In Search of Gravestones Old and Curious Part 8

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 73. WEST HAM.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 74. WANSTEAD.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 75. WANSTEAD.]

There are several other variations of the same symbol in the elegant enclosure at Wanstead Church; but the most remarkable of the old stones is one which has at the top corners two projecting skulls, the one facing nearly to the front and the other in profile, both standing out in full relief, carefully and accurately sculptured, but too ghastly to be beautiful. This one, the Richmond example, and the two at Ripley const.i.tute my entire experience of full relief work on a mere gravestone.

FIG. 75.--AT WANSTEAD.

"To William Swan, died 1715, aged 16 years."

Other churchyards in the locality we found less fruitful, and taking rail to Buckhurst Hill, we struck across Epping Forest to Chingford, also without profit, and walked on to Walthamstow, where another of the enfoliated death's-head pictures was found; the novelty being two skulls with ivy sprays, symbolical of evergreen recollections.

FIG. 76.--AT WALTHAMSTOW.

"To Jane Redfern, died 1734, aged 52 years,"

In the Broxbourne example on the same Plate (Fig. 77) branches of oak, bearing leaves and acorns, are used with good decorative effect on either side of a porch in which is seated a mourning figure, but I cannot undertake to explain the symbolical significance of the oak in sepulchral masonry.

FIG. 77.--AT BROXBOURNE.

"To Mrs Rowe, widow, died 6 May 1798."

My excursions into Ess.e.x have been too limited in scope to trace or test peculiarities in that county, but I have found by observation in a number of counties that, although there are occasional evidences of local invention, or at least of local modification, in certain districts, the same set of types which prevails in one county serves pretty well for all the rest.

It is well therefore to guard against disappointment. Pilgrimages like ours, having for their real purpose healthy exercise and physical enjoyment, are not to be counted failures when their ostensible errand seems to have borne no result. It is necessary for the pilgrim to be armed with some such reflection as this against the shafts of discomfiture. There have been occasions when, at the close of the day, conscious as I might be of the pleasant hours past, the freshened brain and the body reinvigorated, I have yet covetously mourned the scanty and valueless additions to my note-book. Other pilgrims may therefore take warning, be prepared for blank days in barren coverts, and sully not their satisfaction with regrets. But it will be a blank day indeed which does not carry its pleasures with it and store the mind with happy recollections. One walk on a winter's day over the hills from High Barnet to Edgware I reckoned sadly unproductive of the special novelties I sought, but it afforded me the contemplation of some landscapes which I can never forget, and it printed on my brain a little _papier-mache_-like church at Totteridge which was worth going miles to see. Better fortune next time should be the beacon of the gentle tramp. The long jaunt I had from Chigwell Lane Station through the pretty but unpopulous country west of Theydon Bois, uneventful as it was, made an ineffaceable mark on my memory. I picture now the long and solitary walk across fields and woodlands, with never a soul to tell the way for miles and miles, crossing and recrossing the winding Roden, startling the partridges from the turnips, and surprising, at some sudden bend in the footpath, the rabbits at their play. It is not without excitement to steer one's course over unknown and forsaken ground by chart and compa.s.s. These needful guides then prove their value, and in a hilly country an alt.i.tude-barometer is a friend not to be despised. It is not without some pride in one's self-reliance to find one's self five miles from a railway station, as I did at Stapleford Abbotts; and, though my special quest was all in vain at several halting-places that day, I met with a Norman doorway at Lambourn Church which archaeologists would call a dream, the axe-work of the old masons as clean cut and as perfect as though it had been done last week; and in taking a near cut at a guess across country for Stapleford Tawney I mind me that I lost my way, or thought I had, but the mariner's needle was true, and emerging in a green avenue I saw before me a finger-post marked "To Tawney Church." I took off my hat and respectfully saluted that finger-post, and was soon in the churchyard, where I haply lighted upon one of the gems of my collection, the headstone sculpture of "The Good Samaritan."

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 76. WALTHAMSTOW.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 77. BROXBOURNE.]

FIG. 78.--AT STAPLEFORD TAWNEY.

"To Richard Wright, died 3d March 1781, aged 76 years."

I have, however, an earlier study of the same subject from the churchyard at Shorne Village, near Gravesend, which, is here given for comparison, and I have seen two others at Cranbrook. They all have some features alike, but there are differences in the treatment of details in each case.

FIG. 79.--AT SHORNE.

"To Mary Layton, died Jan. 12, 1760; Joseph Layton, died May 21, 1757; and Will.

Holmes, died Aug. 26, 1752."

The stone at Shorne being close to the church door is well known to the villagers, by whom it is regarded as a curiosity. The schoolmaster was good enough to give me a photograph from which my sketch is made. But such rarities are seldom esteemed by, or even known to, the inhabitants of a place, and are pa.s.sed by without heed by the constant congregation of the church. At Stapleford Tawney, just named, a native, the first I had seen for a mile or two, stopped at the unwonted sight of a stranger sketching in the churchyard, and I consulted him as to application of the parable of the Good Samaritan in the case under notice. His reply was that, though he had lived there "man and boy for fifty year," he had "never see'd the thing afore." He condescended, however, to take an interest in my explanations, and seemed to realize that it was worth while to seek for objects of interest even in a churchyard. This was decidedly better than the behaviour on another occasion of two rustics at Southfleet. They had pa.s.sed my friend jotting down an epitaph, and the turn of a corner revealed me sketching a tombstone, when one to the other exclaimed, "Land sikes, Bill, if 'ere ain't another on em!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 78. STAPLEFORD TAWNEY.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 79. SHORNE.]

CHAPTER VII.

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 Caesar 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 a.s.sign 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 mult.i.tude 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 superst.i.tion." 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 f.l.a.n.g.ed 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.