The hearse, so often mentioned in wills and funeral directions, was not a carriage for the conveyance of the body like that in use at the present day, but was a four square framework of timber, from each corner of which rose a rafter slanting, and all four rafters met at the top; this was covered with black cloth, and at the funerals of persons of distinction was set up for a time in the choir, for the reception of the body during the service; it was surrounded with rails, and fringed and ornamented according to the rank of the deceased. Until the Reformation, hearses were garnished with numerous lights as well as with pencils and escocheons, but with the change of faith the lights were discontinued. These hearses were introduced about the fourteenth century, and they continued to be used until the civil wars of the seventeenth century.
In Shropshire there is a custom of “ringing the dead home,” viz.: chiming all the bells, instead of ringing only one, while the funeral is on its way to the church. When the procession nears the churchyard gate the chiming is stopped and a minute bell is tolled. The sexton’s fees at Much Wenlock, as laid down in 1789, include “a chime if required before the funeral, 0 1 0.” At Hatherleigh, a small town in Devonshire, it was the prevalent custom to ring a lively peal on the church bells after a funeral, as elsewhere after a wedding.
Even in the present day, in some remote rural districts, and especially in Hampshire, the practice still prevails of leaving open the outer door of the house, through which the corpse has been carried, until the mourners return from church, and in some places the custom extends also to the windows; this arises from a superstition that if the doors or windows be shut there will certainly be another death in the house within a year. In some districts there is a belief that if, when the moment of death approaches, all the doors and windows of the house are opened, the spirit will leave the body more easily.
It was an ancient practice to put an hour glass into the coffin before burial, as an emblem of the sand of life being run out. Some antiquaries are of opinion that little hour glasses were anciently given at funerals, like rosemary, and by the friends of the deceased either put into the coffin or thrown into the grave.
The custom which still prevails of sewing up a corpse in flannel, originated, doubtless, in the Act of Parliament, 18 and 19, Charles II., which was passed for the encouragement of the woollen trade, and required all bodies to be buried in woollen shrouds; two amending statutes were passed, 1678 and 1680, requiring at the funeral an affidavit to be delivered to the priest stating that the requirements of the law had been carried out; otherwise penalties were incurred. These acts were repealed by 54 George III., although long before that time the penalties for noncompliance with the law had ceased to be enforced. During the operation of the acts for burying in woollen, the law was sometimes evaded by covering the corpse with hay, or flowers, notification of which is sometimes met with in the parish registers.
Burial in armour was not at all uncommon in the middle ages, and was considered a most honourable form of burial. Sir Walter Scott, in “The Lay of the last Minstrel,” thus refers, to it:
“Seem’d all on fire that Chapel proud,
Where Roslin’s Chiefs uncoffin’d lie,
Each Baron for a sable shroud
Sheathed in his iron panoply.”
Clement Spelman, of Narburgh, Recorder of Nottingham, who died in 1679, is immured upright, enclosed in a pillar in Narburgh Church, so that the inscription is directly against his face: this must surely be a solitary instance of burial in a pillar, although there are many other instances of burial in an upright position. Thomas Cooke, who was a Governor of the Bank of England, from 1737 to 1739, and who had formerly been a merchant residing in Constantinople, died at Stoke Newington, 12th August, 1752, and by his directions his body was carried to Morden College, Blackheath, of which he was a trustee, it was taken out of the coffin, and buried in a winding sheet upright in the ground, according to the Eastern custom.[8] Ben Jonson was buried at Westminster in an upright position: possibly this may have been on account of the large fee demanded for a full-sized grave. It was for a long time supposed that the story was invented to account for the smallness of the gravestone, but on the grave being opened some years since, the dramatist’s remains were discovered in the attitude indicated by tradition. The following quotation from Hearne’s “Collection of Antiquarian Discourses,” Vol. I., p. 212, shows that the upright position of burial was anciently adopted in the case of captains in the army:
“For them above the grounde buryed, I have by tradition heard, that when anye notable Captayne dyed in battle or campe, the souldyers used to take his bodye and to sette him on his feet uprighte, and put his launce or pike into his hand, and then his fellowe souldyers did travell and everye man bringe so much earthe, and laye about him as should cover him, and mount up to cover the top of his pike.”
At Messina there is a church attached to one of the monasteries—St. Jacomo—in which several monks are buried in a sitting posture, and may be seen through a grating in a vault below the church.