The following is a description of the championship ceremony at the

banquet in Westminster Hall written at the time of the coronation of

George IV., 1821, and taken from Allen’s History of the County:—

“Before the second course was brought in the deputy appointed

to officiate as King’s Champion (this was the son of the

champion, who was himself disqualified, being a clerk in holy

orders), in his full suit of bright armour, mounted on a horse

richly caparisoned, appeared under the porch of the triumphal

arch, at the bottom of Westminster Hall. Everything being in

readiness, the procession moved in the following order:—

“Two trumpeters with the Champion’s arms on their banners,

“The Sergeant Trumpeter with his mace on his shoulder,

“Two Sergeants-at-Arms with their maces on their shoulders,

“The Champion’s two Esquires, in half armour, one on the right

hand bearing the Champion’s lance, the other on the left hand

with the Champion’s target and the arms of Dymoke depicted

thereon.

“A Herald, with a paper in his hand, containing the Challenge.

“The Deputy Earl Marshall (Lord Howard of Effingham) on

horseback, in his Robes and Coronet, with the Earl Marshall’s

staff in his hand, attended by a page.

“The Champion (Henry Dymoke, Esq.) on Horseback, in a complete

suit of Bright Armour, with a Gauntlet in his hand, his Helmet

on his head, adorned with a plume of feathers.

“The Lord High Constable (The Duke of Wellington), in his Robes

and Coronet and Collar of his Order, on Horseback, with the

Constable’s Staff, attended by two pages.

“Four Pages richly apparelled, attendants on the Champion.

At the entrance into the Hall, the Trumpets sounded thrice,

and the passage to the King’s table being cleared by the

Knight Marshall, the Herald, with a loud voice proclaimed the

Champion’s Challenge, in the words following:—

“‘If any person of what degree soever, high or low, shall deny

or gainsay our sovereign Lord King George the fourth, of the

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Defender of the

Faith, son and next heir to our Sovereign Lord King George the

third, the last King, deceased, to be the right heir to the

Imperial Crown of this United Kingdom, or that he ought not to

enjoy the same, here is his Champion, who saith that he lieth,

and is a false traitor, being ready in person to combat with

him, and in the quarrel will adventure his life against him on

what day soever he shall be appointed.’

“Whereupon the Champion threw down his gauntlet: which having

lain a short time upon the ground, the Herald took it up, and

delivered it again to the Champion. They then advanced to the

middle of the Hall, where the ceremony was again performed in

the same manner.

“Lastly they advanced to the steps of the throne, where the

Herald with those who preceded him ascended to the middle of

the steps, and proclaimed the challenge in the like manner;

when the Champion having thrown down his gauntlet and received

it again from the Herald, made a low obeisance to the King:

Whereupon the Cupbearer, having received from the officer

of the Jewel-house a Gold Cup and Cover filled with Wine,

presented the same to the King, and his Majesty drank to the

Champion, and sent to him by the Cupbearer the said Cup,

which the Champion (having put on his gauntlet) received, and

having made a low obeisance to the King drank the Wine; after

which, making another low obeisance to his Majesty and being

accompanied as before, he departed out of the Hall, taking with

him the said Cup and Cover as his fee.”

DRIBY, TUMBY, AND TATTERSHALL.

[Sidenote: NORMAN ACTIVITY]

The amount of work done by the Normans in England has always astonished

me. Not only did they build castles and strongholds, but in every county

they set up churches built of stone, and not here and there but literally

everywhere. They apportioned and registered the land, measured it and

settled the rent, and, though hard task masters, they showed themselves

efficient guardians, nor was any title or property too small for the king

and his officers to inquire into. Hence, in quite small out-of-the-way

places in the county we find monuments in little and almost unknown

churches which attest the activity of our Norman forefathers and which,

when examined by the aid of documents from the Public Record Office or

the abbey or manor rolls, old wills and all the early parchments in

which the industrious bookworm revels, often unfold chapters of early

history of extraordinary interest, if not for the general public, at

least for students and for the local gentry who still haunt the places

where once the armed heel of the knight rang and the monastery dispensed

the unstinted doles of a period which would have held up both hands

in astonishment at the luxury of our poor laws, the excellence of our

roads and the enormity of our rates and taxes. Take, for instance, the

little village of _Driby_ in the Lincolnshire wolds, a village the

early denizens of which my old friend, the late W. C. Massingberd, has

taken the trouble to make acquaintance with, and to whose labours I am

indebted for what little I know about it. He tells us how even in Saxon

times a notable man lived at Driby, one Siward, not perhaps the great

Northumbrian Thegn mentioned in _Macbeth_, but a later Siward who helped

Hereward and his fenmen to oppose the Normans at Ely. Whoever he was,

he held Scrivelsby and a large acreage in the Wolds. Next we find the

great Lincolnshire Baron, Gilbert de Gaunt, succeeding Siward at Driby,

holding, as Domesday Book (1086) shows, direct from the king.

[Sidenote: THE ABBOT OF KIRKSTEAD]

Early in the next century Simon de Driby comes before us; and his

son Robert—the eldest son was nearly always alternately Simon or

Robert—grants some lands in _Tumby_ to the abbey of Kirkstead. Robert’s

father is called sometimes Symon de Tumbi and sometimes Simon de Driby,

and it seems that he had obtained disposal of this land in Tumby by a

grant from Robert, son of Hugh de Tattershall, just as his forefather

had held land in Driby by the grant of Gilbert de Gaunt. On February 25,

1216, a Simon de Driby made his submission to King John at Lincoln, and

Ralph de Cromwell, whose descendant of the same name eventually married

the heiress of the Simon de Dribys and held the castle of Tattershall,

also submitted at Stamford on the 28th and gave his own eldest daughter

as a hostage for his good behaviour. The submissive Simon died in 1213,

and his son, the inevitable Robert, made an agreement with Hugh, the

Abbot of Kirkstead, by which the abbot was allowed to have his big cattle

and sheep dogs, mastiffs they were termed, in the warren of Tumby at all

times of the year, but no greyhounds or lurchers (_leporarios vel alios

canes preter mastivos_), and if the latter turned riotous and chased game

they were to be removed and others put in their place.

Robert’s son Simon obtained by marriage additional lands near Driby,

at _Tetford_, _Bag Enderby_, _Stainsby_, and _Ashby Puerorum_ on the

wolds, as well as some of the rich marsh land at _Wainfleet_. Henry III.

granted to Robert Tateshalle license to crenelate his house at Tateshall,

“quod possit kernelare mansum suum” in 1239; and we may here note that

Tattershall Castle in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and half

of the fifteenth was a stone building. Just at the close of the reign of

Edward I. a Robert de Driby married Joan, one of the three co-heiresses

of Robert de Tateshale or Tattershall, the last male representative of

the family, and Joan tried to settle the castle and manor of Tattershall

on her youngest son, Robert, instead of on the rightful heir. Until the

heir was of age Edward had granted them to his wife, Queen Margaret, a

sign that the property was valuable. She, moreover, when a widow, had the

manor of Tumby for her dower house.

When the third Edward was on the throne one of the parsons who served

Driby was a fellow of Merton College, Oxford, William Merle by name, who

is worthy to be remembered because he was the first Englishman to keep

a diary of the weather. He was appointed in 1330, and at that time one

Gilbert de Bernak was the parson at Tattershall, whose relative William

de Bernak, Kt., married Alice, the daughter of Robert de Driby and Joan

Tattershall, and, her three brothers dying without issue, Alice came into

possession of the manor of Driby. Their son, Robert de Bernak, presented

a man of the same name to Driby in 1347, who died probably of the Black

Death, for he presented again two years later. Robert in some way made

himself unpopular, and in 1369 we hear of his being spoiled and beaten

at Driby, with many of his men grievously wounded, and his reeve and his

butler both killed.

In 1374 he founded a chantry in Driby church endowed _inter alia_ with

rents from land in Driby and Friskney. His wife is called in his will

Katherine de Friskney. This Robert de Bernak was the only one of the name

who held the manor of Driby, for his elder brother John appears not to

have done so, and to have died in 1346.

[Sidenote: MATILDA DE BERNAK]

The uncle of these de Bernaks, John de Driby, shortly before his death

had granted the castle of Tattershall and the manors of Tattershall and

Tumby away from his sister Alice to John de Kirton, who was knighted by

Edward II., and summoned to Parliament in the sixteenth year of Edward

III., 1343; so none of the de Bernaks ever held Tattershall, and it was

through the direct interposition of the king that the descendants in the

female line of the Driby and Bernak families got the property back. The

way it came into the female line was this: The John de Bernak, eldest son

of William de Bernak and Alice de Driby, had married Joan, the daughter

of John Marmion of Wintringham, and had two sons and a daughter Matilda,

who eventually was his sole heiress. She married Ralph second Baron

Cromwell, and the presentation to her uncle, Robert de Bernak’s, chantry

at Driby was left to her and to her son Robert Cromwell after her.

Then, at her mother’s death in 1360, she succeeded to her mother’s

property in Norfolk, Tumby Manor and Tattershall Manor and Castle

reverted to her on the death of John de Kirton in 1367 and Driby Manor

with Brynkyl on her uncle, Robert De Bernak’s, death in 1387; so she held

Driby, Tumby, and Tattershall, as well as property in Norfolk.

