chap, ii.] BRITISH PLACES OF WORSHIP. — BURIAL GROUNDS. 33 



BRITISH PLACES OF WORSHIP. 



There are three British places of worship at present in 

 Madeira ; two Church of England, and one Presbyterian. 



ENGLISH BURIAL GROUNDS. 



In former days, before the power of the Inquisition was 

 broken in Portugal, the bodies of all whom the Holy Office 

 termed heretics were forbidden the rites of Christian burial. 

 Ovington* relates a barbarous instance of their bigotry : " An 

 English merchant dying, all the other merchants of the same 

 nation, willing to inter the body decently, and yet to avoid 

 the rigorous impositions of the Inquisition, determined to 

 have it carried in the night over the rocks into the moun- 

 tains ; however, their design was discovered by that jealous 

 tribunal, and they were watched to the place of interment. 

 Scarce had the corpse been laid in the dust when they 

 were surrounded by the corregidors and officers of justice, 

 assisted by a large body of armed men, who immediately 

 dug up the body, exposed it to public insults, and then 

 threw it into the sea, with all possible marks of infamy 

 and disgrace." Religious toleration, which always accom- 

 panies the progress of a more healthy policy, has now granted 

 to the English in Madeira two places of burial for their 

 dead : the one is used by those constantly resident in the 

 island ; the other contains the bodies of those who, seeking 

 for health in a foreign land, have there found rest for ever. 

 The cypress droops over the stranger's grave, and many a 

 flower decks his lonely tomb. 



* Voyage to Suratt, 1689, p. 28. 



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