¹ Finucane, R. C., ‘Sacred corpse, profane carrion: social ideals and death rituals in the later middle ages’, in Whaley, Joachim ed., Mirrors of mortality: studies in the social history of death (New York, 1982), 41.Google Scholar For a clear exposition of the power of ritual see Kertzer, David I., Ritual, politics, and power (New Haven and London, 1988), esp. 1–14.Google Scholar For the range of relevant research see Grimes, Ronald L., Research in ritual studies: a programmatic essay and bibliography (London, 1985).Google Scholar For funerals see Huntington, Richard and Metcalf, Peter, Celebrations of death: the anthropology of mortuary ritual (Cambridge, 1979).Google Scholar

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⁵ Gittings, , Death, burial and the individual, 120–2, 151–64Google Scholar; Stannard, , Puritan way of death, 110–17.Google Scholar

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¹⁰ Haigh, Christopher ed., The English Reformation revised (Cambridge, 1987), 21–9, 209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Collinson, Patrick, ‘The Elizabethan church and the new religion’, in Haigh, Christopher ed., The reign of Elizabeth (London, 1984), 169–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Collinson, , The religion of Protestants: the church in English society 1559–1625 (Oxford, 1982)Google Scholar; Scarisbrick, J. J., The Reformation and the English people (Oxford, 1984).Google Scholar

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¹⁵ John Weever noted that ‘in ancient times there was likewise made a difference of personage in the carriage of their dead bodies to the place of sepulture, according to their state and dignity’, and thought it entirely appropriate to make similar distinctions in the present. Weever, , Ancient funeral monuments, 11.Google Scholar

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²⁰ ‘Admonition to the Parliament’, 28.Google Scholar James Pilkington noted, in ‘Godlie exposition’, 321Google Scholar, that ‘whether burial sermons are to be suffered and used’ agitated one of the ‘controversies in these our days’.

²¹ Some testators attempted to sustain the ideals described by Heal, Felicity, ‘The idea of hospitality in early modern England’, Past and Present 102 (1984), 66–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²² For descriptions of eating at later seventeenth-century funerals see Latham, Robert and Mathew, William eds., Diary of Samuel Pepys, 5 (London, 1971), 90–1Google Scholar; Sachse, William L. ed., The diary of Roger Lowe (New Haven, 1938), 66, 82, 109Google Scholar; Turner, J. Horsfall ed., The Rev. Oliver Heywood, B.A. 1630–1702; his autobiography, diaries, anecdote and event books, 1 (Brighouse, 1882) 339, 351Google Scholar; and Gittings, , Death, burial and the individual, 151–64.Google Scholar

²³ ‘Admonition to the Parliament’, 28Google Scholar; Pilkington, , ‘Godlie exposition’, 319Google Scholar; Gittings, , Death, burial and the individual, 87.Google Scholar

²⁴ The understanding behind these provisions was expressed in a consecration address by the Bishop of Hereford in 1635, describing the churchyard as ‘a dormitory or place for Christians to sleep in. … They lying in their graves expect to be raised again at the last day by the voice of the archangel, as those which lie in their beds are raised in the dawning by the cocks crowing.… Those which in their lifetime like neighbours assembled together in one place, as members of the same body, might after death lie together in one place, expecting the same resurrection … and lie as near the place as might be where they were first initiated into the church,’ PRO, C115/N9/8876.

²⁵ Women (all widows) were responsible for less than ten per cent of the wills in this collection. A systematic analysis of gender differences might confirm the impression that women cared less than men about the formal ritual of their funerals.

²⁶ See also Stone, , Crisis of the aristocracy, 580–1.Google Scholar

²⁷ Weever, , Ancient funeral monuments, 10.Google Scholar

²⁸ An instructive example is in Heal, ‘Idea of hospitality’, 93.Google Scholar

²⁹ Gittings, , Death, burial and the individual, 160.Google Scholar Men attending funerals in later seventeenth-century England and New England accumulated memorial gloves by the dozen.

³⁰ Huntington, and Metcalf, , Celebrations of death, 1, 53–4, 46–7.Google Scholar

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³² Ibid., 33.

³³ Ibid., 46. The best discussion of liminality is Victor Turner, The ritual process: structure and anti-structure (Chicago, 1969)Google Scholar and Turner, , Dramas, fields and metaphors; symbolic action in human society (Ithaca, New York, 1974).Google Scholar

³⁴ Huntington, and Metcalf, , Celebrations of death, 61–6.Google Scholar See also Goody, , Death, property and the ancestors, 30Google Scholar; Bloch, Maurice and Parry, Jonathan eds., Death and the regeneration of life (Cambridge, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Whaley, Joachim, ‘Symbolism for the survivors: the disposal of the dead in Hamburg in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’Google Scholar, in Whaley, ed., Mirrors of mortality, 80–105.Google Scholar

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³⁶ On the Puritan ambivalence to bells see Gilbey, , Pleasaunt dialogue, sig. M4Google Scholar; Emmison, F. G., Elizabethan life: morals and the church courts (Chelmsford, 1973), 174–5Google Scholar; and Cressy, David, Bonfires and bells: national memory and the Protestant calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England (London, 1989).Google Scholar

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³⁹ Seaver, Paul S., The Puritan lectureships: the politics of religious dissent 1560–1662 (Stanford, 1970), 347.Google Scholar For more on ‘garlands in country churches, and strewing flowers on the graves’ see Brand, John, Observations on popular antiquities, 2 (ed. Ellis, Henry, London, 1813) 203–12.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Weever, , Ancient funeral monuments, 17Google Scholar; Pilkington thought two to three days sufficient for mourning, and anything more than a week excessive: ‘Godlie exposition’, 319.Google Scholar For formal mourning in the eighteenth century see Trumbach, Randolph, The rise of thegalitarian family (New York, 1978) 34–41.Google Scholar