Clement Spelman, of Narburgh, Recorder of Nottingham, who died in 1679, is immured upright, enclosed in a pillar in Narburgh Church, so that the inscription is directly against his face: this must surely be a solitary instance of burial in a pillar, although there are many other instances of burial in an upright position. Thomas Cooke, who was a Governor of the Bank of England, from 1737 to 1739, and who had formerly been a merchant residing in Constantinople, died at Stoke Newington, 12th August, 1752, and by his directions his body was carried to Morden College, Blackheath, of which he was a trustee, it was taken out of the coffin, and buried in a winding sheet upright in the ground, according to the Eastern custom.[8] Ben Jonson was buried at Westminster in an upright position: possibly this may have been on account of the large fee demanded for a full-sized grave. It was for a long time supposed that the story was invented to account for the smallness of the gravestone, but on the grave being opened some years since, the dramatist's remains were discovered in the attitude indicated by tradition. The following quotation from Hearne's "Collection of Antiquarian Discourses," Vol. I., p. 212, shows that the upright position of burial was anciently adopted in the case of captains in the army: "For them above the grounde buryed, I have by tradition heard, that when anye notable Captayne dyed in battle or campe, the souldyers used to take his bodye and to sette him on his feet uprighte, and put his launce or pike into his hand, and then his fellowe souldyers did travell and everye man bringe so much earthe, and laye about him as should cover him, and mount up to cover the top of his pike." At Messina there is a church attached to one of the monasteries--St. Jacomo--in which several monks are buried in a sitting posture, and may be seen through a grating in a vault below the church. From the earliest ages to within about one hundred years ago, it appears to have been customary to bury either with or without a coffin. The following is an extract from a Terrier of lands, fees, etc., belonging to Caistor Vicarage, Lincolnshire, dated 1717: "For every grave in the churchyard and without coffin, four pence, if with coffin, one shilling." Amongst the Vestry Minutes of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, dated 5th March, 1564: "Item, that none shall be buryd within the Church, unless the dead corpse be coffined in wood." The late John Bernard Palmer, first Abbot of the Cistercians in England since the Reformation, was buried in the Chapter House, at Loughborough, without a coffin. In the days when burial without a coffin was general, the body was shrouded, tied at the head and feet, and carried to the grave in a closed bier, which was generally provided by the parish for this purpose.