What makes the example at Newtown Earley in Co. Kilkenny quietly arresting is less its form than its inscription, a Latin verse carved in raised Old English lettering that runs around the edges and continues along the chamfered sides of the mensa. The words belong to a well-worn medieval tradition of memento mori: "I am what thou wilt be, I was what thou art. Pray for me I beseech thee." It is the kind of message that does not age.

The tomb commemorates John Swetman, Baron of Erley, who died on 28 May 1605, and his wife Ellen Fanning, who had predeceased him, dying on a date in 1595 that is now partially illegible on the stone. The mensa, measuring just over two metres in length and 0.7 metres wide, carries a raised cross down its centre flanked by heraldic shields: the Sweetman arms on one side, and on the other the fretty pattern associated with the St. Legers alongside an eagle displayed. The cross-head is decorated with fleur-de-lis terminals and stands on a carved mound, beneath which faint markings of a skull and crossbones can still be made out. Intriguingly, the tomb was signed by its maker. Along the chamfered edge runs the line "Walterus Kerin fabricabit tamba 1600", meaning Walter Kerin made this tomb in 1600, five years before John Swetman's death and almost certainly commissioned in anticipation of it. The four slabs that likely formed the complete chest tomb, the mensa, a front panel, and two side panels, were uncovered during a graveyard clean-up at the medieval church of Newtown Earley between 1985 and 1987, and are now housed within the interior of the church itself.