[Sidenote: MARRIES RALPH CROMWELL]

In 1395 and 1399 we find her husband, Ralph Cromwell, presenting to the

chantry of the Holy Trinity in the church at Driby. They were large

landholders, for, in addition to the manor of Cromwell and his other

lands in Notts., he and his wife held the manor of ‘Kirkeby in Bayne’

with what are called the appurtenances to those various manors, _i.e._,

lands in many parts of the wolds and marsh.

[Illustration: _Tattershall Church and the Bain._]

Matilda died in 1419. Her son, Ralph Cromwell, was baptised on July

15, 1414, a day memorable for a very high tide on the Lincolnshire

coast which inundated all the land about Huttoft. He only lived to

be twenty-eight, and was succeeded by his cousin, Ralph third Baron

Cromwell, the grandson of Matilda.

[Sidenote: HER GRANDSON LORD HIGH TREASURER]

This Ralph Lord Cromwell had been appointed Lord High Treasurer of

England under Henry VI. in 1433. He married Margaret, daughter of John

fifth and last Baron d’Eyncourt, but had no issue. He it was who replaced

the old castle by the splendid brick building which was, and is, the

finest in England. He presented to Driby in 1449, and was the founder of

the college and the almshouse at Tattershall, for which he obtained leave

from the Crown to turn the parish church into a collegiate church in

1439, when he rebuilt it from the ground and endowed it with[26] several

manors, Driby being one, so in 1461 and until 1543 the warden of the

college of Tattershall was the patron of Driby. The almshouse has still

an endowment of £30. He died in 1455, as the brass in Tattershall church

records, and his nieces, the daughters of Sir Richard Stanhope, succeeded

to his estates, but Driby remained with the warden of Tattershall. The

nieces were Joan Lady Cromwell (for her husband Humphrey Bourchier,

son of the first Earl of Essex, was summoned to Parliament as Baron

Cromwell _jure uxoris_) and Matilda Lady Willoughby d’Eresby. One of

his executors, William of Waynflete, the famous Bishop of Winchester,

held the manor of Candlesby in 1477 for the use of this Lady Matilda,

and soon afterwards obtained a grant of it to his newly founded college

of Magdalen, Oxford, with whom it remains. Matilda Lady de Willoughby

presented to Candlesby in 1494, eight years after the bishop’s death.

Since then the living has been in the gift of the college.

At the dissolution of the monasteries, in 1545, Driby was granted to

the Duke of Suffolk, then it passed to Sir Henry Sidney of Penshurst,

who sold it to the Prescotts, a Lancashire family, about 1580, with

appurtenances of lands and rents in “Brynkhill, Belchford, Orebye,

Grenwyke, Ingolmells, Bagenderbie, Asbie Puerorum, ffulletsbye, West

Saltfletby alias Sallaby, Sallaby Allsaints, Golderbye, Tathwell, Thorpe

next Waynflet, Sutterbye and Scamlesbye.” There are two small brasses

in the church to James Prescott and his wife, who was a Molineux of

Lancashire. They died in 1581 and 1583. In 1636 Sir W. Prescott sold the

manor of Driby to Sir John Bolles, and in 1715 it was bought by Burrell

Massingberd and still goes with the Ormsby estate of that family.

[Sidenote: BUILDS TATTERSHALL]

[Sidenote: THE CASTLE]

A few words must be added about _Tattershall_. The great brick building

which rises so magnificently out of the flat is one of the most

impressive things in this or any country. I have walked all day partridge

shooting on the estate, and however far you went you never seemed able

to get away from the immediate presence of the magnificent pile; you

only had to look round and it was apparently just at your shoulder all

day long. Then if you enter it and go up, for even the first floor is

several feet above the level of the quadrangle, you are astonished at

the size of the great chambers one above the other, thirty-eight feet

by twenty-two, and seventeen feet high; and finally you come on the

second, third, and fourth story to the most beautiful brick vaulting

and mouldings in the small rooms and galleries running round the big

central rooms in the thickness of the walls. The whole is of exquisite

workmanship, and finished by very deep and handsome machicolations and

battlements. The bricks are apparently Flemish, thinner and of finer

quality than the English bricks; similar ones were used in building

Halstead Hall, Stixwould. The windows are dressed with stone, these

are large and arched, having mullions and the heads filled with stone

tracery like church windows. This shows how the nobleman’s castle was

changing into the nobleman’s palace or mansion. The building is at one

corner of a quadrangle, and is itself a parallelogram, and, including the

turret bases, eighty-seven feet long by sixty-nine wide, and 112 feet

high to the parapet of the angle turret. The walls, which are built on

massive brick vaulting, are immensely thick, being fifteen feet above,

and even more on the ground floor. The windows of the basement chambers

are close on the water of the moat, for several small chambers were made

in the thickness of the walls, in which, too, are the four chimneys.

The spiral staircase is in the south-east turret, and has a continuous

stone handrail let into the brick wall, very cleverly contrived, and

giving a firm and easy grasp. Each turret is octagonal, going up all

the way from the ground and being finished with a cone. In each turret

is a fireplace—a comfort to the warders, and useful at a pinch for

heating the supplies of oil and lead which could be poured down through

the machicolations on the heads of a too assiduous foe. From turret

to turret, and projecting somewhat over these machicolations, runs

a loopholed gallery, and here, too, the vaulting and the rich brick

mouldings are better than anything else of the kind in England, with

the exception of the smaller but elaborately enriched wall surfaces

of Barsham, near Walsingham in Norfolk. There are little rooms in the

turrets, on each floor, and the galleries on the second and third are

divided into rooms, so that in the whole building there were some

forty-eight rooms. The large central rooms would be hung with tapestry,

the lowest being used for an entrance-hall, meals being served in the

fine banqueting hall adjoining, the second for a hall of audience or

withdrawing room, and the third for the state bedroom. The fireplaces

are, in the large rooms, of great width, and the restored mantelpieces,

the barbarous removal of which lately caused such a stir, show a

number of most interesting coats-of-arms of the families who have been

connected with Tattershall down to the time of Henry VI. The treasurer’s

purse figures alternately with the shields, which bear the arms of the

Cromwells, Tattershalls, and d’Eyncourts, of Marmion, Driby, Bernak, and

Clifton; and on the second floor one panel represents the combat between

Hugh de Neville and a lion. Neville and Clifton were the second and third

husbands of Matilda Lady Willoughby, which points to the fact that these

mantelpieces were not carved until after the Lord Treasurer’s death,

1455, when Bishop Waynflete was in charge of the work. Sir Thomas Neville

was killed at the battle of Wakefield, 1460, and Sir Gervasse Clifton at

Tewkesbury in 1471.

[Illustration: _Tattershall Church and Castle._]

[Sidenote: ESHER PLACE]

[Sidenote: TATTERSHALL CHURCH]

There are three other brick buildings, which always strike me as being

worthy to rank along with Tattershall. The first, but following _longo

intervallo_, is the Bishop of Lincoln’s palace at Buckden in Hunts.,

built by Bishop Hugh of Wells about 1225. Another is the beautiful old

Tudor manor-house already alluded to at Barsham, near Walsingham, which

Lord Hastings has just advertised for sale (November, 1913). This has

more exquisite brick diaper work and mouldings on the outside of both

house and gate-house than Tattershall Castle has even in the passages

and vaulted rooms on the upper floor inside, and is a miracle of lovely

brick building. But it is not nearly so big as Tattershall. The other

bit of fine bricklaying which is of the same rather severe character as

Tattershall and Magdalen School at Wainfleet, is the gate-house of Esher

Place, occupied by Cardinal Wolsey October, 1529, to February, 1530. It

belonged to the Bishops of Winchester, and Wolsey then held that see

together with York. Waynflete, who was bishop 1447-1486, and finished

Tattershall about 1456, a year after the Lord Treasurer Cromwell’s death,

had partly re-built Esher Place in his inimitable brickwork, about

seventy years before. He used bricks for the lintels and mouldings, and

even put in the same sunk spiral handrail, which we have noticed as so

clever and remarkable a device in the turret staircase at Tattershall.

Waynflete’s arms, the lilies, so familiar to us at Eton and Magdalen,

were found by the Rev. F. K. Floyer, F.S.A., only last year (1912), when

some plaster was removed, on the keystone of the curiously contrived

vaulting over the porch. It is noticeable that Henry Pelham, who bought

the house in 1729, has introduced also his family badge, the Pelham

buckle, which is cut on the stone capitals of the door. This badge we

have spoken of in the chapter on Brocklesby. So we have two Lincolnshire

families of note, each of which has left his cognisance on the gateway of

the once proud Esher Place, the “Asher House” in that magnificent scene

of Act III. in Shakespeare’s “Henry VIII.”

_Norfolk._ “Hear the king’s pleasure, cardinal; who commands you

To render up the great seal presently

Into our hands: and to confine yourself

To Asher-house, my lord of Winchester’s,

Till you hear farther from his highness.”

Tattershall had a double moat, the outer one reaching to the River Bain.

