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In the fifteenth century John Bluet held the living, one of whose ancestors was probably the civilian with his feet on a fleece, whose fine recumbent effigy is in Harlaxton church. His daughter married Robert Bawde, whose brass is in the church, and their family were in possession till 1720. A large monument on the north wall commemorates Elizabeth Lady Brownlow, née Freke, whose son John built Belton House. She died in 1684. There is also a brass to Peregrine Bradshaw and his wife, who died in 1669 and 1673.

Dr. William Stukeley, the famous antiquary, who was a Lincolnshire man, born at Holbeach in 1687, was, at one time, rector of Somerby.

Ropsley, two and a half miles to the east, shows some ‘Long and Short’ Saxon work at the north-east angle of the nave. The tower has a Decorated broach spire. At the south porch is the couplet,

“Hac non vade via

Nisi dices Ave Maria.”

BISHOP FOX

The church has also a very notable little stained glass window with an armed figure of Johannes de Welby. In the church a curious broad projection from the east window of the north aisle forms a bridge to the rood loft. In the eyes of a Corpus man, like the writer, Ropsley is sacred as being the birthplace of Bishop Fox, who held successively the sees of Exeter, Bath and Wells, Durham and Winchester, and founded, or helped to found, the Grantham Grammar School near his old home in 1528, and also, in 1516, the College of Corpus Christi, Oxford.