Summary

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 6… (1911)

The practice of burying in churches or churchyards is said to have been connected with the custom of praying for the dead, and it would appear that the earlier practice was burying in the church itself. In England, about the year 750, spaces of ground adjoining the churches were enclosed and appropriated to the burial of those who had been entitled to attend divine service in those churches.
Source: Wikisource

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 6… (1911)

The right to burial in the parish churchyard is a common law right, controlled in many points by the provisions of the law ecclesiastical. This double character is sufficient to explain the controversy which has so long raged round the subject of burials in England. Every man, according to the common law, has a right to be buried in his own churchyard, or, as it is sometimes put, in the churchyard of the parish where he dies.
Source: Wikisource

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