Over both of them the entrance would probably be, as it certainly was

over the inner one, protected by a drawbridge and portcullis. This was

still to be seen in 1726 at the north-east corner of the quadrangle.

All that is now left is this one great pile of the Lord Treasurer’s

and one guard-house of the fifteenth century. The original castle was

begun 200 years earlier, when Robert, the direct descendant of Hugh

Fitz Eudo—founder in 1138 of the Cistercian abbey of Kirkstead, who had

received the estate from William the Conqueror—obtained leave from Henry

III. to build a castle there. We have seen how the castle became the

property of Joan who married Sir Robert Driby, whose daughter Alice

consigned it at her marriage to Sir W. Bernak, and their daughter Matilda

married Lord Cromwell, whose grandson was the High Treasurer to Henry

VI. He built the brick castle, but died soon after doing so, leaving

his collegiate church to be finished by his executors. The college he

had founded was to consist of a warden, a provost, six priests, six lay

clerks, and six choristers, and the almshouse was for thirteen poor of

either sex. The original building for this still exists, and is of very

humble appearance, having, it is said, been put up to serve first as a

lodgment for the masons engaged on the castle and church. Of these the

latter is singularly well built, as any building supervised by Bishop

William of Waynflete was sure to be, and evidently of very good stone;

and the two buildings being close together are striking specimens of the

secular and ecclesiastical architecture of the period.

[Sidenote: THE BRASSES]

The Treasurer’s wife, who was sister and coheir of William fifth Baron

d’Eyncourt, died a year before her husband. They are buried in the

church, and two very fine brasses once marked the spot. He was a K.G.,

and this shows him with the Garter and Mantle of his Order, but the brass

is sadly mutilated now; while her effigy is, sad to say, lost entirely.

Two other fine brasses of this family are in the church. One, of the

Treasurer’s niece, Joan Stanhope, who married first Sir Humphrey

Bourchier, son of the Earl of Essex, who was made fourth Baron Cromwell

in her right in 1469; and secondly, after her first husband had been

slain at the battle of Barnet, 1471, Sir Robert Ratcliffe. She died in

1479, and was succeeded in the property by her sister Matilda, who had

married Lord Willoughby d’Eresby. Her brass has also been a particularly

fine one. She died in 1497, and ten years before this the Tattershall

estate had passed to the Crown. The inscription on her brass is filled

in by a later and inferior hand, and no mention is made of her two next

husbands.

[Sidenote: THE WINDOWS]

There is a very fine brass also of one of the last provosts or wardens

of the college, probable date between 1510 and 1520. In 1487 Henry VIII.

granted the manor to his mother, Margaret Countess of Richmond, and,

the Duke of Richmond having no issue, Henry VIII., in 1520, granted it

with many other manors in the neighbourhood to Charles Duke of Suffolk.

This grant was confirmed by Edward VI. on his accession in 1547, but the

duke and his two sons having died, he granted it, in 1551, to Edward

Lord Clinton, afterwards Earl of Lincoln. The Clintons held it till

1692, when it passed, through a cousin Bridget, to the Fortescue family

under whom both church and castle have suffered severely. Amongst other

vandalisms, Lord Exeter, when living at Revesby, was allowed to remove

the fine stained glass windows to his church of St. Martin’s in Stamford,

in 1757. He paid £24 2_s._ 6_d._ to his steward for white glass to be

put in in their stead, but the glass was not put in, and for eighty

years the church was open to the wind and rain. The removal at all was

a disgraceful business, and no wonder the Tattershall folk threatened to

kill the glazier who was employed to take the windows out.

[Illustration: _Tattershall Church._]

The castle is now (1912) the property of Lord Curzon, who is putting

it into repair. The story of its sale quite recently to a speculator,

and the ruthless tearing out by his creditors of the fine historic

mantelpieces is one which reflects little credit on any concerned in it.

They are now replaced.

[Sidenote: THE KEEP RESTORED]

But “All’s well that ends well,” and Lincolnshire may congratulate

herself that the finest old brick building in the country is in such

good hands, and that the needed restoration is being carried out so

admirably. It was no easy task to find oak trees to supply the beams

which carry the floors, as each had to be twenty-four feet long and

eighteen inches square.[27] The floors are now in, and the roof, which

had been off for 250 years, reinstated. In the inner ward the ground plan

of the kitchen has been laid bare; this was close outside the south-east

angle of the keep and connected with it by a covered passage leading from

the staircase turret. The turrets and parapets are repaired, and the

floors and roof being again in place and the moat refilled with water,

though not what one would call a comfortable residence, it will be a

most interesting place to visit, and never again, we trust, be likely

to fall into the neglect which it has suffered for the last two hundred

years. Enough pottery and metal has been found to form the nucleus of a

collection which will be preserved for visitors to see. But no collection

will ever be half as interesting as the sight of this magnificent brick

building itself, and the close examination of all its structural details.

[Illustration: _Scrivelsby Stocks._]

CHAPTER XXXIV

BARDNEY ABBEY

The Excavations—The Title

“Dominus”—Barlings—Stainfield—Tupholme—Stixwould—Kirkstead

Abbey—Kirkstead Chapel—Woodhall Spa—Tower-on-the-Moor—Charles

Brandon Duke of Suffolk.

The fens were always a difficulty to the various conquerors of England,

and, probably owing to the security which they gave, they, from the

earliest times, attracted the monastic bodies. Hence we find on the

eastern edge of the Branston, Nocton, and Blankney fens, and just

off the left bank of the Witham river when it turns to the south, an

extraordinary number of abbeys. For Kirkstead, Stixwould, Tupholme and

Bardney, with Stainfield and Barlings just a mile or two north of the

river valley, are all within a ten mile drive. Of these, Kirkstead was

Cistercian, and Stixwould and Stainfield were nunneries. They were

all most ruthlessly and utterly destroyed by Thomas Cromwell at the

dissolution, so it is only the history of them that we can speak about.

[Illustration: _Kirkstead Chapel._]

Stixwould and Kirkstead were originally as much in the fen as Bardney;

but since the “Dales Head Dyke” was cut parallel with the Witham and

about a mile to the west from “Metheringham Delph” to “Billinghay

Skirth,” the land between it and the river is known as the “Dales.”

[Sidenote: ST. OSWALD]

[Sidenote: A ROYAL ABBOT]

By far the oldest and the biggest and most interesting of the group

was the great Benedictine Abbey of Bardney. This was founded not later

than the seventh century. Some of the chronicles say by Æthelred, son

of Penda, the pagan king of Mercia; but it may have been by his brother

Wulfhere, who reigned before him. Æthelred’s Queen Osfrida, niece of

the sainted Oswald, the Northumbrian king who had defeated Cædwalla at

Hevenfield in 635 and was himself killed in battle by Penda at Maserfield

in 642—had before her marriage brought the relics of her uncle in 672

to Bardney, where they became the centre of attraction for pilgrims,

and St. Oswald’s name as patron was added to those of St. Peter and

St. Paul to whom the abbey was dedicated. Osfrida herself having been

murdered by the Danes in 697, was buried here, and Æthelred, who in 701

founded Evesham Abbey, following the example of half-a-dozen Anglian

and Saxon kings, gave up his throne after a reign of thirty years and

entered Bardney as a monk in 704. In the quaint words of the chronicle

he “was shorn a religious,” i.e., adopted the tonsure, and died twelve

years later, after ruling for four years as Abbot of Bardney. One of the

frescoes in Friskney church represents him resigning his crown to become

a monk. St. Oswald’s arm, which had been preserved in St. Peter’s church

at Bamborough, and which never withered, was afterwards transferred to

Peterborough Abbey, according to Gunton, a little before the Conquest. A

monk of the period wrote the following lines about it:—

“Nullo verme perit, nulla putredine tabet

Dextra viri, nullo constringi frigore, nullo

Dissolvi fervore potest, sed semper eodem

Immutata statu persistit, mortua vivit.”

In which the monk, as usual, made a “false quantity.” In 870 Hingvar

and Hubba, the Danes, in spite of its fancied security, utterly

destroyed the abbey and put some 300 monks to death. They also destroyed

Peterborough, Croyland, Ely, Huntingdon, Winchester, and other fine and

wealthy monastic houses in the same barbarous manner. Bardney after

this lay desolate for 200 years; after which, Gilbert De Gaunt, on whom

the Conqueror had bestowed much land in mid-Lincolnshire, with the aid

of the famous Bishop Remigius of Lincoln, restored it, and endowed it

with revenues from at least a dozen different villages, amongst them

Willingham, Southrey, Partney, Steeping, Firsby, Skendleby, Willoughby,

Lusby, Winceby, Hagworthingham, Folkingham, and Heckington. This would

be about 1080. In 1406 we read of Henry IV., our Lincolnshire king,

spending a Saturday-to-Monday there, riding from Horncastle with his two

sons and three captive earls of the Scots, Douglas, Fyfe, and Orkney,

and a goodly company. The Bishop of Lincoln “with 24 horses” and the

“venerable Lord Willoughby” came to do homage in the afternoon. The abbey

stood on slightly rising ground, with a moat and deep ditch lined with

brick, as at Tattershall, and enclosing twenty-four acres. It was half a

mile from the present church. On the east side of the abbey is a large

barrow on which was once a handsome cross in memory of King Æthelred, who

is supposed to have been buried there, and it is quite possible that he

was. The name of a field close by “Coney garth” is no doubt a corruption

of Koenig Garth, which is much the same as the “King’s Mead fields” near

Bath Abbey, immortalised in Sheridan’s “Rivals,” as the place of meeting

between Captain Absolute and Bob Acres, and where Sir Lucius O’Trigger

inhumanly asks Acres “In case of accident ... would you choose to be

pickled and sent home? or would it be the same to you to lie here in the

Abbey? I’m told there is very snug lying in the Abbey.”

