In "Chamberlain's Imitation of Holbein's Drawings," in his Majesty's collection, is the following passage alluding to the great care Lady Hobye took as to the arrangement of her funeral.
"Her fondness for those pompous soothings, which it was usual at that time for grief to accept at the hands of pride, scarcely died with her; for, a letter is extant from her to Sir William Dethick, Garter King of Arms, desiring to know 'what number of mourners were due to her calling; what number of waiting women, pages, and gentlemen ushers; of chief mourners, lords, and gentlemen; the manner of her hearse, of the heralds, and church?' &c. This remarkable epistle concludes thus: 'Good Mr. Garter, do it exactly, for I find forewarnings that bid me provide a pick-axe,' &c. The time of her death is not exactly known, but it is supposed to have been about 1596. She is buried at Bisham, with her first husband.[12] It was this Lady's daughter, Elizabeth Russell, that was said to have died with a pricked finger."
It was usual at funerals to use rosemary, even to the time of Hogarth, who has introduced it in a pewter plate on the coffin-lid of the funeral scene in his Harlot's Progress. Shakspeare notices it in Romeo and Juliet, "And stick your _rosemary_ on this fair corse." "This plant," says Mr. Douce, in his "Illustrations of Shakspeare and Ancient Manners," page 216, vol. i. "was used in various ways at funerals. Being an evergreen, it was regarded as an emblem of the soul's immortality." Thus in Cartwright's "Ordinary," Act 5, scene 1:
"----------------If there be Any so kind as to accompany My body to the earth, let them not want For entertainment; pr'ythee see they have _A sprig of rosemary_ dip'd in common water, To smell to as they walk along the streets."
In an obituary kept by Mr. Smith, secondary of one of the Compters, and preserved among the Sloanian MSS. in the British Museum, No. 886, is the following entry: "Jan. 2, 1671, Mr. Cornelius Bee, Bookseller in Little Britain, died; buried Jan. 4, at Great St. Bartholomew's, without a sermon, without wine or wafers, only gloves and _rosemary_." And Mr. Gay, when describing Blowselinda's funeral, records that "Sprigg'd rosemary the lads and lasses bore."