Death, Religion, and the Family in England, 1480-1750Clarendon Press, 2000 - 435 pages Both the interest and importance of the social history of death have been increasingly recognized during the last thirty years. Here, Houlbrooke examines the impact of religious change on the English "way of death" between 1480 and 1750. He discusses relatively neglected aspects of the subject, such as the death-bed, will-making, and last rites. He also studies the wide variety of commemorative media and practices, and is the first to describe the development of the English funeral sermon between the late Middle Ages and the 18th century. Houlbrooke shows how the need of the living to remember the dead remained important throughout the later medieval and early modern periods, even though its justification and means of expression were altered. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
The Face of Death | 5 |
The Hereafter | 28 |
Preparation for Death | 57 |
The Making of Wills | 81 |
Last Wills and Testaments Form and Contents | 110 |
Last Rites and the Craft of Dying | 147 |
Good Deaths and Bad | 183 |
Grief and Mourning | 220 |
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Common terms and phrases
accounts Archdeaconry Autobiography bequests bereaved Berkshire body burial buried cent Christ Christian Church Church Monuments churchyard coffin comfort corpse D'Ewes dead deceased Diary died disease dying earl early modern eighteenth century Elizabeth Elizabethan Emmison England English epitaph especially eternal Evelyn faith friends funeral sermons funerall G. A. Aitken God's godly grief heaven hell Henry heraldic History important individual John John Donne Josselin Kings Langley Lady Lancashire late medieval later Lives London Long Sutton Lord Mary memory ment minister Monumental Brasses monuments moriendi mortality mourning Norwich Oliver Heywood Oxford parish Pepys person pious plague poor pray prayers Preach'd preachers preparation for death priest probate Protestant purgatory Puritan Ralph Josselin Record Soc Reformation Religion religious repentance resurrection Richard rites Samuel Pepys sermon preached seventeenth century sick Simonds D'Ewes sins sixteenth social soul surviving testators Thomas Thomas Gataker tion vols widow wife will-making William