It closes with a direct address to whoever happens to be passing: "Traveller, for them duly pray, and reflect that thou art subject to death, and soon to die." It is an unusually candid piece of stonework, and its survival owes something to chance rather than to careful preservation.

The monument commemorates Edward Butler, the first Viscount of Galmoy, who died in 1653. Butler was a member of the wider Ormonde family network, and the heraldry above the inscription makes the connection explicit: three shields of arms featuring the falcon crest, the lion sable, the three cups, and the saltire, all elements shared with the Ormonde arms. The Latin text, surmounted by those shields, sets out his titles and landholdings at Low Grange, Barrowmount, and Balliogan, then moves through the expected virtues, prudence, hospitality, liberality, zeal for the faith, before recording that he arranged this monument for himself, his wife Anne Butler, and their descendants. What gives the piece an edge is its opening motto: "Non fortior quam justus", not more brave than just. When the Cistercian abbey at Graiguenamanagh was being restored in 1813, the monument was discovered, according to Wilson writing in 1863, "amongst the rubbish." It was then built into the external wall of the vestry, where it has remained. A Cistercian abbey is a monastic complex founded under the strict reform movement that spread from Burgundy in the twelfth century; Duiske was established in 1204 and is one of the largest medieval abbey churches in Ireland. The monument's displacement and reuse mean it now sits outside the building rather than within any planned interior scheme, which gives it a slightly incongruous quality, a formal aristocratic memorial embedded in rubble stonework, addressed to passers-by who were never quite its intended audience.