His seat was at Tawstock Court, three miles south of Barnstaple in North Devon, which he rebuilt in the Elizabethan style in 1574, the date being sculpted on the surviving gatehouse.

A magnificent[7] and sumptuous[8] monument exists in St Peter's Church, Tawstock, incorporating recumbent effigies of William Bourchier, 3rd Earl of Bath and his wife Elizabeth Russell.

Two vines grow up on either side of the main effigies, on the dexter inhabited with heraldic escutcheons showing five generations of ancestry described by five shields of Bourchier impaling the arms of their wives.

At the feet of the Earl is his crest of the head in profile and shoulders of a bearded oriental man wearing a Phrygian cap with a pointed tasselled top flopped over.

The Bourchier crest was explained by John Weever (died 1632) as follows:[13] "In the hall of the manor house of Newton Hall in this parish (i.e. Little Dunmow, Essex) remaineth in an old painting two postures, the one for an ancestor of the Bourchiers, combatant with another, being a pagan king, for the truth of Christ, whom the said Englishman overcame and in memory thereof his descendants have ever since bore the head of the same infidel as also used the surname BOWSER, as I had it out of the collections of Augustin Vincent, Windsor Herald, deceased" The Phrygian cap is an iconographical symbol of Oriental kings.

Lege viator quae magnatum saxa rarissime loquuntur: vir probus et nobilis uter(que) hic situs est.

Vixit in hac ipsa Devonia cui datus est praefectus et provinciam triginta plus minus annis integerrime administravit.

Uxorem duxit lectissimam foeminam sociam huius sepulchri D(omi)nam Elizabetham Francisci Comitis Bedfordiensis filiam ex qua genuit Joh(an)em Robertum et Edwardum filios et Franciscam filiam e quibus Edwardum modo Comitem Bathoniensem solum reliquit superstitem ipsum clarissimae familiae suis quoq(ue) virtutibus et foelicissimo conjugio futurum ornamentum.

Read O Traveller what (grave)stones of the great very seldom speak: Here lies a man both upright and noble, William Bourchier Earl of Bath, deserving of eternal memory amongst men.

Top: Bathon(i)ae Com(i)ti Devonae praefecto memoriae ergo ("To the memory of the Earl of Bath therefore to the prefect (i.e. Lord Lieutenant) of Devon").

Below is a Latin epigram with some words in capitals, which may relate to a chronogram or other word-game: Quid sibi vult tumulus quidve haec insignia luctus est comes in superos ecce locumo tenens quare fles Devonia vel Bathonia quare ("If you wish to know what is this pile or why this great mourning, the Earl behold is above as place-holder (lieutenant), as weeps Devon and Bath").