Lady Margaret's Tomb with around 30 copies.
Her fine tomb is by Italian sculptor Pietro Torrigiano, with a portrait effigy in gilt bronze of the Countess in her old age, wearing a widow’s dress with a hood and long mantle. Her head rests on two pillows with Tudor badges and the delicate and characteristic wrinkled hands are raised in prayer. At her feet is the yale (a mythical beast with swivel horns), family crest of the Beaufort’s. The tomb chest is of black marble with sculpted bronze shields of arms around the base. The inscription in Latin was composed by Erasmus. It can be translated:
“Margaret of Richmond, mother of Henry VII, grandmother of Henry VIII, who gave a salary to three monks of this convent and founded a grammar school at Wimborne, and to a preacher throughout England, and to two interpreters of Scripture, one at Oxford, the other at Cambridge, where she likewise founded two colleges, one to Christ, and the other to St John, his disciple. Died A.D.1509, III Kalends of July [29 June]”.
