Thomas Ralph Winstanley

In the east cloister of Westminster Abbey is a memorial tablet to Thomas Ralph Winstanley. He is buried nearby, as are his father the Reverend Thomas Winstanley and his mother Sylvia. The Latin inscription can be translated:

Here is buried T.R. Winstanley, a youth, for gentleness of manners, simplicity and faith, second to none. First admitted to Westminster School, then afterwards elected a King's Scholar, Captain of his contemporaries, thence elected to Trinity College, Cambridge, still chief of his fellows, taken a little before with a bloody flux from the lungs he died on 21st May in the 21st year of his age and A.D. 1769, by all, alas, deservedly lamented.

If piety, transparent modesty, most spotless virtue, considerable ability, shrewdness and innocence, if a courteous elegance and appearance be the sign of an honest mind, charms of a young man and wisdom of an old; if these things have any nobility, or any lovable quality, that rightly, child, is all yours, that distinction is clearly for you.

His father was buried on 13th February 1789 aged 74 and was the son of Ralph Winstanley of Wigan. Educated at Oxford and Cambridge he became prebendary of St Paul's cathedral and rector of St Dunstan in the East church and prebendary of Peterborough. His wife Silvia was buried in July 1799 aged 85. Her first husband had been Colonel John Brathwaite (her eldest daughter from this union married Bonnell Thornton who has a monument in the same cloister).