The Tomb of Mabilia de Murdak (also spelled Mabilla or Mabila) is a small 14th-century medieval monument. The tomb is part of a collection of stone memorials in the north chapel (or Gayton Chapel), which includes effigies of local nobility tied to dramatic family events, such as murder and pilgrimage.

The tomb features a diminutive freestone effigy of a young girl, approximately child-sized (under 3 feet tall), depicting Mabilia (d1310) as a veiled infant or toddler. She is shown in a loose gown and mantle, with her hands clasped in prayer, symbolizing innocence and piety, a common motif in medieval child memorials. The figure is finely carved, possibly by a local or regional sculptor, and rests on a simple plinth. 

Discovered in 1830 embedded in the exterior east wall of the chancel (during church restorations), the effigy was relocated and reset above a larger tomb recess in the north chapel. It now overlooks the grander effigy of her aunt (or grandmother) Scholastica de Gayton, who is depicted as an adult woman in a similarly draped gown under a multi-moulded pointed arch. The recess is richly detailed with bold mouldings and foliated designs, typical of early 14th-century English Gothic architecture.

This tomb is a rare surviving example of a medieval child effigy in England, offering insight into 14th-century mourning practices for noble infants amid family tragedy. It contrasts with the more elaborate adult tombs in the church, highlighting themes of lost potential.

Mabilia was the daughter of Sir Thomas de Murdak and Juliana de Gayton, herself a daughter of Sir Philip de Gayton (d. 1316), a prominent local knight who undertook a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in the early fourteenth century. The de Gayton family held substantial lands in Gayton, and their surviving tombs commemorate a turbulent lineage. In 1316 Juliana was accused of murdering her husband, Sir Thomas de Murdak, with the assistance of a retainer, Sir John Vaux. Tried before the King’s Bench in 1321, she was convicted of petty treason—the murder of one’s husband, legally classed as betrayal of the king, and sentenced to death by burning, the prescribed punishment for women in such cases. The King’s Bench roll records the verdict and the marginal note comburenda (“to be burned”)1, while the Calendar of Fine Rolls refers to the disposition of her lands “for which she was burnt.”2 Her accomplice, Vaux, as a man, escaped that fate: he was outlawed and imprisoned in the Tower of London, later pardoned and restored to his estates by 1327.3
The contrasting fates of Juliana and Vaux reveal the sharply gendered logic of medieval justice for petty treason, in which the nature of the offence was shaped as much by hierarchy and gender as by law.4 Only exceptionally did royal mercy substitute another penalty for women so condemned; in most records the formula comburenda or cremand appears beside the judgment, confirming the expectation of burning5. Mabilia, born before these events, appears to have lived into childhood; her monument, dated stylistically to c. 1320–25,6 is an unusually early example of a child’s effigy, dedicated memorials to children are seldom found before the later fourteenth century and only become common after c. 1370.7 Its exceptional nature may therefore signal more than simple bereavement: a discreet act of familial atonement for her mother’s crime, enfolded in the image of an innocent child.

Later retellings confused or sensationalised these events, some relocating Juliana’s death to Tyburn, others conflating her with her sister Scholastica (de Gayton, d. 1354, wife of Godfrey de Meaux)—yet the paired effigies in Gayton church preserve, in stone, a more complex story of disgrace, memory, and redemption. Mabilia, born before these events, appears to have lived into childhood; her monument, dated stylistically to c. 1320–25,8 may thus represent not only the commemoration of a lost child but also a discreet act of familial atonement for her mother’s crime. Later retellings confused or sensationalised these events, some relocating Juliana’s death to Tyburn, others conflating her with her sister Scholastica (de Gayton, d. 1354, wife of Godfrey de Meaux), yet the paired effigies in Gayton church preserve, in stone, a more complex story of disgrace, memory, and redemption.

• 1. KB 27/243, rex rot. 7
• 2. Edward II, vol. 3, 1319–1327, p. 38
• 3. Patent Rolls, 1 Edward III, pt. 1
• 4. Petty treason and gendered punishment.
  Before the Statute of Treasons of 1352 formally defined high treason, the killing of a social superior—most notably a husband by his wife, or a master by a servant—was treated at common law as petty treason (J. G. Bellamy, The Law of Treason in England in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 33–37). The offence carried the same moral taint as betrayal of the king. Custom dictated that men convicted of petty treason were drawn and hanged, while women were burned at the stake, an explicitly gendered penalty that avoided the “indecency” of public dismemberment but emphasised spiritual purification through fire (B. A. Hanawalt, Crime and Conflict in English Communities, 1300–1348 (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 108–10; S. Butler, “Petty Treason and the Punishment of Women,” Historical Journal 46 (2003), pp. 721–40).
• 5. for examples, see TNA KB 27/243 rex rot. 7; and C. Given-Wilson, The Royal Household and the King’s Affinity (New Haven, 1986), p. 94
• 6. Pevsner, Northamptonshire, p. 209
• 7. Saul, English Church Monuments in the Middle Ages
• 8. Pevsner, Northamptonshire, p. 209