By the rubrick in the Common Prayer, before the burial office, (confirmed by _Statute_ 13 and 14, _Car._ 2, _c._ 4) persons who have laid violent hands on themselves shall not have that office used at their interment. Yet the priest has no power of enquiry, or even as it would appear of delay, in order to enquiry, when a body (though it be of a notorious suicide) is brought to his church for interment. “The proper judges, whether persons who died by their own hands were out of their senses” (and a fortiori whether they did or not die by their own hands) “are doubtless the coroner’s jury. The minister of the parish hath no authority to be present at viewing the body, or to summon or examine witnesses, and therefore he is neither entitled nor able to judge in the affair; but may well acquiesce in the public determination, without making any private enquiry. Indeed, were he to make one, the opinion which he might form from thence could usually be grounded only on common discourse, and bare assertion. And it cannot be justifiable to act upon these in contradiction to the decision of a jury, after hearing witnesses upon oath. And though there may be reason to suppose that the coroner’s jury are frequently favourable in their judgment in consideration of the circumstances of the deceased’s family with respect to the forfeiture, and their verdict is[90] in its own nature traversable, yet the burial may not be delayed,[91] until that matter on trial shall finally be determined. But on acquittal of the crime of self-murder by the coroner’s jury, the body in that case not being demanded by the law, it seemeth that a clergyman may and ought” (we can safely add is compellable) “to admit that body to christian burial.” 1 _Burn’s Ecc. Law_, _tit. Burial_. OF MURDER GENERALLY. There are so many various modes by which this infamous and horrid crime may be perpetrated, that it would be an almost endless task to enumerate them. In a legal point of view it is scarcely necessary; for wherever death ensues from illegal violence[92], with malice _prepense_, it is felony; yet for the better aid of medical investigation it is expedient to class them under several heads. Sir _Matthew Hale_, in his pleas of the Crown, vol. 2, p. 431, enumerates several ways of killing. 1. By exposing a sick or weak person or infant unto the cold, to the intent to destroy him, 2 _Ed._ 3, 189, whereof he dieth. 2. By laying an impotent person abroad, so that he may be exposed to and receive mortal harm, as laying an infant in an orchard, and covering it with leaves, whereby a kite strikes it and kills it. 6 _Eliz. Compt. de Pace_; 24 _Dalton_, _cap._ 93, (new edit. 145.)[93] 3. By imprisoning a man so strictly that he dies, and therefore where any dies in gaol, the coroner ought to be sent for to enquire of the manner of his death. 4. By starving or famine. 5. By wounding or blows. 6. By poisoning.