BURIAL WITHOUT RELIGIOUS SERVICE—BURIAL.
(Vol. v., pp. 466. 549.)
There can be no doubt, I think, that a burial ground, whether parish churchyard or cemetery, so long as it has been consecrated, or even licensed by the bishop, is only legally useable for interments performed according to "the ecclesiastical laws of this realm;" i.e. the burial service, as rubrically directed, must be read by a clergyman over the corpse. Whether the bishop would have proceeded by law against the clergyman in Carlile's case, supposing he had desisted from the service under the protests of the sons, may be questioned; but that he could have done so is beyond a doubt. The sixty-eighth canon says, that "no minister shall refuse or delay to bury any corpse that is brought to the church or churchyard ... in such manner and form as is prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer. And if he shall refuse, &c., he shall be suspended by the bishop of the diocese from his ministry by the space of three months." The consecration, or episcopal licence, seems to tie the burial ground to the burial service, except in the three cases of persons who die excommunicated, unbaptised, or by their own hands; and I imagine that a clergyman would render himself liable to suspension by his bishop, who either allowed interments to take place in the churchyard without the burial service, or, on the other hand, used the service in unconsecrated or unlicensed ground. By the 3 Ja. I. c. 5., there is a penalty for burying a corpse away from the church; but this law is either repealed or obsolete. If any services of the church be used by a clergyman, except "according to order," I imagine that he renders himself liable to penal consequences; but it may be sometimes thought best to omit them. Sometimes, however, as in the case of baptisms being allowed in drawing-rooms, there is such an intentional oversight as is quite indefensible.
The story which I have heard of Baskerville's burial is as follows;—He died at Birmingham, but was not interred, and his corpse was kept in the house in which he had lived. After a time this house was sold, and the purchaser of it became embarrassed by the unexpected discovery that he was in possession of the old printer's mortal remains. He applied to the clergyman of
the parish for release from his difficulty; and this gentleman, being a man of the world, said that he was the last person who ought to have been consulted, but since it was so, the churchyard and the shades of evening afforded a remedy.
Perhaps it is worth adding, that when Sir W. Page Wood, the late Solicitor-General, would have brought a bill into parliament to relieve dissenters from the payment of church rates, on condition that they consented to forego all claim upon the services of the church, including of course the burial service, the bargain was declined by them.
Alfred Gatty.