ABSTRACT
The Roman poet Horace depicts death as a silent figure moving steadily from place to place and house to house: Francis Bacon, writing his essay on the subject of death in 1625, refers to death as a fear, full of foreboding and dread. Although the rejection of Hell eased the pain of death and the act of dying, nevertheless the eighteenth-century attitude to death supports the general hypothesis that the doctrinal and religious changes of the Reformation had little actual effect on a community's reactions to death and burial. Such accounts were often concluded by giving extremely gloomy details of the funeral, all of which only served to present death as a truly terrible event. The sad scenes around the deathbed were quickly forgotten in the preparations for the burial, reading the will and discussing the division of the deceased's money and effects between his heirs.
