There still remains, however, in the family of the Heathcotes, an
orderly-book of a troop of horse, which tradition says had some connexion
with his fortunes. Affixed to this defaced and imperfect document, is a
fragment of some diary or journal, which has reference to the condemnation
of Charles I. to the scaffold.
The body of Content lay near his infant children, and it would seem that
he still lived in the first quarter of the last century. There was an aged
man, lately in existence, who remembers to have seen him, a white-headed
patriarch, reverend by his years, and respected for his meekness and
justice. He had passed nearly, or quite, half-a-century unmarried. This
melancholy fact was sufficiently shown by the date on the stone of the
nearest mound. The inscription denoted it to be the grave of "Ruth,
daughter of George Harding of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, and wife of
Capt. Content Heathcote." She died in the autumn of 1675, with, as the
stone reveals, "a spirit broken for the purposes of earth, by much family
affliction, though with hopes justified by the covenant and her faith in
the Lord.
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