In the church of Revel lies the Duc de Croÿ, a general of Charles XII., arrayed in full costume, with a rich flowing tie of fine guipure; not that he was ever interred—his body had been seized by his creditors for debt, and there it still remains.
The author of Letters from a Lady in Russia (1775), describing the funeral of a daughter of Prince Menzikoff, states she was dressed in a nightgown of silver tissue, on her head a fine laced mob, and a coronet; round her forehead a ribbon embroidered with her name and age, etc.
Alluding to this custom of interring ladies of rank in full dress, Madame de Sévigné writes to her daughter:—"Mon Dieu, ma chère enfant, que vos femmes sont sottes, vivantes et mortes! Vous me faites horreur de cette fontange; quelle profanation! cela sent le paganisme, ho! cela me dégoûteroit bien de mourir en Provence; il faudroit que du moins je fusse assuré qu'on ne m'iroit pas chercher une coëffeuse en même temps qu'un plombier. Ah! vraiment! fi! ne parlez plus de cela."—Lettre 627. Paris, 13 Déc, 1688.
Laborde. Itin. de l'Espagne. Again, the Duc de Luynes says: "The Curé of St. Sulpice related to me the fashion in which the Duke of Alva, who died in Paris in 1739, was by his own will interred. A shirt of the finest Holland, trimmed with new point lace, the finest to be had for money; a new coat of Vardez cloth, embroidered in silver; a new wig; his cane on the right, his sword on the left of his coffin."—Mémoires.
That grave-clothes were lace-trimmed we infer from the following strange announcement in the London Gazette for August 12th to 15th, 1678: "Whereas decent and fashionable lace shifts and Dressings for the dead, made of woollen, have been presented to his Majesty by Amy Potter, widow (the first that put the making of such things in practice), and his Majesty well liking the same, hath upon her humble Petition, been graciously pleased to give her leave to insert this advertisement, that it may be known she now wholly applies herself in making both lace and plain of all sorts, at reasonable prices, and lives in Crane Court in the Old Change, near St. Paul's Church Yard." Again, in November of the same year, we find another advertisement:—"His Majesty, to increase the woollen manufacture and to encourage obedience to the late act for burying in woollen, has granted to Amy Potter the sole privilege of making all sorts of woollen laces for the decent burial of the dead or otherwise, for fourteen years, being the first inventor thereof."
Betterton's History of the English Stage. Her kindness to the poet Savage is well known.