Miscellaneous instances crowd upon us of burial without coffins. There is a parish in the Isle of Thanet the register of which contains entries of eightpence for burying in a coffin, and sixpence without a coffin; and in the register of an adjoining parish (more than two centuries back), eightpence 'in a coffined grave,' and sixpence 'in a sheet.' About a century ago, in Dorset, a gentleman directed that his uncoffined remains should be buried ten feet deep in a particular field lying near his house, and the field to be then thoroughly ploughed over, as if to obliterate him as completely as could well be the case. The family of the St Clairs of Rosslyn were for many generations (the men at anyrate) buried without coffins. The latest of such burials took place towards the close of the seventeenth century. When the vault was next opened, the body of Sir William St Clair was seen lying in his armour with a red velvet cap on his head; nothing was decayed but a part of the white fur-edging to the cap. In some parts of Ireland it was at one time customary to carry the body to the grave-side in a coffin, upon which the body was taken out and reverently deposited in the earth. There was one Augustinian abbey graveyard in particular, near Enniscorthy, in which certain families were generally buried in this fashion, the graves being scrupulously prepared with boards, earth, sods, and grass. It is said that the Superior of the first Cistercian abbey founded in England since the Reformation lies buried in this fashion in the chapter-house of the abbey in one of the midland counties. Mr Thomas Cooke, a merchant who had well befriended Morden College, Blackheath, directed that his body should be buried in a winding-sheet, minus coffin, in the college grounds.
And as some people have been buried without coffins, so have there been instances of coffins buried without people. Fraud, more or less, may be suspected in such cases. About a dozen years ago the death of a foreigner was entered in the register of an Essex parish on the faith of a medical certificate, apparently authentic; a coffin was bought; and a grave ordered to be dug in a Roman Catholic graveyard. The funeral, or a funeral, took place, all in decent order. A few weeks afterwards a claim was put in by the widow for a hundred thousand francs, due from an insurance office. The (alleged) deceased was known to have been a fugitive fraudulent bankrupt. The aid of the detective police being obtained, the grave and coffin were opened, and—no corpse was there. The rascal had made out the certificate of his own death, ordered his own grave and coffin, and followed his own coffin to its last home as chief mourner!
With or without coffins, many persons have been buried in spots other than churchyards or graveyards; such, for instance, as in their own gardens, farms, parks, or plantations. There is a family residence in Northamptonshire marked by the singularity of having a coffin placed as it were a table in a summer-house. Sir William Temple, before his death in 1700, ordered his heart to be inclosed in a silver casket, and buried under a sun-dial in his own garden at Moor Park, opposite a particular window. Where the body was interred we have no record. William Liberty, a brickmaker in Herts, was buried in a tomb constructed by himself at the side of a lonely footpath across a field; and room was afterwards found in the same tomb for his widow. Sir James Tillie, of Pentillie Castle, Cornwall, was at his own desire laid under a tower in a summer-house in a favourite part of his park. Baskerville the printer was buried under a windmill near his garden; a dancing-master in a plantation near Macclesfield; a barrister beneath a tower which he had built at Leith Hill, Surrey; a Yorkshire squire in his own shrubbery, 'because he had passed some of the happiest hours of his life there;' a shepherd of the Chiltern Hills on the chalky slopes of the hills themselves, with an inscription cut in the grassy covering. The wish of a captain in Cromwell's army to bury his favourite charger in the churchyard of Houghton-le-Spring, was frustrated; whereupon he had it buried in his own orchard, and left orders that he himself was to be buried by the side of the horse. The editor of a Newcastle journal was buried in his own garden; and a Northumbrian gentleman under a tomb in his own orchard. Körner, the German soldier-poet who fell at Gadebusch, was buried on the spot under an old oak; and many military men have found a similar resting-place.
Many queer stories are extant, resting, however, on tolerably good authority, of bodies being left unburied, or in some way or other kept above-ground, in the hope of cunningly defeating some law or other. The old stage-coachmen on the Great North Road, when driving through Stevenage, were wont to point to a barn in which the body of a former owner, Mr Trigg, was kept; it was inclosed in lead, and placed upon a beam of the roof. The gossips of the neighbourhood had two theories to explain this. One was to the effect that Trigg had expressed a desire that his body should be kept there 'until the day of judgment;' the other, that he believed he would return to life again thirty years after his death, and left his property subject to this contingency. He died in 1721. After the thirty years his representatives 'gave him three days' grace,' then buried him, and finally disposed of his property. Just about a century ago, a legacy of twenty-five pounds a year was left to a woman 'so long as she remained above-ground.' Her husband, on her death, put a crafty interpretation on these words; he rented a small room in a neighbour's house, and kept the body there in a coffin during the long period of nineteen years, receiving the annuity because the woman was still 'above-ground.' A gentleman, rather earlier in the same century, left orders that, when dead, he should be placed in a coffin perched up on end in a cellar. He had bequeathed all his property to charitable uses, and had a notion that his relatives would try to defy the will unless his body were kept unburied; that is, not actually interred in the ground.
[FROM DAWN TO SUNSET.]
PART II.
CHAPTER THE FIFTH.
Two winters shed their snows, two summers spread their blooms round Enderby; and old Time, who gives and takes so much, turned his hour-glass, and the sands ran on. Beauty, hoar hairs, the feeble tired heart of age, the fresh and throbbing heart of youth, all bend to the death-sweep of his sickle. But his loans to the living are rich and rare; though he scaths and saddens, he seldom fails to beautify and bless. Each life, in early dawn, wins from the old graybeard's hands hope and love and joy in very showers; youth is so beautiful, youth is so hopeful, youth is so bright! Old Time gives more than he ever takes away, for he gives days replete with life and strength and gemmed with golden hours; but when he asks them back, they are shrunken and worthless, mere empty shells, from which man has extracted the sweetness and the goodness to his own vitality or destruction. Old Time is merciful; if he wounds with that keen scythe of his, he as often cures with healing balm. More often he spares from cruel hurts the aged and the young. The young spring joyously over his scythe, and he pelts them with flowers, and loves them for their daring and content; they fear him not. Strong manhood rushes at him, wrestles with him, strives to wrest from him more than he will ever give; so perchance he throws that strong man, or pitilessly severs a limb. But the aged he loves, because they are like to him; their bleeding wounds he numbs, their failing hands he takes within his own, and leads them gently on the way; then filling their poor hearts with blessed memories of youth and spring, draws his scythe around them, and lays them gently down to rest.
The Rose of Enderby was favoured by old Time, who called Dame Nature to him, and bade her paint her darling with colours rich and rare; to filch somewhat from the red beauty of the bud; to subdue it to a fainter softer hue; to darken the gold tints in the amber hair; to deepen the lustre in the laughing eyes; to whisper to the heart of the rose, so that the sweet voice of Nature might flutter that maiden heart, and raise the maiden blush, that fairest gem in maiden's dower.