Richard Burn

On the north wall of St Margaret's church Westminster is a tablet to Richard Burn of the county of Westmoreland (now Cumbria). At the top is a rather worn coat of arms "quarterly argent and sable four lions heads caboshed sable and argent, on a chief gules four mullets of the first". The Latin inscription can be translated:

Sacred to the memory of Richard Burn, Gent. born in Kendall in Westmorland, recently living in Deanscales, Westmorland, for more than thirty years a member of the Board of the most reverend and honourable administrators of Queen Anne's Bounty, endowed to augment the poorer benefices of the Church of England. He was also Treasurer to the honourable and venerable Society which was set up for the purpose of converting the slaves of North America to the Christian faith. These great offices, to which he constantly applied his mind, he fulfilled acquiring honour for himself. Deemed worthy in the estimation of his superiors, respected by his friends, deeply and heartily beloved and esteemed by his family, praised by all, he finished his mortal course on the sixteenth day of January in the 78th year of his age, the year of salvation 1822 "in certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life". His mortal remains are deposited beneath in the crypt of this church. His sorrowing friends wished to erect this monument. "Our life vanishes like a wave in the sand, or like a phantom of the night, deluding our sense in the darkness.