of
men and women of high station were celebrated with much pomp and
dignity, if not with religious exercises. Volleys were fired over the
freshly made grave--even of a woman. A barrel and a half of powder was
consumed to do proper honor to Winthrop, the chief founder of
Massachusetts. At the funeral of Deputy-Governor Francis Willoughby
eleven companies of militia were in attendance, and "with the doleful
noise of trumpets and drums, in their mourning posture, three thundering
volleys of shot were discharged, answered with the loud roarings of
great guns rending the heavens with noise at the loss of so great a
man." When Governor Leverett died, in 1679, the bearers carried banners.
The principal men of the town bore the armor of the deceased, from
helmet to spur, and the Governor's horse was led with banners. The
funeral-recording Sewall has left us many a picture of the pomp of
burial. Colonel Samuel Shrimpton was buried "with Arms" in 1697, "Ten
Companies, No Herse nor Trumpet but a horse Led. Mourning Coach also &
Horses in Mourning, Scutcheons on their sides and Deaths Heads on their
foreheads." Fancy those coach-horses with gloomy death's-heads on their
foreheads. At the funeral of Lady Andros, which was held in church, six
"mourning women" sat in front of the draped pulpit, and the hearse was
drawn by six horses. This English fashion of paid mourners was not
common among sincere New Englanders; Lady Andros was a Church of England
woman, not a Puritan. The cloth from the pulpit was usually given, after
the burial, to the minister. In 1736 the _Boston News Letter_ tells of
the pulpit and the pew of the deceased being richly draped and adorned
with escutcheons at a funeral. Thus were New England men, to quote Sir
Thomas Browne, "splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave."

Many local customs prevailed. In Hartford and neighboring towns all
ornaments, mirrors, and pictures were muffled with napkins and cloths at
the time of the funerals, and sometimes the window-shutters were kept
closed in the front of the house and tied together with black for a
year, as was the fashion in Philadelphia.

Hawthorne tells us that at the death of Sir William Pepperell the entire
house was hung with black, and all the family portraits were covered
with black crape.

The order of procession to the grave was a matter of much etiquette.
High respect and equally deep slights might be rendered to mourners in
the place assigned. Usually