EARLIER GRAVESTONES.
Although memorials of the dead in one shape or another have apparently
existed in all eras of ethnological history, it would seem that the
upright gravestone of our burial-grounds has had a comparatively brief
existence of but a few hundred years. This, however, is merely an
inference based on present evidences, and it may be erroneous. But
they cannot have existed in the precincts of the early Christian
churches of this country, because the churches had no churchyards for
several centuries. The Romans introduced into Britain their Law of the
Ten Tables, by which it was ordained that "all burnings or burials"
should be "beyond the city,"[3] and the system continued to prevail
long after the Roman evacuation. It was not until A.D. 742 that
Cuthbert, eleventh Archbishop of Canterbury, brought from Rome the
newer custom of burying around the churches, and was granted a Papal
dispensation for the practice. The churchyards even then were not
enclosed, but it was usual to mark their sacred character by
erecting stone crosses, many of which, or their remains, are still in
existence. Yet it was a long time before churchyard interments became
general, the inhabitants clinging to the Pagan habit of indiscriminate
burial in their accustomed places. We hear nothing of headstones in
the early days of Christianity, but there are occasionally found in
certain localities inscribed stones which bear the appearance of rude
memorials, and these have been regarded as relics of our National
Church in its primitive state. It is also suggested that these stones
may be of Druidical origin, but there is nothing to support the
theory. Among the aboriginal Britons the custom of simple inhumation
was probably prevalent, but there are not wanting evidences in
support of the belief that cremation also was sometimes practised in
prehistoric times. An instance of early interment was discovered in
a tumulus at Gusthorp, near Scarborough, in 1834. In a rude coffin
scooped out of the trunk of an oak-tree lay a human skeleton, which
had been wrapped or clothed in the skin of some wild animal, fastened
at the breast with a pin or skewer of wood. In the coffin were also a
bronze spearhead and several weapons of flint--facts which all go to
establish a remote date. The absence of pottery is also indicative of
a very early period. Regarding the skins, however, it may be remarked
that Cæsar says of the Britons, when he invaded the island, that "the
greater part within the country go clad in skins."
[Footnote 3: The ancient Jewish burial-ground had to be no less than
2000 cubits (or about a mile) from the Levitical city.]
Christian burials, as we have seen, cannot be dated in England earlier
than the eighth century, and monuments at the grave may have possibly
originated about the same period, but there is nothing whatever to
sustain such a belief, and we cannot assign the earliest of existing
memorials to a time prior to the eleventh century. Indeed it is very
significant to find that the tombs within the churches are only a
trifle older than the gravestones outside, scarcely any of them being
antecedent to the sixteenth century. As burials inside churches were
not permitted until long after the churchyards were used for the
purpose,[4] it is indeed possible that no memorials were placed in the
edifice until Tudor days; but this is scarcely feasible, and the more
probable explanation is that all the earlier ones have disappeared.
Those which can boast an antiquity greater than that of the common
gravestone are very few indeed. It might have been supposed that the
sculptured shrine under the roof of the sanctuary, reverently tended
and jealously watched, might have stood for a thousand years, while
the poor gravestone out in the churchyard, exposed to all weathers
and many kinds of danger, would waste away or meet with one of the
ordinary fates which attend ill-usage, indifference, or neglect. This
indeed has happened in a multitude of places. Who has not seen
in ancient churchyards the headstones leaning this way and that,
tottering to their fall? Are there not hundreds of proofs that the
unclaimed stones have been used, and still serve, for the floors of
the churches, and actually for the paving of the churchyard paths?
It was not thought strange, even within the memory of the present
generation, to advertise for owners of old graves, with an intimation
that on a certain date the stones would be removed; and vast numbers
of them were thus got rid of--broken up perhaps to mend the roads.
But still greater perils have been survived by the earlier of those
memorials which remain to us, both without and within the churches.
The dissolution of the Papal power in Great Britain was the cause of
one of these hazards; for, towards the latter end of Henry VIII.'s
reign, likewise during the reign of Edward VI., and again in the
beginning of Elizabeth's, commissioners in every county were vested
with authority to destroy "all graven images" and everything which
seemed to savour of "idolatry and superstition." Under colour of this
order, these persons, and those who sympathized in their work, gave
vent to their zeal in many excesses, battering down and breaking up
everything of an ornamental or sculptured character, including tombs
and even the stained windows. Moreover we are told by Weever[5] that
the commission was made the excuse for digging up coffins in the hope
of finding treasure. Elizabeth soon perceived the evil that was being
done by the barbarous rage and greediness of her subjects, and
issued a proclamation under her own hand restraining all "ignorant,
malicious, and covetous persons" from breaking and defacing any
monument, tomb, or grave, under penalty of fine or imprisonment. This
checked, but did not wholly cure, the mischief; and, although in her
fourteenth year of sovereignty she issued another and sterner edict on
the subject, the havoc was perpetuated chiefly by a sect or party whom
Weever describes as "a contagious brood of scismaticks," whose object
was not only to rob the churches, but to level them with the ground,
as places polluted by all the abominations of Babylon. These
people were variously known as Brownists, Barrowists, Martinists,
Prophesyers, Solisidians, Famelists, Rigid Precisians, Disciplinarians,
and Judaical Thraskists. Some who overstepped the mark paid the penalty
with their lives. One man, named Hachet, not content with destroying
gravestones and statuary, thrust an iron weapon through a picture of
the Queen, and he was hanged and quartered. Another, John Penry, a
Welshman, was executed in 1593, and of him was written:
"The Welshman is hanged
Who at our kirke flanged
And at her state banged,
And brened are his buks.
