Elizabeth and Jane Joye

In the north cloister of Westminster Abbey is the gravestone of sisters Elizabeth and Jane Joye. The inscription, which is now quite faint, reads:

Mrs Elizabeth Joye obt.[died] 30 March 1790 aetat. [aged] 72. Mrs Jane Joye obt. 30 November 1810 aetat. 84. Here also rests Mary wife of the Revd. Tho. Champnes who died July 19 1813 aged 32 years

Elizabeth was the eldest child of James Joye (a son of the well known Peter Joye (1636-1721) merchant and founder of the free school in St Anne's Blackfriars in London and benefactor of Sion College) and his wife Mary (daughter of Robert Jeffes, merchant of London). She died unmarried (the Mrs. on the stone denotes Mistress) and left a large fortune to her sister Jane and bequests to nephews and nieces. Jane was baptised at Acton in 1727 and died unmarried and "immensely rich" at Richmond. Her principal legatee was her nephew Keane Fitzgerald.

Mary Champnes was mentioned in Jane's will, although no relationship is given. Mary was buried with the sisters and was a daughter of John and Mary Macnamara and wife of the Reverend Thomas Weldon Champnes (died 1841), minor canon at the Abbey from 1800 and later vicar of parishes in Buckinghamshire. Their son Reverend Edward Thomas Champnes succeeded his father in the vicarage at Upton and died in Bath in 1875.

Further reading

For information on Peter Joye see Oxford Dictionary of National Biography