Читать книгу Dealings with the Dead (Vol. 1&2) - Lucius M. Sargent - Страница 29

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Burning dead saints, is a more pardonable matter, than burning living martyrs—the combustion of St. Genevieve’s dry bones, than the fiery trial of Latimer and Ridley—the fantastical decree of the French Convention, than the cruel discipline of bloody Mary. Dark days were they, and full of evil, those years of bitterness and blood, from 1553 to Nov. 17, 1558, when, by a strange coincidence, this hybrid queen, whose sire was a British tyrant, and whose dam a Spanish bigot, expired on the same day with the Cardinal, Reginald Pole. From the remarkable proximity of the events arose a suspicion of poison, of which the public mind has long since been disabused.

In this age of greater intelligence and religious freedom, the outrages, perpetrated, in the very city of London, within five brief years, are credible, only on the strength of well authenticated history. According to Bishop Burnet, two hundred and eighty-four persons were burnt at the stake, during four years of this merciless and miserable reign. Lord Burleigh makes the number of those, who died, in that reign, by imprisonment, torments, famine, and fire, to be near four hundred. Weever, in his Funeral Monuments, page 116, quotes the historian Speed, as saying, “In the heat of those flames, were burnt to ashes five bishops, one-and-twenty divines, eight gentlemen, eighty-four artificers, an hundred husbandmen, servants, and laborers, twenty-six wives, twenty widows, nine virgins, two boys, and two infants; one of them whipped to death by Bonner, and the other, springing out of the mother’s womb from the stake, as she burned, thrown again into the fire.” Here, in passing, suffer me to express my deep reverence for John Weever. I know of no book, so interesting to the craft, as his Funeral Monuments, a work of infinite labor and research. Weever died in 1632, and lies in St. James, Clerkenwell. His epitaph may be found in Strype’s Survey:

Lancashire gave me birth,

And Cambridge education;

Middlesex gave me death,

And this church my humation;

And Christ to me hath given

A place with him in heaven.

The structure of these lines will remind the classical reader of Virgil’s epitaph:

Mantua me genuit: Calabri rapuere; tenet nunc

Parthenope; cecini pascua, rura, duces.

The short and sharp reign of Mary Tudor was remarkable for burning Protestant Christians and wax candles. That fountain of fun, pure and undefiled, that prince of wags, Theodore Hook, was offered, very young, for admission at the University; and, when the chancellor opened the book, and gravely inquired if he was ready to sign the thirty-nine articles, “Yes, sir,” replied the young puppy, “forty, if you please.” Now, in contemplation of the enormous consumption of wax, especially upon the occasion of funeral obsequies, during Mary’s reign, it would seem that a belief, in its vital importance, might have formed an additional article, in the Romish creed.

I have never thought well of grafting religion upon the selfishness of man’s nature. Nominal converts, it is true, are readily made, in that way. In Catholic countries, wax chandlers are Romanists, to a man. I always considered the attempt, a few years since, to convert the inhabitants of Nantucket to Puseyism, by a practical appeal to their self interest, however ingeniously contrived, a very wicked thing. And I greatly lauded the good old bishop of this diocese, for rebuking those very silly priests, who promoted a senseless and extravagant consumption of one of the great staples of that island, by burning candles in the day time. He made good use of his mitre as an extinguisher.

On a somewhat similar principle, I have always objected to every attempt to augment the revenues of a state by taxing corpses—not upon the acknowledged principle, that taxation without representation is inadmissible—but because the whole system is a most miserable mingling of sacra profanis. I may not be understood by all, in this remark: I refer to those acts of Parliament, which, for the purposes of levying a tax, or promoting some particular branch of industry, have attempted to regulate a man’s apparel, and the fitting up of his narrow house, after he is dead. The compulsory employment of flannel, by British statute, is an example of this legislative interference.

Nothing is more common, in Strype’s Ecclesiastical Memorials, than entries, such as these: “1557, May 3. The Lord Shandois was buried with heralds, an herse of wax, four banners of images, and other appendages of funeral honor.” “On the 5th, the Lady Chamberlain was buried with a fair herse of wax.” “May 28, in the forenoon, was buried Mrs. Gates, widow, late wife, as it seems, to Sir John Gates, executed the first year of this queen’s reign. She gave seventeen fine black gowns, and fourteen of broad russet for poor men. There were carried two white branches, ten staff torches, and four great tapers.” “July 10th the Lady Tresham was buried at Peterborough, with four banners, and an herse of wax, and torches.” “1558, September 14th, was buried Sir Andrew Judd, skinner, merchant of Muscovy, and late Mayor of London, with ten dozen of escutcheons, garnished with angels, and an herse of wax.” What is an herse of wax? This will be quite unintelligible to those, who have supposed that word to import nothing else than the vehicle, in which the dead are carried to the grave. Herse also signifies a temporary monument, erected upon, or near, the place of sepulture, and on which the corpse was laid, for a time, in state; and a herse of wax was a structure of this kind, surrounded with wax tapers. This will be made manifest, by some additional extracts from the same author: “1557. The 16th day of July, died the lady Anne, of Cleves, at Chelsey, sometime wife and queen unto King Henry VIII., but never crowned. Her corpse was cered the night following.” “On the 29th began the herse at Westminster, for the Lady Anne of Cleves, consisting of carpenters’ work of seven principals, being as goodly an herse as had been seen.” “On the 3d of August the body of the Lady Anne of Cleves was brought from Chelsey, where her house was, unto Westminster, to be buried—men bore her, under a canopy of black velvet, with four black staves, and so brought her into the herse, and there tarried Dirge, remaining there all night, with lights burning.” “On the 16th day of August the herse of the King of Denmark was begun to be set up, in a four-square house. August 18, was the King of Denmark’s herse in St. Paul’s finished with wax, the like to which was never seen in England, in regard to the fashion of square tapers.” And on the 23d, also was the King of Denmark’s herse, at St. Paul’s, “taken down by the wax chandlers and carpenters, to whom this work pertained, by order of Mr. Garter, and certain of the Lord Treasurer’s servants.” These herses were, doubtless, very attractive in their way. “Aug. 31, 1557. The young Dutchess of Norfolk being lately deceased, her herse began to be set up on the 28th, in St. Clements, without Temple bar, and was this day finished with banners, pensils, wax, and escutcheons.”

The office of an undertaker, in those days, was no sinecure. He was an arbiter elegantiarum. A funeral was a festival then. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die, was the common phylactery.

“The funeral baked meats

Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.”

Baked meats shall be the subject of my next.