[Sidenote: BARDNEY ABBEY]

The site of the abbey when excavations were begun in 1909 was apparently

a grass field with a moat; but since then the whole of the great monastic

church has been laid bare to the floor pavement, which was about four

and a half feet below the surface. The Norman bases of the eight chancel

columns and twenty pillars of the nave are now visible, and also of the

four large piers which supported the tower arches; these must have been

very beautiful, each nave pillar having round a solid core a cluster of

twelve, and the tower piers of sixteen, columns. All down the church,

which is 254 feet long and over sixty-one feet wide, tombs were found

_in situ_, with inscriptions, the earliest being that of Johanna, wife

of John Browne of Bardney, merchant, 1334, and the handsomest that of

Richard Horncastel, abbot, 1508, which measures eight feet by four, is

seven inches thick, and weighs three tons. This had been already moved,

and it is now fixed against the south wall of Bardney church. Adjoining

the south side of the nave is the cloister; and the chapter-house,

parlour, dormitory, dining-hall, cellar, kitchen, well and guest-house

are all contiguous. A little way off are the infirmary-hall and chapel,

with three fireplaces and some tile paving. Not much statuary was found,

but various carved heads and iron tools, pottery, etc., one headless

figure three feet high of St. Laurence and, most interesting of all, the

reverse of the abbey seal which was in use in 1348, showing St. Peter and

St. Paul beneath a canopy and the half figure of an abbot with crozier

below. We know that the obverse had on it a figure of St. Oswald, but

that has not yet been found. It is made of bronze or latten.

The huge extent of the buildings and the beauty of the column bases and

the plan of this, the earliest of English monasteries, with its moat

enclosing the whole twenty-five acres, and its king’s tumulus, make a

visit to the site very interesting, and the vicar, Rev. C. E. Laing, has

worked hard with his four men each year since 1909, and with the help of

kind friends has managed to purchase three acres, but is greatly hampered

by want of funds, which at present only reach one quarter of the sum

required.

[Sidenote: THE TITLE “DOMINUS”]

Mr. Laing has published a little shilling guide to the excavations at

Bardney, with photographs, which explain the work very clearly and show

the tombs with their inscriptions. From this it will be noticed that

Abbot Horncastel is called on his tomb “Dompnus,” _i.e._, Dominus, and

Thomas Clark, rector of Partney, has this title “Dns.,” and also Thomas

Goldburgh, soldier, has the same. This is the same name as that on the

old Grimsby Corporation seal of the princess, who is said to have married

Havelock the Dane (_see_ Chap. XIX.). Dominus is a difficult title to

translate, for if we call it ‘Sir,’ as the old registers often do, it is

misleading, as it has no knightly significance, and it probably meant no

more than “The Rev.,” or in the case of a soldier “Esq.” or “Gent.” It

certainly does not imply here that the owners of the title belonged to

“the lower order of clergy,” and yet that is the recognised meaning of

it in many old church registers, _e.g._, in the list of rectors, vicars,

and chantry priests of Heckington, taken from the episcopal records at

Lincoln. Some of the vicars and most of the chantry priests are called

“Sir,” and this generally implies a non-graduate. So also in the chapter

on the clergy with the list of rectors and curates given in Miss Armitt’s

interesting book, “The Church of Grasmere” (published 1912), pp. 57-60

and p. 81, we find that the tythe-taking rector is termed “Master,”

and bears the suffix “Clerk”; while “Sir” is reserved for the curate,

his deputy, who has not graduated at either university. This view is

upheld in Dr. Cox’s “Parish Registers of England,” p. 251. The Grasmere

book speaks of “_Magister_ George Plumpton,” who was son of Sir William

Plumpton, of Plumpton, Knight, and rector of Grasmere, 1438-9. In 1554

Gabriel Croft is called rector, and his three curates for the outlying

hamlets are put down as—

“Dns. William Jackson, called in his will ‘late Curate of Grasmer.’”

“Dns. John Hunter.

“Dns. Hugo Walters.”

This entry is followed by—

“_Sirre_ Thomas Benson curate” who witnesses a will in 1563; and in 1569

we have “_Master_ John Benson Rector.” In 1645 we have a “Mr. Benson”

doing the duty as rector during the Commonwealth, and in 1646 we have

“Sir Christopher Rawling,” who had probably served as curate for some

years, as he is, at his child’s baptism in 1641, styled “Clericus.”

Clearly this word “Sir” is here the translation of the Latin “Dominus,”

and the previous entries bear out the statement that the prefix ‘Sir’

here betokens the lower order of clergy who had not graduated at either

university. But that this was not a plan universally followed is made

quite clear from the monuments at Bardney, where we find a rector and an

abbot and a soldier all called “Dominus.” Perhaps in neither of these

cases is it necessary to translate the word by ‘Sir,’ why not leave it

at “Dominus”? From a letter in _The Times_, May, 1913, I gather that

this word “Dominus” is responsible for the title “Lord Mayor.” The words

“Dominus Major” are first found among the City of London Records for

1486, in an order issued for the destruction of unlawful nets and coal

sacks of insufficient size. The words only meant “Sir Mayor,” but in

course of time they came to be translated “The Lord The Mayor,” which

easily passed into “The Lord Mayor,” a title which did not come into

general use till 1535.

[Sidenote: BARLINGS ABBEY]

_Barlings Abbey_ stood a mile west of the Benedictine nunnery of

_Stainfield_, which was founded by Henry Percy in the twelfth century.

The abbey was founded about the same time by Ralph de Hoya for

Premonstratensian canons. This term is derived from the “_Premonstratum_”

Abbey in Picardy, _i.e._, built in a place “pointed out” by the Blessed

Virgin to be the headquarters of the Order. This was in 1120, and the

Order first came to England in 1140. At the dissolution they seem to

have had thirty-five houses here, Tupholme Abbey being one of them. The

canons lived according to the rule of St. Augustine, and wore a white

robe. In the revolt against the suppression of the smaller houses, known

as “the Lincolnshire Rebellion,” or “the Pilgrimage of Grace,” in 1537,

the prior of Barlings, Dr. Matthew Makkerell, a D.D. of Cambridge, took a

prominent part, and under the name of Captain Cobbler, for he took that

disguise, he led 20,000 men. They were dispersed by Charles Brandon, Duke

of Suffolk, and the prior was hanged at his own gate.

The abbey is sometimes called Oxeney, because the founders removed the

canons from Barling Grange to a place called Oxeney in another part of

the village, but the name followed them and Oxeney became Barlings.

_Barlings_ and _Stainfield_ are both near Bardney to the north, and

_Tupholme_ and _Stixwould_ just as near on the south. _Tupholme_, like

Barlings, has a Premonstratensian house, founded 1160. A wall of the

refectory with lancet window, and a beautiful stone pulpit for the reader

during meals is all that is left. It is close to the road from Horncastle

to Bardney.

[Illustration: _Remains of Kirkstead Abbey Church._]

[Sidenote: KIRKSTEAD ABBEY]

_Stixwould_ is three miles to the south, and was, like Stainfield, a

nunnery. It was founded by Lucia the first, the wife of Ivo Taillebois.

Nothing is left of it; but in the parish church are some stone coffins,

a good parclose screen, used as a reredos, and a remarkable font, whose

panels, bearing emblems of the Evangelists and of the first four months

of the year, are divided by richly carved pinnacles with figures of

lions and flowers. Near by is _Halstead Hall_ (“Hawstead”), a fifteenth

century moated house of the Welby family, from which Lincoln, Boston, and

Heckington are all visible.

[Sidenote: KIRKSTEAD CHAPEL]

_Kirkstead_ is three miles further south, and here is one of the most

beautiful little thirteenth-century buildings in the county. It is near

the ruin of the abbey, of which only a gaunt fragment remains. This

chapel of St. Leonard is a real gem of Early English architecture. It

is an oblong chamber with vaulted roof adorned with tooth and nail-head

ornament, springing from bosses low down in the wall. The wall is arcaded

all round, and the capitals exquisitely carved. Bishop Trollope speaks

of the western door as “one of the most lovely doorways imaginable, its

jambs being first enriched by an inner pair of pillars having caps from

which spring vigorously and yet most delicately carved foliage, and then,

after a little interval, two more pairs of similar pillars carrying a

beautifully moulded arch, one member of which is worked with the tooth

moulding. Above this lovely doorway, in which still hangs the cöeval

delicately ironed oak door, is an arcade of similar work, in the centre

of which is a pointed oval window of beautiful design. The inside is

still more beautiful than without.”

