Esther de la Tour de Gouvernet, Lady Eland

The graves of Esther de la Tour de Gouvernet, her mother and her grandmother are in the north ambulatory of Westminster Abbey. The gravestone inscription was re-cut in 1997 and an extra inscription added at the base.

Esther also had a monument of white marble, with a relief of her lying on a bier with her mourning mother, by the Huguenot sculptor Henri Nadauld, 1704. In the 19th century this was removed as it partly obscured the monument of Queen Eleanor of Castile. The inscription panel, which has the same inscription as the gravestone, in both English and Latin, was set up for a time in the nearby chapel of St John the Baptist but both panel and relief are now in store in the Abbey triforium.

The grave inscription reads:

Esther de la Tour de Gouvernet a name renowned in France, and which her excellent endowments of mind & body rendred much more illustrious, was the best of wives, and soon the widow of the most noble Lord Eland, eldest son of the Marquis of Halifax. Her extraordinary goodnesse towards all, her singular dutifulnesse to her parents made her beloved of all, but by her mother above all. Her soul thus adorned with heavenly graces, she early resigned to heaven, and her body to his tombe which her mother (herself allmost buryed in sorrows) as the least mark of her unspeakable grief, made for her. She dyed the 28th year of her age of the Christian account 1694

The additional lines on the stone read:

With Lady Eland in a vault nearby lie her mother Esther de la Tour du Pin, Marquise de Gouvernet + 1733 And her grandmother Esther Hervart +1697, Huguenot refugees from France at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes 1685. Restored by the Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland 1998

Her grandmother Esther Vimart married Bartholomew Hervart and had six children. Her husband was a banker and appointed by Mazarin to be Controller General of the Finances. They placed their large fortune at the disposal of Louis XIII and he gave them various estates which were confiscated at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Her son Philibert was ambassador in Geneva. She was buried on 7th December 1697.

Her mother Esther married Charles de la Tour du Pin, Marquis de Gouvernet, in 1655 and their children were Esther, Charles, Madelaine and Jean Frederic. She had permission to join her daughter in England on condition that she left her other children in France. Later naturalized she was a well known figure in Society and Lady Cowper said of her "She is the most charming, agreeable woman in the world, without any of the ill humours of eighty". She died in her house in St James' Square and was buried on 10th July 1722 (not 1733 as on the stone).

Esther, Lady Eland was born in France in 1666 and married Henry Savile, Lord Eland, eldest son of George, 1st Marquess of Halifax. They had no children.

Photos of the stone and the relief can be purchased from Westminster Abbey Library.