There is a tale told in Wales of a certain Sion Kent, who agreed with the Devil to surrender to him body and soul whether he were buried in or out of the Church. But, directing that his body should be laid beneath the church wall, he evaded the compact. It is not often that funeral directions have such eternal issues hanging upon them, but frequently in wills they are given due or elaborate consideration. “True it is,” says Fuller, “bodies flung in a bog will not stick there at the day of judgment; cast into a wood, will find out the way; thrown into a dungeon, will have free egress; left on the highway, are still in the ready road to the resurrection. Yet seeing they are the tabernacles of the soul, yea, the temples of the Holy Ghost, the Jews justly began, the Christians commendably continue, the custom of their solemn interment.” Directions for the disposal of the body, and for the ceremony that shall attend it, are of outstanding interest both for historical and psychological reasons. As one peruses them there rise in the mind innumerable thoughts and fancies of sad or humorous import. Every phase of human nature is illustrated from pompous pride to lowliest humility, from pious reverence to vulgar unconventionality, from love of lamentation and display to hatred of mourning and show. Between the hours of death and of burial seem to cluster many of man’s most quaint ideas; here lies a harvest-ground for the student, and in the records of wills rich treasures may be discovered. Perhaps few scenes of pageantry will live in the memory more than the funeral procession of Henry V., at Fulham, with its multitudes of lights and figures solemnly moving through the dusk. Such a reconstruction of the past, with its Catholic rites and ritual, its appeal to religious emotion, illustrates the picturesque scenes and ceremonies that lie behind the words of a will. Sometimes these directions are given at great length and with lavish elaboration. But not all can command magnificence in death, and the will of Henry VII.’s tailor may be quoted as typical of the common sort.