thomas Steele who died 8 Jan. 1735-6, aged 71, upon whom Rev. Benj. Colman preached a funeral discourse.

The arms illustrated there are: [Field] a bend counter-compony Ermine and [tincture] between two lion’s heads erased [tincture] on a chief [tincture] three delfs [tincture].

Going back to Burke’s General Armory based on this identication of the arms, we find: “Steel (Derwent Bank, co. Cumberland) [also, Steele]. Argent a bend checky sable and ermine between two lion’s heads erased gules on a chief azure three billets or. Crest – A lion’s head erased gules.”

Obviously, the arms on the tombstone do not have a crest. And it is very plausible that the stonecarver didn't know that heralds treat billets and delfs as different, though similar, charges, or that checky and counter-compony are also different, though similar.** But those two items notwithstanding, the arms 

Putting the entire story of this armorial tomb together,* it would appear that this was originally the tomb of Captain John Steel, who died in 1768 and whose arms are carved upon the face of the stone, but where nine years later 13-year-old Master Waine was also buried, this practice not being uncommon as we have seen before in several of the tombs in Copp's Hill Burying Ground in some of our recent posts of armorial memorials there.

* Well, except that this still doesn't explain the 1741 dating of the tomb. Is it an error? Is there additional information about which we have not been told? It will take more research to determine what's going on with that.

** Counter-compony has but two rows of checker squares; checky has three or more. Or as James Parker tells us in his A Glossary of Terms Used in Heraldry: "If there be two rows [of checks] it is called counter compony (or compony counter compony), but if more, it comes under the term chequy." As I said, different, though similar.