Samuel Langford

On the west wall of St Margaret's church Westminster is a memorial for Samuel Langford, by sculptor William Stanton. The inscription panel is flanked by columns and foliage with clusters of flowers at the base either side of his coat of arms ("paly of six or and gules, a bend argent, impaling azure a fess or, between three leopards faces of the second"). He was buried in the middle chancel of the church on 30th December 1690. His wife was probably the Ann Langford buried in the great vault of the church on 8th June 1694. The Latin inscription can be translated: 

Here is laid that which is mortal of Samuel Langford, Gent. who came from the town of Mansfield in the county of Nottingham. He was a man formed by nature for evry excellence, and fashioned with a character as charming as his physical appearance, with the heart, as well as the countenance, of a free man. His youth he gave over to the duties of a mature man, for at no time was he ever a child. Dear to all, serving the best of men, free from envy, he acquired wealth, which he employed without meanness and without extravagance but with magnificence. He lived dutifully at Court, temperately in the city, with clean hands at the Royal Exchequer, the administration of which he carried out so prudently that, being mindful of the brevity of life, and full of foresight, he laid up in heaven those treasures which shall not perish. He was deemed by us to be worthy of a longer life but by God of an early immortality, for he did not exceed the age of our most blessed Saviour (whose endurance in the face of death, on behalf of human weakness, he imitated). Having fulfilled all the duties of a good citizen, subject, husband, friend, in short of a Christian man, he met his last day in such a way as to embellish those very many blessings with which he had obliged his family. He left behind nothing more precious than his memory and example of his life. His weeping wife and daughter erected this monument in the year 1691.