Achilles Preston

Colonel Achilles Preston died on 12th July 1764 aged 31 in the East Indies and his body was returned for burial in the south transept of Westminster Abbey on 12th June 1778. He has no monument and there does not seem to have been an inscribed gravestone for him. 

His father was also called Achilles (buried in the chapel of the Mercers Company in London in 1770 with his wife) and he had sisters Elizabeth, Martha and Ann. He was a colonel in a regiment of foot and was killed at the siege of Madura while leading the storming party against the fort. He was described as "the darling of the army and an ornament to the service". When he made a will in 1763 he was a major in the East India Company at Trichinopoly. it is not clear which member of the family was responsible for having the body buried at the Abbey, unless it was his uncle Alexander Whitchurch.