our ancient customs, was a ditch full of water, where women committing felony were drowned; as men were hanged: Nam et ipsi in omnibus tenementis suis omnem ab antiquo legaem habuere jussitiam, videbant ferrum, fossam, furcas, et similia. In another sense it is taken for a grave, as appears by these old verses:

Hic jacent in fossa Bedae venerabilis ossa: Hic est fossatus, qui bis erat hic cathedratus.

Foss Way was anciently one of the four great Roman highways of England: so called, according to Camden, because it was ditched on both sides, which was the Roman method of making highways.

FOSSARIUS, in antiquity, a kind of officers in the eastern church, whose business was to inter the dead.

Ciacconius relates, that Constantine created 950 fossaries, whom he took out of the divers colleges or companies of tradesmen: he adds, that they were exempted from taxes, services, burdensome offices, &c.

F. Goar, in his notes on the Greek Euchologion, infers that the fossarii were established in the times of the apostles; and that the young men, who carried off the body of Ananias, and those persons full of the fear of God who interred St Stephen, were of the fossarii number.

St Jerome assures us, that the rank of fossarii held the first place among the clerks; but he is to be understood of those clerks only who had the direction and attendance of the interment of the devout.