whichever is the longer period, or if they were not paid to the incumbent or to a person claiming through him, then during fifteen years from that date; and the burial authority are to collect and pay them in like manner as fees for services rendered; and (_b_) the Ecclesiastical Commissioners may, at the request and with the approval of the incumbent or other interested person, agree with a burial authority for a periodical or other payment in commutation of the fees other than for services rendered; and where the fees are paid to an incumbent or a person claiming through him, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners are to apply the commutation money in the first instance in compensating the existing incumbent, and the residue in augmenting the benefice. (iii.) No fee other than fees payable to a sexton for services rendered by him, is to be paid to any clerk or other ecclesiastical officer in respect of interments in the ground of a burial authority; except that a clerk or other ecclesiastical officer who, on 10th July 1900, was entitled to fees in respect of interments in any such ground, might apply to the burial authority for compensation for their abolition, and they were to pay him such equitable amount of compensation as might be agreed upon or be directed by the Home Secretary in default of agreement. (iv.) The foregoing provisions extend to cases where an annual sum had been substituted for fees under 15 & 16 Vict. c. 85, s. 37.[310] 10. A body may be cremated instead of being buried;[311] and a faculty has been granted for the interment of an urn containing the ashes of a cremated body below the floor of a church, in spite of the church and churchyard having been closed for burials under the Burial Acts.[312] And there is no reason why, upon the committal of cremated ashes to consecrated ground, the Burial Service should not be used as fully as over an uncremated body. But the disinterment, for the sake of being cremated, of a body which has been once buried is not permitted.[313] 11. A body which has been buried in consecrated ground cannot be disinterred for reinterment elsewhere in consecrated ground, except under the authority of a faculty, which will be granted in proper cases upon the petition of the representatives of the deceased, with the consent of the incumbent and churchwardens and a certificate of the local medical officer of health that the proceeding will not be dangerous from a sanitary point of view.[314] And except in the case of removal from one consecrated spot for reinterment in another, a body, or the remains of a body, which has been interred in any place of burial may not be removed without the licence of the Home Secretary and with such precautions as he may prescribe.[315] Footnotes [270] Com. Dig. tit. Cemetery (B); Gilbert _v._ Buzzard (1821) 2 Hag. Cons. 333; R. _v._ Coleridge (1819) 2 B. & Ald. 806; R. _v._ Stewart (1840) 12 A. & E. 773, 777. [271] Cripps, 759.