Alan Crosby explains how probate records from the 1600s emphasise our ancestors’ wish to get the resting place they deserved
Recently I was working with a group of family and local historians, looking at probate records from the early 17th century relating to two townships near St Helens. We noted how there were standard phrases that appeared in most of the wills – formulaic wording which is found throughout the country, and relates particularly to the religious beliefs and wishes of the testator. Almost everybody who made a will expressed the fervent hope, or expectation, that they would go to heaven and be redeemed by the suffering and passion of Jesus Christ, a sentiment often set down in the beautiful and majestic words of the 1549 Book of Common Prayer and the King James Bible of 1611.
This emphasises the appropriate religious sentiments that, in principle, everyone should have held in a godly and God-fearing nation. The hope that the soul would be with God, to be resurrected at the Day of Judgment, was shared by just about everybody. Most testators then referred to the fate of their body – the earthly remains implied in the familiar phrase, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust”. That quotation, from the Book of Common Prayer, means that the body will decay and so return to the earth from whence it came. The crucial point, as so many wills state, is that it should be done with a “Christian burial”. That was important, and was highlighted by the fact that many people were specific about their burial place – ‘their’ parish church or churchyard, and quite frequently they give an exact location: “before the altar”, “in the burying place of my ancestors”.
The key to this is that most of the churchyard and all of the church itself were consecrated ground, which was sanctified and holy. That’s why there is so often the emphasis on “Christian” burial. Everybody knew that unbaptised babies (who did not yet have God’s protection) and suicides (who had forfeited it) might well be buried on the north side of the church, in the shadow of the building – a place that was colder, damper and more gloomy, and indeed of doubtful sanctity. That was a terrible fear, a fate to be avoided, so executors were reminded of their duty to arrange proper Christian burial, with the burial service that was set out in the Praye
