5 - Two Tudor funerals

Summary

However much we may deplore the expense and lavish display involved in the funerals of Tudor peers as manifestations of conspicuous extravagance on the part of a status-ridden aristocracy, it is doubtful whether those who lived in the Tudor age would have regarded them in quite this kind of way, at least until Puritan attitudes began to gain a wide acceptance. For at all times, particularly at those crises of transition when human list passes from one state to another (birth, initiation, marriage, death) men have felt the need of rituals which, by projecting ideal images of the human condition and making these available for social participation, made it easier to surmount the stresses of change. The Tudor funeral was one of these rites de passage. But the death of a peer was more than just a crisis in the life of an individual. At least as far as the more conservative area of Tudor society was concerned, the death of a lord of great possessions, presiding over a great household and a large following, was also a crisis in the life of the community over which he presided. Would the heir, for example, favour and cherish those who had given faithful service to his predecessor? The accepted canons of behaviour appropriate to a great lord required that he should do so; but in practice, conflicts between the generations could lead to instances of maltreatment of his father's servants by the heir.