Inside, part of a rood screen with lancet arcading is earlier than

anything of the kind in England, except the plain Norman screen in the

room above the altar in Compton Church, Surrey. A mutilated effigy of a

knight with a cylindrical saucepan-shaped helmet and a hauberk of banded

mail, shows a rare instance of thirteenth-century armour. It is thought

to be Robert, second Lord of Tattershall, who died about 1212.

The ruinous state of this lovely little building, which was used for

public worship until Bishop Wordsworth prohibited it, as the building

was unsafe, has long been a crying scandal; the owner always refusing

to allow it to be made safe by others, and doing nothing to prevent its

imminent downfall himself. The present Act of 1913 has, it is devoutly

hoped, come in time to enable proper and prompt measures to be taken to

put it into a sound condition.[28]

Quite near to Kirkstead is the newest Lincolnshire

watering-place—_Woodhall Spa_.

[Sidenote: WOODHALL SPA]

A deep boring for coal in 1811 found no coal but struck a spring or

flow of water, which is more highly charged with iodine and bromine

than any known spa. This has been utilised, and a fine range of baths,

on the principle of those at Bath, has been set up, though the water,

unlike that at Bath, or at Acqui near Genoa, does not gush out boiling

hot, but has to be pumped up 400 feet and then heated. All the various

kinds of baths and appliances for the treatment of rheumatism, etc., are

now installed, and quite a town has arisen on what was not long ago a

desolate moor. The air is fine, the soil dry and sandy, the heather is

beautiful around the place, and the Scotch fir woods and the picturesque

“Tower-on-the-Moor”—a watch-tower or part of a hunting-lodge built by the

Cromwells of Tattershall—add a charm to the landscape, though the “greate

ponde or lake brickid about,” mentioned by Leland, is gone.

[Illustration: _Kirkstead Chapel._]

[Sidenote: CHARLES BRANDON DUKE OF SUFFOLK]

The Duke of Suffolk, to whom his sovereign gave so many Lincolnshire

manors, was son of Sir W. Brandon, the king’s standard-bearer who fell

at Bosworth field. Henry VIII. had a great liking for him and made him

Master of the Horse, a viscount, and afterwards a duke. Like his royal

master, he was the husband of several wives, the third of four being Mary

Queen of France, widow of Louis XII. and second sister of Henry VIII. He

resembled the king, too, in being a big man; indeed he was remarkable

for his bodily strength and feats of arms, and was victor in several

tournaments. The pains he took to quell the Lincolnshire Rebellion

greatly pleased the king, who showered rewards on him with lavish hands.

He is said to have somewhat resembled him, his countenance being bluff

and his beard white and cut like the king’s. He was good-tempered and

fortunate in never giving offence. Hence, on his portrait at Woburn Abbey

he is said to have been “Gratiose withe Henry VIII. Voide of Despyte,

moste fortunate to the end, never in displeasure with his Kynge.”

CHAPTER XXXV

THE FENS

Brothertoft or Goosetoft—In Holland Fen—John Taylor’s Poem—Fen

Skating.

Primitive peoples have been always rather prone to establishing

themselves on swampy ground, probably because they felt secure from

attack in such places. They passed in their coracles easily from one

little island of dry ground to another and found plenty of employment

in taking fish and waterfowl, in cutting grass for fodder or hay, reeds

for thatch and bedding, willows to make their wattled huts, and peat for

fuel, all of which were close at hand and free to everyone. It was not

such a bad life after all.

[Sidenote: THE ROMANS IN BRITAIN]

The earliest inhabitants of the Lincolnshire fens came from the mouths of

the Meuse, Rhine, and Scheldt, so they lived by choice in low land and

knew how to make the most of the situation. They clung for habitation to

the islands of higher ground, and the names of many villages in the low

part of the county, though no longer surrounded by water, bear witness

by their termination to their insular origin, _e.g._, Bardney, Gedney,

Friskney, Stickney, Sibsey, _ey_, as in the word ‘eyot’ (pronounced ait,

_e.g._, Chiswick Eyot), meaning _island_. In time the knots of houses

grew to village settlements, and raised causeways were made from one to

another, which served also as banks to keep out the sea at high tides.

And we know that they did this effectually; hence we find the churches

mostly placed for safety on that side of the causeway bank which is

furthest from the sea. You will see this to be the case as you go along

the road from Boston to Wainfleet, where the churches are all west of

the road, or from Spalding to Long Sutton, where they are all south of

the road, and this explains how the Lincolnshire name for a high road is

“ramper,” _i.e._, rampart. There are other sea banks which were thrown

up purposely to keep out the sea, not necessarily as roads. These are

very large and important works, fifty miles in length and at a varying

distance from the sea, girdling the land with but little intermission

from Norfolk to the Humber. Such large undertakings could only have been

carried out by the Romans.

This bank, when made, had to be watched; for both in the earliest ages,

and also in Jacobean times when the fens were drained, all embanking and

draining works were violently opposed by the fen-men who lived by fishing

and fowling, and had no desire to see the land brought into cultivation.

The Romans were great colonisers; they made good roads through the

country wherever they went to stay, and in Lincolnshire they began

the existing system of “Catchwater” drains which has been the means

of converting a marshy waste into the finest agricultural land in the

kingdom. The Roman Carr (or fen) dyke joined the Witham with the Welland,

so making a navigable waterway from Lincoln in the centre to Market

Deeping in the extreme south of the county; and by catching the water

from the hills to the west it prevented the overflowing streams from

flooding the low-lying lands, and discharged them into the sea.

Rennie, at the beginning of last century, used the same method in the

east fen; but modern engineers have this advantage over the Romans that

they are able by pumping stations to raise the water which lies below the

level of the sea to a higher level from which it can run off by natural

gravitation. Still the Romans did wonderfully, and when they had to leave

England, after 400 years of beneficent occupation, England lost its best

friends, for, not only was he a great road and dyke builder but, as the

child’s “Very First History Book” says,

“If he just chose, there could be no man

Nicer and kinder than a Roman.”

The Romans themselves were quite aware of the beneficial nature of their

rule, as far as their colonies were concerned, and were proud of it. Who

can fail to see this feeling if he reads the charming lines on Rome which

Claudian wrote, about 400 A.D., when the Romans were still in Britain.

“Hæc est in gremium victos quae sola recepit,

Humanumque genus communi nomine fovit

Matris non Dominae ritu, civesque vocavit

Quos domuit, nexuque pio longinqua revinxit.”

Alone her captives to her heart she pressed,

Gave to the human race one common name,

And—mother more than sovereign—fondly called

Each son though far away her citizen.

W. F. R.

[Sidenote: THE SAXONS]

The whole country soon became a prey to the freebooters who crossed

the North Sea in search of plunder. Of these, the Saxons under Cedric

besieged Lincoln about 497 and, the Angles from the Elbe joining with

them, made a strong settlement there which became the capital of Mercia

and received a Saxon king. To these invaders, who came as plunderers

but remained as colonists, we also owe much. In east Lincolnshire they

certainly fostered agriculture, and like the Romans made salt-pans for

getting the salt from sea water by evaporation.

[Illustration: _Darlow’s Yard, Sleaford._]

[Sidenote: THE DANES]

[Sidenote: THE NORMANS]

The Saxons dominated the country for about the same time as the Romans,

and were then themselves ousted with much cruelty and bloodshed by the

Danes or Norsemen. But during their time Christianity had been introduced

at the instance of Pope Gregory I., who sent Augustine and forty monks

to Britain at the end of the sixth century to convert the Anglo-Saxons,

and as Bertha, wife of Æthelbert, King of Kent, was a Christian, he met

with considerable success, and became the first Archbishop of Canterbury.

He was followed early in the seventh century by Paulinus, who came from

York and built the first stone church at Lincoln. When, a hundred and

fifty years later, the Danes made their appearance they found in several

places monasteries and cathedrals or churches which they ruthlessly

pillaged and destroyed; and they too, having come for plunder, remained

as indwellers, settling in the eastern counties, not only near the coast

but far inland, just as the Norsemen settled and introduced industrial

arts on the west coast in Cumberland. Dane and Saxon struggled long and

fiercely, the Danes being beaten in Alfred’s great battle at Ethandune

in Wilts, 878, but only to return in Edmund’s reign and defeat the

Saxons at Assandun in Essex under King Canute, 1016, after which, by

agreement, they divided the country with Edmund Ironsides, and withdrew

from Wessex, the region south-west of _Watling Street_, but the whole

country north-eastwards from the Tees to the Thames was given over to

them and called the Danelagh, or country under Dane law. Thus Lincoln

became a Danish burgh, and in the next year, on Edmund’s death, Canute

became sole King of England. None of the Fenmen of Lincolnshire had been

subdued till in 1013 Swegen, King of Denmark, invaded the county in force

and pillaged and burnt St. Botolph’s town (Boston), and they appear to

have maintained their independence all through the Norman times. For

the dynasty of Danish kings did not last long, and both they and the

kings of the restored Saxon line were effaced by the Norman invaders

who, like all their predecessors, found the Fenmen a hard nut to crack.

