Part 4

Early in March, 1587, the obsequies of Mary Stuart were solemnised by the King, nobles, and people of France, with great pomp, in the Cathedral of Notre Dame at Paris, and a passionately eloquent funeral oration was pronounced by Renauld de Beaulue, Archbishop of Bourges and Patriarch of Acquitaine, which brought tears to the eyes of every person in the congregation.

After Mary's body had remained for nearly six months apparently forgotten by her murderers, Elizabeth considered it necessary, in consequence of the urgent and pathetic memorials of the afflicted servants of the unfortunate princess and the remonstrances of her royal son, to accord it not only Christian burial, but a pompous state funeral. This she appointed to take place in Peterborough Cathedral, and, three or four days before, sent some officials to make the necessary arrangements for the solemnity. The place selected for the interment was at the entrance of the choir from the south aisle. The grave was dug by the centogenarian sexton, Scarlett. Heralds and officers of the wardrobe were also sent to Fotheringay Castle to make arrangements for the removal of the royal body, and to prepare mourning for all the servants of the murdered Queen. Moreover, as their head-dresses were not of the approved fashion for mourning in England, Elizabeth sent a milliner on purpose to make others, in the orthodox mode, proper to be worn at the funeral, and to be theirs afterwards. However, these true mourners coldly, but firmly declined availing themselves of these gifts and attentions, declaring "that they would wear their own dresses, such as they had got made for mourning immediately after the loss of their beloved Queen and mistress."

On the evening of Sunday, July 30, Garter King of Arms arrived at Fotheringay Castle, with five other heralds and forty horsemen, to receive and escort the remains of Mary Stuart to Peterborough Cathedral, having brought with them a royal funereal car for that purpose, covered with black velvet, elaborately set forth with escutcheons of the arms of Scotland, and little pennons round about it, drawn by four richly-caparisoned horses. The body, being enclosed in lead within an outer coffin, was reverently put into the car, and the heralds, having assumed their coats and tabards, brought the same forth from the castle, bare-headed, by torchlight, about ten o'clock at night, followed by all her sorrowful servants.

The procession arrived at Peterborough between one and two o'clock on the morning of July 30, and was received ceremoniously at the minster door by the bishop and clergy, where, in the presence of her faithful Scotch attendants, she was laid in the vault prepared for her, without singing or saying--the grand ceremonial being appointed for August 1. The reason for depositing the royal body previously in the vault was, because it was too heavy to be carried in the procession, weighing, with the lead and outer coffin, nearly nine hundredweight. On Monday, the 31st, arrived the ceremonial mourners from London, escorting the Countess of Bedford, who was to represent Elizabeth in the mockery of acting as chief mourner to the poor victim. At eight in the morning of Tuesday the solemnities commenced. First, the Countess of Bedford was escorted in state to the great hall of the bishop's palace, where a representation of Mary's corpse lay on a royal bier. Thence she was followed into the church by a great number of English peers, peeresses, knights, ladies, and gentlemen, in mourning. All Mary's servants, both male and female, walked in the procession, according to their degree--among them her almoner, De Préau, bearing a large silver cross. The representation of the corpse being received without the Cathedral gate by the bishops and clergy, it was borne in solemn procession and set down within the royal hearse, which had been prepared for it, over the grave where the remains of the Queen had been silently deposited by torchlight on the Monday morning. The hearse was 20 feet square, and 27 feet high. On the coffin--which was covered with a pall of black velvet--lay a crown of gold, set with stones, resting on a purple velvet cushion, fringed and tasselled with gold.

All the Scotch Queen's train--both men and women, with the exception of Sir Andrew Melville and the two Mowbrays, who were members of the Reformed Church--departed, and would not tarry for sermon or prayers. This greatly offended the English portion of the congregation, who called after them and wanted to force them to remain. After the prayer and a funeral service, every officer broke his staff over his head and threw the pieces into the vault upon the coffin. The procession returned in the same order to the bishop's palace, where Mary's servants were invited to partake of the banquet which was provided for all the mourners; but they declined doing so, saying that "their hearts were too sad to feast."

