register gives her of "Queen of Hell"? (1788.) Distinguished people
were buried in effigy, in all the different churches with which they
were connected, and each sham burial service was entered in the
parish registers, a snare and stumbling-block to the historian.
This curious custom is very ancient. Thus we read in the Odyssey
that when Menelaus heard in Egypt of the death of Agamemnon he
reared for him a cenotaph, and piled an empty barrow "that the fame
of the dead man might never be quenched." Probably this old usage
gave rise to the claims of several Greek cities to possess the tomb
of this or that ancient hero. A heroic tomb, as of Cassandra for
example, several towns had to show, but which was the true grave,
which were the cenotaphs? Queen Elizabeth was buried in all the
London churches, and poor Cassandra had her barrow in Argos,
Mycenae, and Amyclae.

"A drynkyng for the soul" of the dead, a [Greek text] or funeral
feast, was as common in England before the Reformation as in ancient
Greece. James Cooke, of Sporle, in Norfolk (1528), left six
shillings and eightpence to pay for this "drynkyng for his soul;"
and the funeral feast, which long survived in the distribution of
wine, wafers, and rosemary, still endures as a slight collation of
wine and cake in Scotland. What a funeral could be, as late as
1731, Mr. Chester Waters proves by the bill for the burial of Andrew
Card, senior bencher of Gray's Inn. The deceased was brave in a
"superfine pinked shroud" (cheap at 1L. 5S. 6D.), and there were
eight large plate candle-sticks on stands round the dais, and
ninety-six buckram escutcheons. The pall-bearers wore Alamode
hatbands covered with frizances, and so did the divines who were
present at the melancholy but gorgeous function. A hundred men in
mourning carried a hundred white wax branch lights, and the gloves