Elizabeth Franklin brass in Holywell Church, 1622
The above brass is on the wall of St Cross (Holywell) Church (now Balliol Historic Collections Centre). It shows Mrs Elizabeth Franklin, the wife of Thomas Franklin, landlord of the King's Arms, sitting up in bed with her newborn child wrapped in swaddling clothes on her lap, but they both died on 31 July 1622 shortly after the birth. Elizabeth was aged 35, and this was her fourth difficult childbirth: her three earlier dead babies lie wrapped in shrouds on the coverlet. The extant Holywell parish registers only date from 1653, so this family does not appear in them.
The words “of such / are the / kingdome / of heaven” are written in four parts beside each child. Elizabeth has her hands together in prayer, with the words, “Thy will be done” coming from her mouth and rising up to heaven. From three angels float back the words: “Thy prayere is heard”; “Receave thy crowne”; and “Thy patience is tri’d”.
The inscription under the engraving reads:
Here lyeth Eliza: Franklin third wife of Mr Tho: Franklin who dangerous:
ly escaping death at 3 severall travells in childe-bed, died together wth
the fourth July 31: Aetat: 35: 1622
If heavens inheritors on earth be tride,
that thou art one of them, thou need’st not feare
What thou indur’dst these dead have testify’de,
and thus being try’de a crowne deserv’st to weare
Lett then thy husbands children cease their woe
thou lefts them only to thine owne to goe
The last two lines implied that Elizabeth, who was the third Mrs Franklin, had been looking after her husband's children by either or both of his first two wives, but that no child of her own had survived.
This brass plate is now on the south tower pillar of St Cross (Holywell) Church, but Anthony Wood (City of Oxford, III: 189–90) reveals that it was originally on the south wall at the upper end of a little chapel on the south side of the body of that church.
Thomas Franklin, first landlord of the King’s Arms
A licence was granted to “Thomas Francklyn of Holywell, dwelling at a house called the Augustyn Friers, which is very fit for an inn” to set up an inn at his home with the sign of the King’s Arms on 18 September 1607. The following year, there was plague in Oxford, and it must have struck Franklin's inn, for the council record on 30 July 1608 states:
It is agreed that some two women shalbee procured to goe into Francklin’s howse to bury the mayde that is now dead, and that they shalbee kept with sufficient dyet and mayntenaunce either in that howse or in some cabin that shalbee buylt; and moreover that order shalbee taken for erecting of cabins as necessitie shall requier in place conveinent as may bee gotten.
The inn was rebuilt on the same site on the corner of Holywell Street and Parks Road in the early eighteenth century.
The engraving below (Historic England HT10214) shows the former Augustine Friary on the site of the King's Arms: