Robert Poole Finch

The Reverend Robert Poole Finch and his wife Lucy are buried in the north transept of Westminster Abbey. The gravestone, now worn away, is just inside the entrance door adjoining the stone to the Rifle Brigade. It read:

Mrs Lucy Finch, wife of Dr Robert Pool Finch, a Canon of this Church. She was born in 1729 and died in 1796. Dr R.P. Finch born 1723, died 1803.

The coat of arms on the stone showed "a chevron sable between three griffins passant" for Finch, impaling "sable a chevron or between three trefoils"

He was a son of the Reverend Richard Finch and Ann his wife and was baptised at Greenwich in Kent. Educated at Cambridge he became rector of St Michael's Cornhill in London from 1771-84 and rector of St John the Evangelist Westminster from 1784 to his death. For 37 years he was chaplain at Guy's Hospital. He was installed prebendary of Westminster in 1781 and was known as an eminent preacher and "an uncommonly fine and graceful person". He was treasurer to the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge for over twenty years. His only child Thomas became a Fellow of the Royal Society and died in 1810, his wife Mary surviving him.

There was formerly a monument to Robert in St John's Westminster but this was blitzed during the last war. The Latin inscription was recorded in a history of this church.

Further reading

"St John the Evangelist Westminster:Parochial Memorials" by J.E. Smith, 1892

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography