But though they embraced not this practice of burning, yet entertained they many ceremonies agreeable unto _Greek_ and _Romane_ obsequies, And he that observeth their funeral Feasts, their Lamentations at the grave, their musick, and weeping mourners; how they closed the eyes of their friends, how they washed, anointed, and kissed the dead; may easily conclude these were not meer Pagan Civilities. But whether that mournful burthen, and treble calling out after _Absalom_, had any reference unto the last conclamation, and triple valediction, used by other nations, we hold but a wavering conjecture. _Civilians_ make sepulture but of the Law of nations, others do naturally found it and discover it also in animals. They that are so thick skinned as still to credit the story of the _Phœnix_, may say something for animal burning: More serious conjectures finde some examples of sepulture in Elephants, Cranes, the Sepulchral Cells of Pismires and practice of Bees; which civil society carrieth out their dead, and hath exequies, if not interrments. CHAPTER II The Solemnities, Ceremonies, Rites of their Cremation or enterrment, so solemnly delivered by Authours, we shall not disparage our Reader to repeat. Only the last and lasting part in their Urns, collected bones and Ashes, we cannot wholly omit, or decline that Subject, which occasion lately presented, in some discovered among us. In a Field of old _Walsingham_, not many months past, were digged up between fourty and fifty Urnes, deposited in a dry and sandy soile, not a yard deep, nor far from one another: Not all strictly of one figure, but most answering these described; Some containing two pounds of bones, distinguishable in skulls, ribs, jawes, thigh-bones, and teeth, with fresh impressions of their combustion. Besides the extraneous substances, like peeces of small boxes, or combs handsomely wrought, handles of small brasse instruments, brazen nippers, and in one some kinde of _Opale_.[16] [16] _In one sent me by my worthy friend Dr._ Thomas Witherley _of_ Walsingham. Near the same plot of ground, for about six yards compasse were digged up coals and incinerated substances, which begat conjecture that this was the _Ustrina_ or place of burning their bodies, or some sacrificing place unto the _Manes_, which was properly below the surface of the ground, as the _Aræ_ and _Altars_ unto the gods and _Heroes_ above it.