English: Edward Cole Esq., Burgess for Winchester 1601, Mayor of Winchester 1587, 1598 and 1612. Principal Registrar of the Bishop of Winchester.

From: [1] After the time of the Reformation a number of Mayors and aldermen were buried within the Cathedral. Some are commemorated by flat slabs or leger-stones with suitable inscriptions and armorial bearings ; a few by mural tablets or monuments ; while the names of others occur simply in the register of burials. We have already had occasion to refer, in other connections, to several of these excellent men. There was " William Symonds, Gentleman, twice Mayor of Winchester," in 1585 and again in 1596,* who died in the year 1606, and who left to the poor a noble benefaction. There was Mr. Edward Cole, whose fine Jacobean monument is fixed against the wall of the north aisle, f and of whom the following story is related, that " on 29 September, 1590, when Mr. William Badger, Mayor, Mr. Recorder, and the residue of the mayor's brethren were assembled at the Guildhall to receive Mr. Edward Cole, mayor elect, to take his oath ; Thomas Badham and William Budd were sent to fetch him, but returned with the news that Mr. Cole was asleep and could not be awakened....Mr. Edward Cole, mayor of Winchester in 1612, who was also principal Registrar of the Bishop of Winches- ter ; his son, also Edward, who succeeded him in the same office...The earliest mural monument set up within the Cathedral after the Reformation is fixed beneath the eighth window from the west, in the north aisle. It has been described as " a vast and clumsy monument of bad Corinthian archi- tecture with whimsical ornaments."* It is, however, of fine design and workmanship, and would make a very striking mantelpiece in the hall of a Jacobean manor-house ; but it is out of place in a Cathedral. No inscription now appears upon it, but it was erected in the reign of James I., to the memory of one Edward Cole, who was buried in the Cathedral on November 2nd, 1617. A small slab, placed beneath the monument by Dean Kitchin, records the fact that Mr. Edward Cole was Mayor of Winchester in the years 1587, 1598 and 1612, and was the " Principal Registrar " of the Bishop of Winchester....A small and modest tablet of black and white marble, placed against the west wall of the north transept, in what is now the Epiphany Chapel, commemorates Mary, the wife of Dr. Cole, Prebendary of Westminster, and second daughter of Sir William Blackstone, the famous authority on English law and author of the Commentaries. Sir William's eldest daughter, Sarah, was the wife of Dr. Rennell, Dean of Winchester. The sisters died within three weeks of each other, in January, 1830, Mrs. Cole on the 10th and Mrs. Rennell on the 29th, and they were both buried in the north transept of the Cathedral. Mrs. Rennell's mural monument is placed over the entrance to the crypt, and has a lengthy inscription, doubtless written by her husband, who was an adept at such compositions. Her tablet is decorated with the Rennells' coat-of-arms, on a cross moline a roundel, impaling

that of Sir William Blackstone, two bars, in chief three cocks.