“I direct that I shall be buried in the clothes in which I shall die, whether they be day clothes or night clothes, and after my death my body is not to be washed or in any way whatsoever meddled with, and no funeral service shall be held over my remains anywhere.” Another testator directed that his body should be burnt or cremated, and the ashes placed in a glass or earthenware jar. A porcelain vase was then to be made large enough to contain this jar, and to bear his name and the date of his death. A vault was to be built of great strength and solidity, to contain at least six vases, a suitable inscription on the exterior. When these operations should be complete, the glass jar was to be placed within the vase, and the lid of the vase put on with a strong cement to exclude the air, the vase then to be deposited in the vault and to remain there for ever. John Baskerville, who died at Birmingham, 1775, directed that his body should be buried in a conical building, in his own premises, “heretofore used as a mill, which I have lately raised higher and painted, and in a vault which I have prepared for it. This doubtless to many will appear a whim; perhaps it is so, but it is a whim for many years resolved upon, as I have a hearty contempt of all superstition, the farce of a consecrated ground ...” and other ideas, pleasanter to omit and illustrative of the unreasonableness of eighteenth-century reason. His epitaph was to run as follows:— “Stranger, Beneath this cone, in unconsecrated ground, A friend to the liberties of mankind directed His body to be inurned. May the example contribute to emancipate Thy mind From the idle fears of Superstition And the wicked Arts of Priesthood.” John Baskerville endeavours to give at least some idea of the motives underlying his behests. So Major Peter Labelliere, whose mind was said to have been unhinged by hopeless love, by politics and religion, chose for his burial a spot on Box Hill, where about the beginning of the nineteenth century he was interred with his head downwards, in order that as “the world was turned topsy-turvy, he might be right at last.” In the register of Lymington Church under the year 1736 is the entry: “Samuel Baldwin, Esq. sojourner in this parish, was immersed, without the Needles, _sans cérémonie_, May 20.” The explanation, according to Wm. Hone in his “Table Book,” is that this was done in consequence of the deceased’s earnest wish, to disappoint the intention of his wife, who had repeatedly assured him that, if she survived, she would wreak her revenge by dancing on his grave.