And though he be hanged
Yet he is not wranged,
The de'ul has him fanged
In his kruked kluks."
[Footnote 4: The unhealthy practice of using churches for this purpose
was continued some way into the nineteenth century. The still more
objectionable plan of depositing coffins containing the dead in
vaults under churches still lingers on. In 1875 I attended the funeral
(so-called) of a public man, whose coffin was borne into the vaults of
a town church, and left there, with scores of others piled in heaps in
recesses which looked like wine-cellars. Not one of the many mourners
who shared in that experience failed to feel horrified at the thought
of such a fate. Some of the old coffins were tumbling to pieces, and
the odour of the place was beyond description. In the words of Edmund
Burke: "I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a country
churchyard than in the tomb of the Capulets."]
[Footnote 5: Weever's "Funeral Monuments," A.D. 1631.]
And there was a danger to be encountered far later than that which
was due to the anti-Popery zealots of the Tudor dynasty. On the
introduction of the Commonwealth there arose such a crusade against
all forms and emblems of doctrinal import as to affect not only the
ornaments of the churches, but the gravestones in the churchyards,
many of which were removed and put to other uses or sold. The
Puritans, as is well known, went to the extremity of abolishing all
ceremony whatever at the Burial of the Dead.[6] The beautiful Service
in the Book of Common Prayer, now used more or less by all the
Reformed Christian denominations of England, was abolished by
Parliament in 1645--that and the Prayer Book together at one stroke.
In lieu of the Prayer Book a "Directory" was issued on the conduct of
public worship, in which it was said:
[Footnote 6: There does not appear to have been any form of prayer for
the dead prior to the issue of Gaskell's "Prymer" in 1400. The Service
now in use dates from 1611.]
"Concerning Burial of the Dead, all customs of praying, reading, and
singing, both in going to or from the grave, are said to have been
greatly abused. The simple direction is therefore given, that when
any person departeth this life, let the body upon the day of burial
be decently attended from the house to the place appointed for public
burial, and there immediately interred without any ceremony."
Penalties were at the same time imposed for using the Book of Common
Prayer in any place of worship or in any private family within the
kingdom--the fine being £5 for a first offence, £10 for a second, and
a year's imprisonment for the third.
The Puritans, however, are to be thanked for stopping the then common
practice of holding wakes and fairs in the churchyards--a practice
traceable no doubt to the celebration of Saints' Days in the churches,
and for that reason suppressed as remnants of Popery in 1627-31.
It need not be said that the Burial Service and the Prayer Book
came back with the Restoration, but the discontinuance of fairs in
churchyards seems to have been permanent. Many instances, however,
have occurred in later years of desecration by pasturing cattle in the
churchyards,[7] and offences of this nature have been so recent that
the practice cannot be said with confidence to have even now entirely
ceased. But we return to the gravestones.
[Footnote 7: At the Archbishop's Court at Colchester in 1540 it was
reported that at a certain church "the hogs root up the graves and
beasts lie in the porch."]
From one cause or another it is pretty certain that for every old
gravestone now to be seen twenty or more have disappeared.
In Gough's "Sepulchral Monuments of Great Britain" many instances are
given of the wanton and wholesale destruction of church and churchyard
memorials, even late in the eighteenth century. In some cases the
church officers, as already stated, gave public notice prior to
removal of gravestones, in order that persons claiming an interest
in the remains might repair and restore them; but more frequently the
stones were cleared away and destroyed, or put somewhere out of sight
without observation. Sometimes this was the act of the Rector; at
other times individuals, exercising rights of ownership, have done the
disgraceful work, and occasionally the whole of the parishioners have
been implicated. Gough says that the inhabitants of Letheringham in
Suffolk, being under the necessity of putting their church into decent
order, chose to rebuild it, and sold the whole fabric, monuments and
all, to the building contractor, who beat the stones to powder, and
sold as much at three shillings a pound for terrace (?) as came to
eighty guineas. A portion of the fragments was rescued by the Rev.
Mr. Clubbe, and erected in form of a pyramid in the vicarage garden of
Brandeston, in the same county, with this inscription:
[Transcriber's note: the following is enclosed in a narrow border]
Indignant Reader!
These monumental remains are not, as thou
mayest suppose, the
Ruins of Time,
But were destroyed in an
Irruption of the Goths
So late in the Christian era as 1789.
Credite Posteri!