Coffins have been made of various kinds of material. Cedar was used for the Athenian heroes on account of its aromatic and incorruptible qualities. It is said that Alexander was buried in one made of gold. Marble and stone were largely used by the Romans, but many lead coffins have been found in the Roman cemeteries at Colchester, York, London, and other places. Coffins of baked clay and cists formed of tiles have been found at York and at Adlborough. Glass coffins have been used in England. Wooden coffins are, in this country, of great antiquity. It is recorded that King Arthur was buried, in 542, in the entire trunk of a tree, hollowed. Some of the earlier coffins made of wood are extremely rude in shape. Abbot Warin, of St. Alban’s, 1183-95, gave directions for the monks to be buried in stone coffins. They had previously been buried without coffins, under the green turf. According to an ancient legend, St. Cuthbert’s remains sailed down the Tweed in a stone coffin.
Generally speaking, the modes of burying the dead in the Middle Ages were without coffins. The corpses were usually enveloped in linen, but members of religious houses were usually buried in the habit of their order.
Coffins, in their universal use in this country, comparatively speaking, belong to modern times. Thomas Hearne, the antiquary, writing in 1742, says that sixty years before that period it was a common custom to bury the dead without coffins. People of rank, however, were usually buried in coffins, unless they left directions to the contrary.
Sir Walter Scott has made us familiar with the fact that it was customary for
“The lordly line of high Saint Clair”
to deposit their dead in a vault at Roslin Chapel, attired in the armour they had used in life.
In Ireland, there was a curious custom of burying the dead without coffins. “Until about the year 1818,” says a correspondent of Notes and Queries, Second Series, vol. i., p. 455, “certain families, named Tracey, Doyle, and Daly, of the townland of Craan, near Enniscorthy, in the barony of Scarawalsh, in the county of Wexford, were in the habit of burying their dead uncoffined, in the graveyard attached to the Augustinian Abbey of Saint John. The bodies were brought to the place of sepulture in open coffins, with their faces uncovered. The graves were made six or more feet deep, and lined with bright green turf from the banks of the river Slaney. In these green chambers, were strewn moss, dry grass, and flowers, and a pillow of the same supported the head of the corpse when it was laid in its last earthly bed.”
In a “Table of Dutyes” of Shoreditch Church, 1664, are references to the amounts to be paid if coffins are not used at funerals. It is stated, “for a burial in ye new churchyard, without a coffin, eight pence; for a burial in ye olde churchyard, without a coffin, seaven pence; and for the grave-making and attendance of ye Vicar and Clarke on ye enterment of a corps uncoffined, the churchwardens to pay the ordinary duteys, and no more, of this table.”
PARISH COFFIN, EASINGWOLD CHURCH.