George Bryan

In the north choir aisle of Westminster Abbey is a monument to Captain George Bryan. The sculptor was John Bacon junior. The white marble tablet shows a kneeling woman mourning before an urn, with military trophies behind. The inscription reads:

Sacred to the memory of Captain George Bryan, late of HIs Majesty's Coldstream Regiment of Foot-Guards; son of the Revd. John Bryan and Eliza Louise, his wife, of Hertford in the island of Jamaica. He received the early part of his education at Winchester College, and finished his academical studies at Christ Church, Oxford. It was his happiness not only to merit the warmest esteem of the companions of his youthful years, but to obtain the highest approbation of those who guided his progress in the paths of science and of all who witnessed his unremitting zeal in the several duties of a military life. He fell, in the month of July 1809 in the 27th year of his age at the battle of Talavera in Spain, so glorious in the annals of British valour, but so deeply afflicting to a widowed mother. His remains were interred with every military honour in the garden of the convent of Saint Geronimo, when even the officers of the enemy joined in evincing respect to his memory, and sympathy for his untimely fate.