Somewhere along the way it came down, and now rests flat among the ruins, its carved inscription facing upward, still legible after more than three centuries.

The slab dates to 1679 and was commissioned by one Samuel Burton, Esquire, who had it made for himself and his family. What makes the inscription quietly curious is its specificity about origins. Rather than simply naming the deceased or offering a pious epitaph, the stone declares that the Burtons descended from the house of Longnor in St Chad's Parish, Shropshire. That is a deliberate act of identity, a settler family in County Clare taking care to preserve their English lineage in stone. Longnor is a small Shropshire parish, and the mention of it here, cut into a monument in a medieval Irish abbey, suggests Burton was anxious that his family's provenance not be forgotten, even as they established themselves on the western edge of Ireland. Clare Abbey itself is an Augustinian foundation with medieval origins, the ruins of which still stand outside Ennis, and the slab sits within that older fabric, its seventeenth-century confidence now worn to something quieter.