_Coffins for General Use._--In the parish church of Easingwold, Yorkshire,
there was within the last few years an old _oaken shell_ or _coffin_,
asserted to have been used by the inhabitants for the interment of their
dead. After the burial, the coffin was again deposited in the church. Are
there any other well-authenticated instances of a similar usage? And do the
words of the rubric in the Order for "the Burial of the Dead," "When they
come to the grave, while the corpse is _made ready to be laid_ INTO _the
earth_," render it probable that such a custom was generally prevalent in
the Anglican church _since_ the Reformation?
I have met with one corroborative circumstance, in which numbers of bodies
were disinterred in a piece of ground _supposed_ to have been consecrated,
and not a vestige of a coffin was found.