Speaking generally, the upright headstone and the outdoor altar-tomb go back no farther than the middle of the seventeenth century[890]. It has been surmised that existing churchyard monuments which exhibit an earlier date may have been, in some cases, originally set up inside the building[891]. But genuine outdoor stones are found which belong to the late sixteenth century at least. There are two dwarf headstones on the South side of Branscombe churchyard, Devon, dated 1570 (? 1579) and 1580 respectively[892]. Headstones belonging to the fifteenth century have been recorded from Thrapstone, Northampton; Lavenham, Suffolk; Blyborough and Kirton-in-Lindsey, Lincolnshire; and Loversall, Yorkshire[893]. An allusion to the upright stone occurs in _Hamlet_: “He is dead and gone, lady, He is dead and gone; At his head a grass-green turf, At his heels a stone[894].” Where flat slabs occur in the churchyard, they are frequently a century earlier than the upright stones. Specimens of these early “ledger stones” may be seen in the church porches at High Halden, Kent (1583), and Wellington, Somerset (1589). There seems to be little doubt that this form of monument is much older as a class than the vertical, lettered stone. The ledger stone is a familiar object on the floors of churches, as a Mediaeval relic, and it is, no doubt, this kind of monument which is referred to as having been sometimes ejected from the sacred building[895]. There is strong reason for believing that rude, uninscribed wooden crosses preceded the upright headstones. Working by the light of these facts, the searcher will discover that there is ample proof of the unpopularity of the North graveyard for three centuries past. And it would appear that there is good ground for the supposition that the unpopularity was as great, or even greater, during the long period which elapsed before stone monuments came into general use. These conclusions are based on the cumulative evidence of individual instances, but some remarkable exceptions to the rule demand due consideration.