the 7th of January, and all the preparations for the funeral were ordered to be completed by the 25th of the month. They were, indeed, of so costly and elaborate a nature that it would have been difficult to finish them sooner.
In the first place, provision was to be made for the bowelling, sering and enclosing the corpse in lead. When Queen Eleanor, of Castile, departed, as we read in the Ro3al wardrobe accounts for the year, her body was stufled with barley. Queen Katharine's was ordered to be sered, trannnelled, leaded and chested with spices and other things thereunto appertaining. When Henry VIII. himself died, commandment was given for wrapping his corpse in cere cloth of many folds, over the fine cloth of rains and velvet, surely bound and trammelled with cords of silk.
The chandeler received instructions to prepare a proper number of lights to be employed round the corpse during the time it remained at Kimbolton Castle, or in the next church or chapel where it rested; and he was ordered to "execute all exequies and ceremonies for the time." There is no mention of the route taken by the funeral cortegé, but it most probably lay by the nearest line, which was through Huntingdon, Stilton and Yaxley. Particular directions were given for the preparation of the hearses or canopies that rested over the body, and were borne in the procession. There were to be two of these—one with five principals of main divisions of the entire framework filled with lights, which was to be placed over the corpse in the church where the funeral made its first halt; the other, "a sumptuous hearse," with nine principals and lights accordingly, to be set in the church or monastery where the body was interred. These hearses were commonly very elaborate architectural compositions, exhibiting the characteristic features of the period, such as canopies, images, buttresses and finials, probably all made of wax on a wooden framework. The issue roll of 44 Edward III. mentions the cost of Queen Philippa's, in various items, as amounting to 166l., besides other large charges for lights burning round the body in Westminster Abbey. But it is unnecessary to quote these early illustrations, which seem to be of a like character, not only at the obsequies of the Royal family, as at that of John Duke of Bedford, but of several noble families who were not allied to the Crown. King Edward I., with his