Hereward, who was not son of Leofric, but a Lincolnshire man, had many a

fight for liberty, and held the Isle of Ely against the repeated attacks

of the Normans, and, when at last the Fenmen were beaten, they still

maintained a sort of independence, and instead of becoming Normans in

manners and language they are said to have kept their own methods and

their own speech, so that there may well be some truth in the boast that

the ordinary speech of the East Lincolnshire men of “the Fens” and “the

Marsh” is the purest English in the land.

HOLLAND FEN AND FEN SKATING.

In the Fens there were always some tracts of ground raised above the

waters which at times inundated the lower levels there. These are

indicated by such names as Mount Pleasant, or by the termination ‘toft,’

as in Langtoft, Fishtoft, Brothertoft, and Wigtoft in the Fens; and

similarly in the Isle of Axholme, Eastoft, Sandtoft, and Beltoft. Toft

is a Scandinavian word connected with top, and means a knoll of rising

ground. When the staple commodities of the Fens were “feathers, wool,

and wildfowl,” these knolls were centres of industry. Sheep might roam

at large, but in hard weather always liked to have some higher ground

to make for, and human beings have a preference for a dry site, hence

a cottage or two and, if there was room, a collection of houses and

possibly a church would come into existence, and the grassy knoll would

be often white with the flocks of geese which were kept, not so much

for eating as for plucking; and we know that the monasteries always

had ‘vacheries’ or cow-pastures either on these isolated knolls or on

rising ground at the edge of the fen. One of the most notable of these

island villages was called at one time Goosetoft, now Brothertoft, in the

Holland Fen about four miles west of Boston. Here on the 8th of July,

O.S., all sheep “found in their wool,” _i.e._, who had not been clipped

and marked, were driven up to be claimed by their owners, fourpence a

head being exacted from all who had no common rights.

The custom survives in Westmorland, where in November of every year all

stray Herdwick sheep are brought in to the shepherds’ meeting at the

‘Dun Bull’ at Mardale, near Hawes-Water, and after they are claimed, the

men settle down to a strenuous day, or rather two nights and a day, of

enjoyment; a fox hunt on foot, and a hound trail whatever the weather

may be, followed by feasting and songs at night, keep them all “as merry

as grigs.” But where there are ten people at the Dun Bull there were one

hundred or more at Brothertoft, people coming out from Boston for the day

or even for the week, and all being lodged and fed in some thirty large

tents.

[Sidenote: GOOSETOFT]

John Taylor, ‘the water poet,’ wrote in 1640 an account of Goosetoft

which is worth preserving:—

In Lincolnshire an ancient town doth stand

Called Goosetoft, that hath neither fallow’d land

Or woods or any fertile pasture ground,

But is with wat’ry fens incompast round.

The people there have neither horse nor cowe,

Nor sheep, nor oxe, nor asse, nor pig, nor sowe;

Nor cream, curds, whig, whey, buttermilk or cheese,

Nor any other living thing but geese.

The parson of the parish takes great paines,

And tythe-geese only are his labour’s gaines;

If any charges there must be defrayed

Or imposition on the towne is lay’d,

As subsidies or fifteenes[29] for the King,

Or to mend bridges, churches, anything,

Then those that have of geese the greatest store

Must to these taxes pay so much the more.

Nor can a man be raised to dignity

But as his geese increase and multiply;

And as men’s geese do multiply and breed

From office unto office they proceed.

A man that hath but with twelve geese began

In time hath come to be a tythingman;

And with great credit past that office thorough,

His geese increasing he hath been Headborough,

Then, as his flock in number are accounted,

Unto a Constable he hath been mounted;

And so from place to place he doth aspire,

And as his geese grow more hee’s raisèd higher.

’Tis onely geese then that doe men prefer,

And ’tis a rule no geese no officer.

FEN SKATING.

[Sidenote: FEN SKATING]

The Fen skaters of Lincolnshire have been famous for centuries. In the

Peterborough Museum you may see two bone skates made of the shin bones

of an ox and a deer ground to a smooth flat surface on one side and

pierced at either end with holes, or grooved, for attachment thongs.

The regular fen skates, which are only now being ousted by the more

convenient modern form were like the Dutch skates of Teniers’ pictures,

long, projecting blades twice as long as a man’s foot, turned up high

at the end and cut off square at the heel. They were called “Whittlesea

runners,” and were supposed to be the best form of skate for pace

straight ahead; and no man who lived at Ramsey 100 to 200 years ago or

at Peterborough or Croyland was without a pair. The writer has been on

Cowbit Wash (pronounced Cubbit), near Spalding, when the great frozen

plain was in places black with the crowds of Lincolnshire fenmen, mostly

agricultural labourers, all on skates and all thoroughly enjoying

themselves, whilst ever and anon a course was cleared, and with a swish

of the sounding “pattens” a couple of men came racing down the long lane

bordered with spectators with both arms swinging in time to the long

vigorous strokes which is the fenman’s style. The most remarkable thing

about the gathering was the splendid physique of the crowd. Could they

all have been taken and drilled for military service they would have made

a regiment of which Peter the Great would have been proud.

The best ice fields for racing purposes are Littleport in Cambridgeshire,

and Lingay Fen and Cowbit Wash in Lincolnshire. Before it was drained in

1849, Whittlesea Mere in Huntingdonshire was the great meeting ground,

and the Ramsey and Whittlesea men were famous skaters. By dyke or river

one could go from Cambridge to Ramsey on skates all the way. The best

speed skaters—and speed was the only aim of the fen skater—for many years

were the Smarts of Welney, near Littleport. “Turkey” Smart beat Southery,

who won the championship in the last match on Whittlesea Mere from

Watkinson of Ramsey, and after him “Fish” Smart held the record at Cowbit

Wash for a whole generation from 1881 to 1912.

In 1878 and 1879 the frost was long and hard, and the prizes at the

great skating match near Ramsey took the form of food and clothing for

the frozen-out labourers. The course was down a road which a heavy fall

of snow, followed first by a thaw and then by a frost, had made into an

ideal skating course.

[Sidenote: THE CHAMPIONSHIPS]

Whatever year you take you will find that the prize-winners for fen

skating come from the same district and the same villages; Welney,

Whaplode, Gedney, Cowbit, and Croyland are perpetually recurring

names, the last four being all situated in the south-eastern corner of

Lincolnshire which abuts on the Wash between the outfall of the Welland

and the Nene.

In the severe frost of 1912, which lasted from January 29 to February

5, the thermometer on the night of February 3 going down to zero,

Cowbit Wash saw the contest for both the professional and the amateur

championship for Lincolnshire. The Lincolnshire professional race on

Saturday, February 3, over a course of one mile and a half with one

turn in it brought out two Croyland men, H. Slater first and G. Pepper

second, F. Ward of Whaplode being third. The winning time was 4 minutes

50 seconds.

On Monday, February 5, W. W. Pridgeon of Whaplode won the Lincolnshire

amateur championship over a mile course with a turn and a terrific wind

in 3 minutes 40 seconds, two Boston men coming next. On the following

day, February 6, the ice from the thaw, though wet, had a beautiful

surface, and in the great “one mile straightaway” race open to amateurs

and professionals alike, eight men entered, all of whom beat Fish Smart’s

record of 3 minutes. F. W. Dix, the British amateur champion winning

in 2 minutes 27¼ seconds, with S. Greenhall, the British professional

champion, second in 2 minutes 32²⁄₁₅ seconds.

F. W. Dix showed himself to be first-rate at all distances, for besides

this mile race, he won the mile and a half on February 2 at Littleport,

with five turns in 4 minutes 40 seconds, and next day at the Welsh Harp

he secured the prize for 220 yards in 22⅘ seconds. S. Greenhall had won

the British professional championship on the previous day at Lingay Fen

over a course of one and a half miles, coming in first by 170 yards in 4

minutes 44⅘ seconds.

In all these races the wind was blowing a gale, and those who won the

toss, and could run close up under the lee of the line of spectators had

a decided advantage, and as a matter of fact they won in every case.

[Sidenote: A WORLD’S RECORD]

Since this Dix has won in the Swiss skating matches of 1913, and here it

may be of interest to add the following, which appeared in _The Times_ of

February 3, 1913:—

“SPEED-SKATING.

INTERNATIONAL RACE IN CHRISTIANIA.

(From our Correspondent.)

CHRISTIANIA, FEB. 1.

“The International Skating Race held here to-day over a course

of 10,000 metres was won by the Norwegian skater, Oscar

Mathieson. His time was 17 min. 22⁶⁄₁₀ sec., which is a world’s

‘record.’ The Russian, Ipolitow, was second, his time being 17

min. 35⁵⁄₁₀ sec. The previous world’s ‘record’ was 17 min. 36⅗

sec.”

‘Metres’ fairly beat me, but I take it that 10,000 of them would be about

six miles.

But anyone who likes to worry it out can postulate that the length of

a metre is 39·37079 inches. This was originally adopted as a “Natural

unit,” being one ten-millionth of the distance between a pole and the

Equator. But, as an error has been found in the measurement of this

distance, it is no longer a “Natural unit,” but just the length of a

certain rod of platinum kept at Paris, as the yard is the length of a rod

kept at Westminster.

