The English ancestry of Reinold and Matthew Marvin of Hartford, Ct ...

Reinold and Matthew Marvin 23
" renewals seem to have swept away all traces of the early
Norman architecture."
In the seventh year of Edward IV, 1468 (during the life-
time of Roger Marvin), the corporation of Ipswich granted
the Parish a piece of land on the west of the Church-yard,
on condition that a red rose be duly rendered annually, if
demanded,— which may show the Lancastrian sympathies of
the town at that period. In 1547 the tower contained three
bells. In the Church there are many mural tablets, most
of which date from the seventeenth century, and there is a
monument of colored marbles by the south-east door. In
earlier times St. Stephen's contained numerous "brasses,"
as shown by the "reaved" stones in the floor, which once
held them ; one of these brasses, erected in 1584, now partly
broken, is all that is left in place. When the building was
restored in 1866, two others were dug up in the Church-yard,
one of which, quite perfect, has a certain interest for us :
it commemorates Thomas, a grandson of Sir Humphrey
Wingfield, and a descendant of this Sir Humphrey married
John Marvin, of Ramsey, who died in 1 57 1.
The Records of the Parish preserve the names of some of
its early benefactors; in 1500 John Boyden left it "a newly-
written Mass-book," and in 1504 a legacy of £,4. was be-
queathed "for the making of a silver censer." Roger Mar-
vin's bequests amounted to 235-. 4^/., not a very large sum,
judged by present standards ; but as I find it stated that the
value of money then was not far from sixteen times what it
is to-day, it was about equivalent to one hundred dollars of