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yank j but extended to those of inferior degree, as wellclergy as laity: kings were buried in their royal robes;knights in their military garments; bishops in their ponti-fical vestments; priests in their sacerdotal habits j and monksin the dress peculiar to the order to which they belonged.

The oldest mention of a coffin in the Saxon times, is thatin which Ethelred was buried in 695, from which periodstone coffins have been continually discovered in every partof England, and may be regularly traced from the ninthcentury to the reign of Henry III. , some indeed so late asHenry VIII . : however, it was customary for the monks to beinterred in the bare ground till the year 1195, when Warren,abbot of St. Alban’s, ordered that they should be buried instone coffins.

The ancients generally buried without the city walls, frontan opinion that the touch, sight, or even neighbourhood of acorpse defiled a man, and likewise to keep the air of the cityfree from the stench of putrified bodies : some few, however,as a mark of distinguished honour, were occasionally permit-ted to be buried within the walls of the city; and in the fourthcentury, this permission became to be generally granted. Du-ring the first three hundred years after Christ burial in churcheswas allowed; but was severely prohibited by the Christianemperors for several ages after. The first step towards therevival of this privilege seems to have been the practice oferecting churches over the graves of some martyrs in thecountry, and translating the relics of others into churches inthe city : the next was allowing kings and emperors to beburied in the atrium or church porch. The reason alleged byGregory the Great in 750, when he granted permission forburying in churches or in places adjoining to them, was, thatthe relations and friends remembering those whose sepulchresthey beheld, might be induced to offer up prayers for them;and this reason was afterwards transferred into the body ofthe canon law. The principle being thus established in the