CHAPTER XXXVI

THE FEN CHURCHES—NORTHERN DIVISION

Friskney—Frescoes in the Church—Its Decoys—Wrangle—John

Reed’s Epitaph—Leake—Leverton—Benington—Frieston—The

Font-Cover—Frieston Shore—Rare

Flowers—Fishtoft—Skirbeck—Boston—The Church.

The two centres for “The parts of Holland” are Spalding and Boston. From

the latter we go both north and south, from Spalding only eastwards, and

in each case we shall pass few residential places of importance, but many

exceptionally fine churches.

We will take the district north of Boston first.

Friskney, which is but three and a half miles south of Wainfleet, where

we ended our south Lindsey excursion, is really in Lindsey. It stands

between the Marsh and the Fen. The road from Wainfleet to Boston bounds

the inhabited area of the parish on the east, and another from Burgh,

which runs for ten miles without passing a single village till it reaches

Wrangle, does the same on the west. Outside of these roads on the west is

the great “East Fen,” reclaimed little more than 100 years ago, and on

the east is the “Old Marsh,” along which went the Roman Bank, and east

of which again is the “New Marsh,” and beyond it the huge stretch of the

“Friskney flats,” over which the sea ebbs and flows for a distance of

from three to four miles; the haunt of innumerable sea birds, plovers

(locally pyewipes), curlew, redshanks, knots, dunlins, stints, etc., as

well as duck and geese of many kinds and even, at times, the lordly swan.

[Sidenote: FRISKNEY]

Thus surrounded, _Friskney_ stands solitary about half way between

Wainfleet and Wrangle, and if only the northern boundary of Holland had

been made the “Black Dyke” and “Gout” as would have been most natural,

Friskney would have been the north-eastern point of Holland, instead

of being the south-eastern point of Lindsey. Since their discovery by

the late rector, the Rev. H. J. Cheales, the most noticeable thing in

the fine Perpendicular church is the series of wall paintings above the

arcades of the nave, date 1320, most of them are faint and hard to make

out, but there are drawings of them, and an account was published in 1884

and 1905 in the “Archæologia,” vols. 48 and 50. The subjects are the

Annunciation, Nativity, Resurrection, and Ascension, and the Assumption

of the Virgin, on the north arcade; on the south are the Offering of

Melchizedek, the Gathering of the Manna, the Last Supper, one possibly

of Pope Gregory, one of King Æthelred entering Bardney Abbey, and a most

curious one of Jews stabbing the Host. There are two Norman arches in

the aisle wall, and a beautiful tower arch with steps from the nave down

into the tower, the lower part of which is transition Norman, the next

stage Early English, and the next Perpendicular; there are six bells in

it. The nave is very high, the clerestory, on which the paintings are,

having been added early in the fourteenth century. The old roof has

been preserved, and the chancel screen and two chantry screens, which

are unusually high to match the nave. The rood stairs, as at Wrangle

and Leake, are on the south side. The pulpit is dated 1659. The north

chantry is entered by a half arch, and there is a squint and a curious

low-side window placed oddly on the north side of the chancel arch. Some

unusually fine sedilia with diaper work at the back, and a trefoiled

aumbry and piscina are in the chancel, which has been nearly ruined by

bad restoration with a new roof in 1849. It has large handsome windows

and finely canopied niches on each buttress, with ornamentation carved in

Ancaster stone. This chancel was the gift of John Mitchell of Friskney in

1566.

An effigy of a knight of the Freshney family (a local pronunciation of

Friskney), of whom we have seen so many monuments in the Marsh churches

at Somercoats, Saltfleetby and Skidbrooke, is at the west end, and a

restored churchyard cross stands near the south door.

The family of Kyme, who had a manor near Boston and two villages called

after them between Sleaford and Dogdyke, held land in Friskney through

the thirteenth century and until 1339, when it passed by marriage to

Gilbert Umfraville, whose son, the Earl of Angus, married Maud, daughter

of Lord Lucy. She afterwards became the second wife of Henry Percy, first

Earl of Northumberland, father of the famous “Hotspur,” whose wife,

together with her second husband, Baron Camoys, has such a fine monument

in Trotton church near Midhurst, Sussex. Hence, in the east window of the

north aisle of the church at Friskney are the arms, amongst others, of

Northumberland, Lucy, and Umfraville.

The Earl’s grandson, the second Earl of Northumberland, who was killed at

the battle of St. Albans fighting for Henry VI., May 22, 1455, possessed

no less than fifty-seven manors in Lincolnshire, many of them inherited

from the Kymes.

William de Kyme, uncle of Gilbert Umfraville, left a widow Joan who

married Nicolas de Cantelupe. He founded a chantry dedicated to St.

Nicolas in Lincoln Cathedral, and she, one dedicated to St. Paul.

[Sidenote: LOST INDUSTRIES]

It is melancholy to hear of old-fashioned employments fading away, but

it is the penalty paid by civilisation all the world over. Friskney in

particular may be called the home of lost industries. For instance,

“Mossberry or Cranberry Fen,” in this parish, was so named from

the immense quantity of cranberries which grew on it, and of which

the inhabitants made no use until a Westmorland man, knowing their

excellence, taught them; and thence, until the drainage of the fens,

thousands of pecks were picked and sent into Cambridgeshire, Yorkshire,

and Lancashire every year, 5_s._ a peck being paid to the gatherers.

After the drainage they became very scarce and fetched up to 50_s._ a

peck.

Similarly, before the enclosure of the fens there were at least ten _Duck

Decoys_ in this part of the county, of which five were in Friskney, and

they sent to the London market in one season over 31,000 ducks. Eighty

years ago there were still two in Friskney and one in Wainfleet St.

Mary’s, and I remember one in Friskney which still maintained itself, in

the sixties, though each year the wild fowl came to it in diminishing

numbers.

Bryant’s large map of 1828 shows a decoy near Cowbit Wash, no less than

five near the right bank of the River Glen in the angle formed by the

“Horseshoe Drove” and the “Counter Drain,” and two on the left bank

of the Glen, all the seven being within a two-mile square, and two

more further north in the Dowsby Fen, and four in the Sempringham Fen

probably made by the Gilbertines.

[Sidenote: THE DECOY]

The decoy was a piece of water quite hidden by trees, and only to be

approached by a plank across the moat which surrounded it, and with a

large tract of marshy uncultivated ground extending all round it, the

absence of disturbing noises being an essential, for the birds slept

there during the day and only took their flight to the coast at evening

for feeding. The method of taking them was as follows. The pond had

half-a-dozen arms like a star-fish, but all curving to the right, over

which nets were arched on bent rods; and these pipes, leading down each

in a different direction and gradually narrowing, ended in a purse of

netting. All along the pipes were screens, so set that the ducks could

not see the man till they had passed him, and lest they should wind

him he always held a bit of burning turf before his mouth. Decoy birds

enticed by hemp and other floating seed flung to them over the screens

kept swimming up the pipes followed by the wild birds, and a little dog

was trained to enter the water and pass in and out of the reed screens.

The ducks, being curious, would swim up, and the dog, who was rewarded

with little bits of cheese, kept reappearing ahead of them, and so led

them on to follow the decoys. At last the man showed himself, and the

birds—ducks, teal, and widgeon—rushed up the pipe into the purse and were

taken. The decoy was only used in November, December, and January, and it

is not in use now at all. But there are still two of the woods left round

the ponds at Friskney, each about twelve acres, and the water is there

to some extent, but the arms are grown over with weeds and are barely

traceable. Indeed it is a hundred years and rather more since the famous

old decoy man, George Skelton, lived and worked here with his four sons.

His great grandson was the last to follow the occupation, but when the

numbers caught came to be only three and four a day, it was clear that

the business had “given out.” Absolute quiet and freedom from all the

little noises which arise wherever the lowliest and smallest of human

habitations exist was necessary, for at least a mile all round the wood,

and as cultivation spread this could not be obtained. Nothing is so shy

as wild-fowl; and Skelton said that even the smell of a saucepan of burnt

milk would scare all the duck away. The mode of taking birds in “flight

nets” is still practised on the coast, the nets being stretched on poles

at several feet above the ground, and the birds flying into them and

getting entangled. Plover are taken in this way, and the smaller birds

which fly low in companies along by the edge of the sea, or across the

mud flats.

A decoy still exists near Croyland, and another at Ashby west of Brigg,

in the lower reaches of the Trent; and formerly there were many in

Deeping Fen and other parts of Holland. But wild-fowl were not the only

birds the Fenmen had to rely on, and Cooper’s “Tame Villatic Fowl,” and

the goose and turkey in particular, are a steady source of income, as the

Christmas markets in the Fens testify.

