ABSTRACT
The remains of Sir Matthew Hale now lie in the churchyard at Alderly in Gloucestershire, entombed in a sarcophagus-like rectangular stone box five feet wide, nine feet long, and four feet high. Hale’s final home dominates the fifteen other tombs and tombstones surrounding his. The churchyard site reportedly was preferred by Hale to the more prestigious church interior because he believed that churches were for the living, churchyards for the dead.1 Straggly weeds grow about half a foot high from cracks in the slab above Hale’s last resting place, while daffodils appear on the other gravesites.
