Under the laws of Constantine, a woman could without blame repudiate her husband, if he was guilty of violating the tombs of the dead; and we are told that the Ostrogoths allowed divorce for this same reason. And among the Franks, one who took the clothing from a buried corpse was banished from society, and none could relieve his wants until the relations of the deceased consented [416]. As long ago as the tenth year of James I., at the assizes in Leicester, a man was tried for stealing winding sheets. Sir Edward Coke tells the matter thus: “One William Hain had in the night digged up the graves of divers several men and of one woman, and took the winding sheets from the bodies and buried the bodies again; and I advising hereupon, for the rareness of the case, consulted with the Judges at Sergeants’ Inn on Fleet street, when we all resolved, that the property of the sheets was in the executors, administrators, or other owner of them, for the dead body is not capable of any property, and the property of the sheets must be in somebody, and according to this resolution he was indicted of felony in the next assizes; but the jury found it but petit larceny, for which he was whipped, as he well deserved.” These learned people thought that if a winding sheet had been gratuitously furnished by a friend the property remained in the donor. For, quoth they, the winding sheet must be the property of somebody; a dead body, being but a lump of earth, hath no capacity; also, it is no gift to the person, but bestowed on the body for the reverence toward it, to express the hope of the resurrection; also, a man cannot relinquish the property he hath to his goods unless they be vested in another [417]. Subsequently, lawyers have generally concurred in these opinions; the coffin, too, is the property of the personal representative of the deceased [418]. |153|