But let us turn aside from the pageants of kings and queens, and direct our attention for a few moments towards Stratford-upon-Avon, where, on April 23, 1616, the greatest of all Englishmen breathed his last. A vague tradition tells us that, being in the company of Drayton and Ben Johnson, Shakespeare partook too freely of the cup, and expired soon after. This may be a calumny; and, if it were not, it would not diminish our gratitude and reverence for the highest intellect our race has produced. It, however, leads us to think and hope, that at the modest funeral of the "great Bard of Avon" the illustrious Ben Johnson as well as Drayton were present with his sorrowing relatives and fellow-citizens. His remains rest under the famous slab which bears the inscription due, it is said, to his own immortal pen:

"Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare To digg T--E dust encloased here: Blessed be T--E Man T/y spares T--ES Stones, And curst be He T/y moves my bones."

If his contemporaries have forgotten to give us details of that memorable funeral, and if for nearly two centuries his modest grave was almost neglected, ample reparation has been made to his memory in this enlightened age, and Shakespeare's tomb has become a shrine visited by countless pilgrims from all parts of the earth; and a glorious monument, more beautiful than has been generally admitted, stands not far from the church, erected to Shakespeare only last year by a nobleman, Lord Ronald Gower, whose taste and culture would have done honour to the epoch which produced not Shakespeare alone, but Sydney and Raleigh.

If we could discover all the particulars respecting Shakespeare's burial, we should possibly find that, being a "gentleman," he was wrapped in his coffin in "wool," for which privilege his survivors paid a tax of 10s. This curious habit, which we derived from our Norman ancestors, endured until the first few years of this century. By "wool" we should read flannel. Almost all the old parish registers in the country make a point of informing us that "the body" was buried in wool, and the "usual tax paid." The Normans, and their descendants in Normandy to this day, had some curious superstitions connected with "flannel," which even the industrious bibliophile Jacob has failed to discover. This custom they introduced into England, and it lasted for hundreds of years. I believe the coffin was also frequently filled up with fine sheep's wool. Another curious custom, which is now obsolete, was to put cloves, spikenard, fine herbs, and twigs of various aromatic shrubs into the coffin, in memory of the embalming of our Lord. Young girls and unmarried women were buried in white, and had their coffins covered with white flowers. All the people who accompanied the funeral wore white scarves, and before the Reformation, white dresses, and the way was strewn with box leaves, grass, and flowers. The porch of the deceased's house was decked with flowers and garlands, and especially with dog-roses and daisies.

THE funeral ceremonies of the French kings and princes of the blood during the Middle Ages and the period of the Renaissance, were, as may well be imagined, exceedingly magnificent. As already related, the death criers announced the decease of the sovereign in the usual manner, shouting out, "_Oyez! bonnes gens de Paris_--listen, good people of Paris: the most high and mighty, excellent and powerful King, our sovereign Master, by the grace of God King of France, the most Christian of Princes, most clement and pious, died last night. Pray for the repose of his soul."

The first part of the ceremony took place at Notre Dame, where what is known as the lying-in-state was conducted with appropriate splendour. The procession, after a solemn mass, formed on the _Pavis_, or square, round the Cathedral, and began to move slowly over the bridge and through the Marais to St. Denis, some miles distant from Paris. There was a halt, however, at the convent of St. Lazaire (now covered by the railway station), and the gentlemen in attendance mounted their horses. Before the Revolution of '93, fifteen beautiful wayside crosses, or _montjoies_, as they were called, stood on the roadside between the Porte St. Denis and the Abbey. At each of these prayers were said and the coffin rested. Sometimes, as in the case of Charles VIII., the coffin and its waxen effigy were carried on the shoulders of a number of noblemen; but usually, since their feet were hidden by heavy black velvet draperies, very common men were charged with the "honourable burden." After the first half of the 16th Century, the royal body was conducted to the grave in a chariot drawn sometimes by as many as four-and-twenty black horses. If I err not, the last King of France whose coffin was carried by men was Francis I., whose gentlemen of the bedchamber performed this office, having each a halter round his neck, and a cord or rope.

At St. Denis the ceremonies were very imposing. High Mass of Requiem being over, the body was removed from the catafalque and lowered into the vaults under the altar. The Grand Almoner of France recited the _De profundis_, all kneeling. Suddenly a voice, that of the Herald-at-Arms, was heard, crying out from the vault below, "Kings-at-Arms, come do your duty." The grand officers were now summoned by name, thus: "Monsieur le duc de Bourbon, bring your staff of command over the hundred Archers of the Guard, and break it and throw it into the grave." "Monsieur le comte de Lorges, bring your staff of office as commander of the Scotch Guard, and break it and throw it into the grave," and so forth, until some fifty of the grand dignitaries of the Court had in turn performed this lengthy ceremony. The last time it occurred was in 1824, on the occasion of the funeral of Louis XVIII., when each detail of the ancient ceremonial was punctually followed. Every staff of office was broken and thrown into the King's grave, except the banner of France, which was merely inclined three times to the very edge of the crypt.

At the conclusion of this rather tedious ceremony, everybody knelt down, and the herald shouted, "The King is dead; pray for his soul." A moment of silence ensued, which was eventually broken by a blast of trumpets. Then the organ played a lively strain, and the Herald proclaimed, "_Le roi est mort, vive le roi_--long live the King!" The banners waved, the cannon boomed, the bells pealed forth joyously, and the procession reformed, whilst the officiating clergy sang the _Te Deum_. As almost all the Kings and Queens of France, with not more than half a dozen exceptions, from the time of Clovis to that of Louis XVIII., were buried at St. Denis, the funeral rites were rarely if ever altered. But with us, although so many of our most illustrious princes are interred at Westminster, still not a few were buried at St. Paul's; many at Blackfriars and at Greyfriars, two glorious churches destroyed in the 17th Century, at Windsor, and in various Cathedrals; so that our royal funereal ceremonies were not always conducted with such punctual etiquette as were those of our neighbours.

[Decoration]

THE minute details of the funeral of Mary Stuart, at Westminster Abbey, prove that it was conducted on the same scale and with the same ceremonies as the one which preceded it by many years at Peterborough. King James, her son, was present, and shortly afterwards the sumptuous monument which we still admire marked the place where her mutilated remains, translated from Peterborough, found a permanent place of rest.

The great changes in religion which occurred at the time of the Reformation, although they took much longer to permeate the habits and customs of the people than is usually imagined, nevertheless were so radical, that of the ancient ritual little soon remained, and the beautiful funeral service of the Church of England, which is so full of faith and hope, and mainly selected from passages of Holy Scripture adapted to the requirements of a religion which abolished belief in an intermediary state, and therefore in the necessity of prayers for the dead, was introduced, and little by little the pompous ceremonies of the Roman Church were forgotten. The lying-in-state of the corpse, for instance, which up to the close of the reign of Mary was general, even with poor people, was now only in use among those of the very highest rank. The increase in the use of carriages, too, and of course the abolition of the monastic orders and brotherhoods, diminished the splendour of the street processions which used to follow the bier. Still, much that was quaint remained in fashion, and it is only, as already said, a few years since that ladies ceased wearing a scarf and hood of black silk, and gentlemen "weepers" on their hats and arms, which were black or white according to the sex of the deceased. In Norfolk, until the end of the first quarter of the present century, it was the custom to give the mourners at a funeral black gloves, scarves, and bunches of herbs. Indeed, it is but a short time since a very old lady told me that so rich, broad, and beautiful was the silk of the scarves presented to each lady at a funeral, when she was a girl, that ladies were wont to keep the pieces by them until they were sufficient in number to form a dress. A bill of the funeral expenses of a very rich gentleman who died at Brandon Hall, in Norfolk, early in this century,--Mr. Denn, of Norwich,--and who left over half a million of money, enables us to form some idea of the expense to which our grandfathers of the upper class were put in order to be buried with what they considered proper respect. It would seem that in those days the hearse and funeral carriages had to be hired from London, and they took three days to perform the journey from the metropolis--a distance of about three hours by rail. No fewer than 40 persons figure as accompanying these vehicles, and as they had to be put up at inns along the road, going both to and from London to Brandon Hall, their expenses were £180. The hire of horses and carriages was £106, and what with the distribution of loaves to the poor at the grave, and the expense of bringing relatives from far parts of the country, and of providing them with silk scarves, gloves, etc., and the housing and entertaining of them all, the worthy Mr. Denn's funeral cost his survivors not less than £775.

In Picard, there is a very beautiful engraving by Schley, representing a funeral procession in 1735, entering the church of St. Paul's, Covent Garden. It occurs by night, and a number of pages in black velvet walk in it, carrying lighted three-branched silver candlesticks. It seems that until 1775 women in England only attended the funerals of their own sex, and that men in the same manner only followed men to the grave. Possibly as a disinfectant against the plague, at all English funerals a branch of rosemary was handed to all who attended, which they threw into the open grave. This fashion endured, to the writer's knowledge, in Norfolk up to 1856.

The French Revolution cannot be described as an unmitigated blessing--far from it; but it certainly did away with many superstitious practices, and shed a flood of light upon civilisation. Before that event it was the universal custom throughout Europe to bury in churches, a practice which was most detrimental to health. By one of the earliest decrees passed by the Convention of Paris, 1794, intramural interments were abolished, although, to be sure, cemeteries already existed of considerable extent, possibly suggested by those which for ages the Mahometans have used in all the principal cities of Asia and Asiatic Europe. That of Père la Chaise, so called after the confessor of Madame de Maintenon, who founded it, is one of the earliest. With the counter-Reformation, as the movement is called in history, the ceremonial of the Roman Church became, on the Continent, even more elaborate than heretofore, and nothing can be imagined more theatrically splendid than the church decorations on occasions of funerals of eminent personages.

From the last half of the 16th Century down to the Revolution of 1789, possibly the most extraordinary funeral recorded in history was that of the Emperor Charles V. It was celebrated with almost identical pomp simultaneously, at Madrid and at Brussels. The procession at Brussels took six hours to pass any one point, and it is estimated that 80,000 persons walked in it, the participants being supplied from every city of Belgium and Holland. In this extraordinary function figured cars on floats, representing certain striking events in the life of the Emperor, and one of these we reproduce, since it will best afford an idea of the supreme magnificence of the spectacle. It represents a ship, and is intended to illustrate the maritime progress made in the reign of this enterprising monarch. The float on which this clever model of a vessel of the period was arranged was dragged through the streets by 24 black horses, covered with black velvet, and followed by representatives of the navies both of Belgium and Spain, and by some 300 lads dressed as sailors of all nations.

We also reproduce a little sketch from the funeral procession of Philip II., son of Charles V., which gives us an excellent idea of the costumes worn on such an important occasion. The large full-page engraving represents a portion of the funeral procession which took place at Brussels, of the Archduke Albert VII. of Austria, surnamed "the Pious." It was almost as sumptuous as that of Charles V., and, fortunately a complete record of it has been preserved by Francovoart, who published a book in the following year, containing no less than 49 plates illustrating this pageantic procession, which was of enormous length, and must have cost a great sum of money. The great engraver Cochin has left us one of his most beautiful plates, representing the interior of the Church of Notre Dame as arranged for the funeral of the Infanta Theresa of Spain, Dauphiness of France, in 1746. It gives us rather the idea of a scene in a court ball-room than of a grave ceremony. Literally, thousands of lights blazed in all directions, and there was nothing of a sombre character present, excepting the catafalque, which was of black velvet, and in a certain sense produced an admirable effect by showing off to still greater advantage the illuminations. The funeral of Louis XIV., was fabulously gorgeous, and so complete an apotheosis of that vain monarch, it brought about a sort of reaction, and made most persons observe that it was of little use praying for the soul of one who evidently must already be in glory. In order to put some bounds to these extravagant services, many people of a devout character have in all ages prayed in their wills that they should be carried to the grave in the simplest manner, sometimes in the habit of a Franciscan, or mendicant friar, and that only a few pounds should be expended upon their burial.

The Italians, and especially the Venetians, spent enormous sums upon their funeral services, which were exceedingly picturesque; but as the members of the brotherhoods who walked in the procession wore pointed hoods and masks, so that, by the glare of the torches, only their eyes could be seen glittering, and as it was the custom, also, for the funeral to take place at night, the body being exposed upon an open bier, in full dress, the scene was sufficiently weird to attract the attention of travellers, perhaps more so than anything else which they saw in the land _par excellence_ of pageant. Horace Mann, in one of his letters, thus amusingly describes the funeral of the daughter of Cosmo III., Grand Duke of Tuscany:--