VII.

BOOK dence of mind and judgment, which is always most

effective and most unerring when it flows from this high origin, and is kept in continual union with its venerated Giver. 21

21 The true etymology of Prudentia may be supposed to be, that it was at first an abbreviation of Providentia in the loftiest sense of that word, and subsequently came to signify also those human præ-videntia and pre-audientia, which now form its common meaning and ethical appropriation.

CHAP. XIV.

Their Funerals.

XIV.

The northern nations, at one period, burnt their CHAP. dead. But the custom of interring the body had become established among the Anglo-Saxons, at the æra when their history began to be recorded by their Christian clergy, and was never discontinued.

Their common coffins were wood; the more costly were stone. Thus a nun who had been buried in a wooden coffin was afterwards placed in one of stone. Their kings were interred in stone coffins? ; they were buried in linen', and the clergy in their vestments. 4 In two instances mentioned by Bede, the coffin was provided before death.5 We also read of the place of burial being chosen before death, and sometimes of its being ordered

by will. 6

With the common sympathy of human nature, friends are described as attending, in illness, round the bed of the deceased. On their

On their departure, we read of friends tearing their clothes and hair. One who died, is mentioned to have been buried the next day. As Cuthbert, the eleventh bishop from Augustin, obtained leave to make cemeteries within

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VII.

cities', we may infer that the more healthful custom, of depositing the dead at some distance from the habitations of the living, was the general practice; but afterwards it became the custom of England to bury the dead in the churches. The first restriction to this practice was the injunction that none should be so buried, unless it was known that in his life he had been acceptable to God. It was afterwards ordered, that no corpse should be deposited in a church, unless of an ecclesiastic, or a layman so righteous as to deserve such a distinction. All former tombs in churches were directed to be made level with the pavement, so that none might be seen; and if in any part, from the number of the tombs, this was difficult to be done, then the altar was to be removed to a purer spot, and the occupied place was to become merely a buryingground.

Some of their customs at death may be learnt from the following narrations. It is mentioned in Dunstan's life, that Æthelfeda, when on her deathbed, said to him, “Do thou, early in the morning, cause the baths to be hastened, and the funeral vestments to be prepared, which I am about to wear ; and after the washing of my body, I will celebrate the mass, and receive the sacrament; and in that manner I will die." 11

10

9 Dugd. Mon. i. p. 25.
10 Wilk. Leg. Anglo-Sax. p. 179. p. 84.

11 MSS. Cleop. B. 13. This life has been printed in the Acta Sanctorum for May, from a MS. brought from the Vedastine monastery at Rome. This MS. differs from the Cotton MS. in some particulars. It has the preface, which the Cotton MS. wants; but it has not two pages of the conclusion, which are in the Cotton MS. In the body of the Roman MS. there are forty-two hexameters which are not in the Cotton MS.

XIV.

The sickness, death, and burial of archbishop CHAP. Wilfrid, in the eighth century, is described with these particulars. On the attack of his illness, all the abbots and anchorites near were unwearied in their prayers for his recovery.

He survived, with his senses; and power of speech returned, for a

; year

and a half. A short time before his death, he invited two abbots and six faithful brethren to attend him, and desired them to open his treasurechest with a key. The gold, silver, and precious stones therein were brought out, and divided into four parts, as he directed. One of these he ordered to be sent to the churches at Rome, as a present for his soul; another part was to be divided among the poor of his people; a third he gave to some monasteries, to obtain therewith the friendship of the kings and bishops; and the fourth he destined to those who had shared in his labours, and to whom he had not given lands.

After his death, one of the abbots spread his linen garments on the ground. The brethren laid his body on them, washed it with their hands, and put on his ecclesiastical dress. Afterwards they wrapped it in linen, and singing hymns, they conducted it in a carriage to the monastery. All the monks came out to meet it ; none abstained from tears and weeping. They received it with hymns and chantings, and deposited it in the church which he had built. 12

One of the nobles who attended the king at his Easter court, having died, it is mentioned that his body was carried to Glastonbury; and the king

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14

a

ordered some of the bishops, earls, and barons, to attend the bier thither with honour. 13

When the body of an alderman was taken to the monastery at Ramsay to be buried, a numerous assemblage from the neighbourhood met to accompany his exequies."

. THE SAUL-SCEAT, or the payment of the clergy on death, became a very general practice. No respectable person died or was buried without a handsome present to some branch or other of the ecclesiastical establishment.

Nothing can more strongly express the importance and necessity of this custom, than that several of their gilds seem to have been formed chiefly with a view to provide a fund for this purpose.

It appears in all the wills. Thus Wynflaed, for

IT her saul-sceat, gave to every one of the religious, at the places she mentions, a mancus of gold; and to another place, half a pound's worth, for saulsceat. She adds a direction to her children, that they will illuminate for her soul.

ByrHtric, for his soul and his ancestors, gave two sulings of land by his will, and a similar present, with thirty gold mancys, for his wife's soul and her ancestors. 15 Wulfaru bequeaths to Saint Peter's minster, for his « miserable soul,” and for his ancestors, a bracelet, a patera, two golden crosses, with garments and bed-clothes. 16

A dux who flourished in the days of Edgar and Æthelred, not only gave an abbot some valuable lands, in return for his liberal hospitality, but also several others, with thirty marks of gold, and twenty