Lying within a hexagonal grave-plot at the ruins of Mothel's Augustinian abbey, a limestone slab just over two metres long carries an inscription that has remained legible for more than five centuries. Cut in Gothic script and composed in Latin, it names its occupant with an unusual distinction: not merely a man of standing, but "captain of his nation."

The slab measures 2.24 metres by 0.8 metres and is decorated with a raised cross in relief, the kind of craftsmanship that would have signalled considerable local prestige in the late medieval period. The inscription reads, in full Latin form, Hic jacet Ricardus Poer suae nationis capitaneus que obiit III die mensis Octobris Anno Domine Millesimo CCCCLXXXIII, meaning "Here lies Richard Power, captain of his nation, who died the third of October, 1483." The phrase "captain of his nation" was a specific designation in late medieval Ireland, used among the Hiberno-Norman and Gaelic lordly classes to denote the elected or recognised head of a kin group or sept. The Powers were a prominent Hiberno-Norman family in Waterford and Tipperary, descendants of the original Anglo-Norman settlers who had over generations become deeply embedded in the local political landscape. That Richard Power merited such an epitaph, carved into limestone and placed within a purpose-built hexagonal enclosure, suggests he was a figure of genuine authority in the region during the turbulent decades before the Tudor consolidation of Ireland.