Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/599

Rh long been on the decline. The buildings of interest in the town are a palace, built by Akbar, called the Lai Kild, or the Red Fort, and the JumA Masjid built by Aurungzebe. A considerable number of Boras, a class of commercial Mahometans, reside here. Municipal income of the town in 1872, 3514, 10s.; expenditure, 2321, 12s.  BURIAL BURIAL ACTS. The practice of burying in churches or churchyards is said to have been connected with the custom of praying for the dead, and it would appear that the earlier practice was burying in the church itself. &quot; In England, about the year 750, spaces of ground adjoining the churches were carefully enclosed and solemnly consecrated and appropriated to the burial of those who had been entitled to attend divine service in those churches, and who now became entitled to render back into those places their remnants to earth, the common mother of mankind, without payment for the ground which they were to occupy, or for the pious offices which solemnized the act of interment&quot; (Lord^ Stowell). The right to burial in the parish churchyard is far from being merely an ecclesiastical privilege, but at the same time it is intimately bound up with the laws of the Church Establishment. It is a com mon law right, controlled in many points by the provisions of the law ecclesiastical. This double character is sufficient to explain the controversy which has so long raged round the subject of burials in England. Every man, according to the common law, has a right to be buried in his own churchyard, or, as it is sometimes put, in the churchyard of the parish where he dies. But the churchyard, as well as the church itself, is the freehold of the parson, who can in many respects deal with it as if it were a private estate. A statute of Edward I. (35, st. 2) speaks of the churchyard as the soil of the church, and the trees growing in the church yard &quot;as amongst the goods of the church, the which laymen have no authority to dispose,&quot; and prohibits &quot; the parsons from cutting down such trees unless required for repairs.&quot; Notwithstanding the consecration of the church and churchyard, and the fact that they are the parson s freehold, a right of way may be claimed through them by prescription. The right to burial may be subject to the payment of a fee to the incumbent, if such has been the immemorial custom of the parish, but not otherwise. The spirit of the ancient canons regarded such burial fees as of a simoniacal complexion, inasmuch as the consecrated grounds were among the res sacrce a feeling which Lord Stowell says disappeared after the Reformation. No person can be buried in a church without the consent of the incumbent, except when the owner of a manor house prescribes for a burying-place within the church as belonging to the .manor house. In the case of Rex v. Taylor it was held that an information was grantable against a parson for opposing the burial of a parishioner; but the court would not interpose as to the parson s refusal to read the burial service because he never was baptized that being matter for the ecclesiastical court. Strangers (or persons not dying in the parish) should not be buried, it appears, without the consent of the parishioners or churchwardens, &quot; whose parochial right of burial is invaded thereby.&quot; According to a recent case, a clergyman may be punished for refusing to read the burial service over a person who had ceased to be a parishioner, but was buried in a family vault. While burial is a common-law right, the mode of burial is said to be of ecclesiastical cognizance, and a mandamus to inter a body in an iron coffin was in one case refused. Lord Stowell permitted the use of iron coffins on condition of an increased rate of payment to the parish, observing that the common cemetery is not res unius cctatis, the property of one generation now departed, but of the living and of generations yet unborn, and is subject only to temporary appropriation (Gilbert v. Buzzard, 2 Consistory Reports, 333). One of the canons of 1603 requires the clergyman under penalty of suspension for three months to bury the corpse without refusal or delay, &quot; unless the party deceased were excommunicated majori excommunicatione, for some grievous and notorious crime, and no man able to testify of his repentance.&quot; It appears that persons dying in a state of intoxication must be buried with the funeral service of the church. On the other hand no service but that of the Church of England may be used, and no layman or unauthorized person can read or assist in reading a burial service over a dead body in consecrated ground. Nor, it seems, does the church recognize &quot; such an indecency &quot; as burial without service. There are probably many questions as to the common right of burial to which the law has as yet provided no specific answer. In the meantime many attempts have been made to pass a Burials Bill, the main feature of which is the permission to use in churchyards religious services other than that of the Church of England. The necessity for providing new cemeteries, caused by the natural increase of population, has led to a good deal of legislation, and an Act was passed (10 and 11 Viet. c. 65) to consolidate certain provisions usually contained in Acts authorizing the making of cemeteries. Sec. 23 allows the bishop to consecrate a part of any such cemetery &quot; for the burial of the dead according to the rites of the Estab lished Church.&quot; The 15 and 16 Viet. c. 85, for discon tinuing burials in the metropolis and opening new burial grounds, was extended to other towns by the 1 6 and 1 7 Viet. c. 134. The new burial ground is to be divided into consecrated and unconsecrated portions ; and provision is made for building a cemetery chapel for the use of the church, and, if necessary, another for dissenters. By 20 and 21 Viet. c. 81, ground may be consecrated for the burial of poor persons. The same Act allows a burial board to appeal to the archbishop when the ordinary refuses to consecrate a new burial ground, and if after the archbishop confirms the appeal the bishop still refuses to consecrate, the archbishop may licence the grave for interments as if it were consecrated. The 30 and 31 Viet, c. 133 (amended in the following year) provided facilities for cheapening the expense of consecration and for allowing limited owners to convey sites of land for churchyards. The practice of burying suicides on a public highway, with a stake driven through the body, is prohibited by 4 Geo. IV. c. 52, which requires the coroner to direct their private interment, without religious rites, in the churchyard, within twenty-four hours after the inquest, and between the hours of nine and twelve at night. Bodies may not be removed from burial grounds without licence from a Secretary of State, except when the removal is from one unconsecrated place to another, and is authorized by the ordinary. A coroner may disinter the body in a case of violent death. In Scotland the obligation of providing and maintaining the churchyard rests on the heritors of the parish. The guardianship of the churchyard belongs to the heritors and also to the kirk-session, either by delegation from the heritors, or in right of its ecclesiastical character. The right of burial appears to be strictly limited to parishioners, although an opinion has been expressed that any person dying in the parish has .a right to be buried in the church yard. The parishioners have no power of management. The presbytery may interfere to compel the heritors to provide clue accommodation, but has no further jurisdiction. It is the duty of the heritors to allocate the churchyard. The Scotch law hesitates to attach the ordinary incidents of real property to the churchyard, while English law treats the ground as the parson s freehold. It would be difficult to say who in Scotland is the legal owner of tho 