The vanished tombstone of William Hewling, Lyme Regis, 1685

At Lyme Regis, a tombstone at St Michael The Archangel Church has this inscription:

Here lieth the body of William Hewling, son of William Hewling of London, and grandson of William Kyffin, Esq., Alderman of London, who suffered martyrdom before he was full twenty years of age, engaging with the Duke of Monmouth for the Protestant religion and English liberty against Popery and slavery, September 12th, 1685.

(source here from 1894; however by 1922 the gravestone was described as "no longer exists").

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The Hewling brothers, William and Benjamin, were followers of the Duke of Monmouth and were arrested after the failure of his rebellion. Both were executed, William at Lyme aged 19 and Benjamin at Taunton aged 22. Their sister Hannah had pleaded for their release; her intervention, and payment of a colossal £1000, saved William from being disembowelled.

• Their grandfather William Kiffin was a "Strict and Particular Baptist" pastor (see this source).

• Kiffin's autobiography Remarkable Passages In The Life of William Kiffin (1689; 1823 edition is online here). He had met with his two grandsons after their arrests. It is moving to read the grandfather's account of the boys' last days and hours.

"The Sheriff having given his body to be buried, although it was brought from the place of execution without any notice given, yet very many of the town, to the number of about two hundred, came to accompany it. And several young women, of the best of the town, laid him in his grave, in Lyme church yard, the 18th of September, 1685."

• Hutchins' 1774 The history and antiquities of the county of Dorset gives this description here:

"In the church yard, on the S. side of the church was formerly a tomb, two sides of which, with the following inscription, are preserved, in that part of the church which is under the school" 

• Benjamin Hewling was one of 18 men who were executed at Taunton, and was reputedly buried at St Mary Magdalene Church at Taunton, now Taunton Minster. There is no known gravestone.