[Sidenote: WRANGLE]

[Sidenote: THE REED EPITAPH]

From _Friskney_ we run on about four miles to _Wrangle_. What the road

used to be we may guess from the constable’s accounts for the parish of

Friskney, in which the expenses for a journey to Boston are charged for

two days and a night “being in the winter time.” The distance is thirteen

miles. In the eighteenth century corn was still conveyed to market on

the backs of horses tied in strings, head to tail, like the camels in

eastern caravans. The name of _Wrangle_ is Weranghe, or Werangle, in

Domesday, said to mean the lake or mere of reeds, from “wear,” a lake,

and “hangel,” a reed. A friend of mine passing Old Leake station (which

was first called “Hobhole drain,” but, at the request of the Wrangle

parishioners, because the name deterred visitors, was altered afterwards

to Leake-and-Wrangle), observed that this name reminded him of the

words of Solomon that the beginning of strife is like the letting out

of water.[30] The place used to be a haven on a large sea creek, and

furnished to Edward III. for the invasion of France, in 1359, one ship

and eight men, Liverpool at that time being assessed at one ship and five

men. The church is large, and the rectors have been for over a hundred

years members of the family of Canon Wright of Coningsby, a nephew of

Sir John Franklin. The outer doorway of the south porch has a beautiful

trefoiled arch with tooth moulding, and curious carvings at the angles.

Near this is a fine octagonal font with three steps and a raised stone,

called a ‘stall,’ for the priest to stand on. This is not uncommon in

all these lofty Early English fonts. The tower was once much higher, as

is shown by the fine tower arch with its very singular moulding. The

tracery in the clerestory windows marks a period of transition, being

alternately flowing and Perpendicular. There is a good deal of old

glass of the fourteenth century in the north aisle, quite two-thirds of

the east window of the aisle being old, with the inscription “Thomas

de Weyversty, Abbas de Waltham me fieri fecit.” There is a turret

staircase for the rood-loft stair at the junction of the south aisle and

chancel, hence the door to the rood loft is on that side. The pulpit

is Elizabethan. The Reed family have several monuments here, and it is

probable that the three first known parsons of Wrangle—William (1342),

John (1378), and Nicolas (1387)—were chaplains to that family. On a large

slab in the chancel pavement to “John Reed sum time Marchant of Calys and

Margaret his wyfe,” date 1503, are these lines:—

This for man, when ye winde blows

Make the mill grind,

But ever on thyn oune soul

Have thou in mind,

That thou givys with thy hand

Yt thou shalt finde,

And yt thou levys thy executor

Comys far behynde.

Do thou for thy selfe while ye have space.

To pray Jesu of mercy and grace,

In heaven to have a place.

Sir John Reade, the great-grandson of John and Margaret, who died in

1626, is described as “eques aureus vereque Xianus eirenarcha prudens,”

etc., the last substantive meaning Justice of the Peace.

There is an old Bede-house founded 1555, which we shall pass now on our

way to _Leake_, and we may perhaps trace the old sea-bank just behind

it. There was once one also at Benington, a few miles further on, called

“Benington Bede.” But before leaving so much that is old we may delight

our eyes, if we are lucky enough to find Mr. Barker (the vicar) or his

wife in the church, with a sight of some most exquisite modern church

embroidery in the form of an altar cloth, lately made by the ladies of

the rectory.

[Illustration: _Leake Church._]

[Sidenote: LEAKE]

_Leake_, little more than a mile from Wrangle, has a most massive

Perpendicular tower which was fifty-seven years building and never

completed; here, too, there was a seaway to the coast. The south aisle

of the church and the nave have been restored, but the north aisle is

still in a ruinous condition, and reflects little credit on the patrons

who are, or were, the governors of Oakham and Uppingham schools. There is

a magnificent clerestory of six windows with carved and canopied niches

between each window, giving a very rich effect; and, as at Wrangle, there

is an octagonal rood turret and spirelet at the south-east of the nave.

The wavy parapet of the nave gable reminds one of the similar work round

the eastern chapel at Peterborough Cathedral, and the tall nave pillars

resemble those at Boston. Only a very little Norman work remains from

an earlier church. A knight in alabaster, a good Jacobean pulpit, and a

remarkable old alms-box made out of a solid oak stem are in the church,

and round the churchyard is a moat with a very large lych-gate on the

bridge across it. A mile and a half east of this are the remains of an

old stone building of early date, called the Moat House.

Two of the Conington family were vicars here in the seventeenth century,

and a Thomas Arnold was curate in 1794.

[Sidenote: LEVERTON]

_Leverton_ is but two miles from Leake, and _Benington_ only one mile

further. The churches in this district have no pinnacles. Leverton was

thatched until 1884, when the present clerestory was built. The chancel

has some beautiful canopied sedilia, which are spoken of by Marrat in

his “History of Lincolnshire” as “three stone stalls of most exquisite

workmanship, to describe the beauties of which the pen seems not to

possess an adequate power.” At the back of one of these is an aumbrey, or

locker. The windows are square-headed, the font is tall and handsome, but

the greatest charm of the building is the sacristy or Lady chapel to the

south of the chancel—a perfect gem of architecture, the carved stone work

of which is rich and tasteful. Crucifixes surmount both gables of this,

and also that at the chancel end, this profusion being a consequence of

the church being dedicated to St. Helena. Whether she was the daughter

of a Bithynian innkeeper or a British princess, she was the wife of

Constantius Chlorus and mother of Constantine the Great; and the legend

is that, being admonished in a dream to search for the Cross of Christ,

she journeyed to Jerusalem, and, employing men to dig at Golgotha, found

three crosses, and having applied each of them to a dead person, one of

the crosses raised the dead to life, so she knew that that was the one

she was searching for. The church of North Ormsby is also dedicated to

her. At Leverton the rood-loft steps exist on the south of the chancel

arch, and the churchwarden’s book, which begins in 1535, gives the

bill for putting up the rood loft and also for taking it down. At the

beginning of last century Mrs. A. Skeath, of Boston, made a new sea-bank

three miles long, which effectually reclaimed from the sea 390 acres for

this parish.

The village of _Benington_ has a fine church with a good porch and a

turret stairway to the north-east of the nave. The roof retains its old

timbers with carved angels. In the chancel are the springers for a stone

roof. The pillars of the nave have a very wide circular base, and in the

Early English chancel are sedilia with aumbries and piscina, and also

an arched recess which may have been used for an Easter sepulchre. The

tall red sandstone font is singularly fine, both bowl and pedestal being

richly carved with figures under canopies.

[Illustration: _Leverton Windmill._]

The practice of putting inscriptions into rhyme is exemplified in the

windows of these churches.

[Sidenote: BENINGTON]

Benington has a Latin couplet:—

Ad loca Stellata

Duc me Katherina beata

Leverton one in Norman French:—

Pour l’amour de Jhesu Christ

Priez par luy q moy fatre fist.

(Pray for him who caused me to be made.)

[Sidenote: BUTTERWICK AND FRIESTON]

[Sidenote: FRIESTON SHORE]

A lane here leads eastwards to Benington-Sea-End, which is close on the

Roman bank. And, as the main road to Boston is devoid of interest, we

will bend to the left hand, and pass through Butterwick to Frieston

and so to the shore. An old register records in rhyme the planting of

the fine sycamore tree in _Butterwick_ churchyard, in 1653. The name

Butterwick occurs in the East Riding of Yorkshire, and is derived

probably from the Dane Buthar, as are Buttermere in Cumberland, and

Butterlip-How in Grasmere. At _Frieston_, which, like Friskney and

Firsby, is said to indicate a colony of Frieslanders, the present church

is the nave of a fine old priory church of the twelfth century founded

by Alan de Creon for Benedictines and attached as a cell to Croyland,

where his brother was abbot. It had a central tower adjoining the east of

the present building; the west piers of this tower are visible outside.

Inside there are six Norman and three pointed arches, the latter leading

to a massive western tower with a stone figure in a niche dating from the

fifteenth century. The south aisle is now all of brick, the Norman stone

corbelling being replaced above the eight large three light clerestory

windows. The most remarkable thing in the church is the beautiful carved

wood font-cover, at least twelve feet high, and surmounted by a figure

of the Virgin. This is similar, but superior, to that at Fosdyke, but

in no way equal to the beautiful and richly carved example ten feet in

height at Ufford church in Suffolk. The font itself has carved panels

and two kneeling-steps for priest and sponsor. The churchyard is an

extremely large one. The sea once came close up to Frieston, the coast

bending round to Fishtoft and towards Skirbeck; at the present time the

Frieston shore is two and a half miles off. The road runs close up to the

sea-bank. A long old-fashioned hostelry, with a range of stables telling

of days gone by, stands under the shelter of the bank, on mounting which

you find a bench on a level with the bedroom windows of the inn, whence

you look out towards the sea, which forms a shining line in the far

distance, for it is over two miles to ‘Boston deeps,’ far over a singular

stretch of foreshore channelled with a network of deep clefts by which

the retreating tide drains seaward through the glistening mud. The first

part of this desolate shore is green with sea-grasses, visited daily by

the salt water, and along the fringe of it there are here many rather

uncommon flowers growing just below high-water mark, such as the yellow

variety of the sea aster (_Aster tripolium var. discoideus_), and the

rare _Suæda fruticosa_; and in the ditches leading inland the handsome

marsh-mallow (_Althæa officinalis_) flourishes, as it does on Romney

Marsh, near Rye. At high water all looks quite different; and a sunrise

over the lagoon-like shallow water gives a picture of colour which is not

easily forgotten.

[Illustration: _Frieston Priory Church._]

From Frieston shore one gets by a circuitous three-mile route to

_Fishtoft_. Here once was a Norman church. The present one has two rood

screens; one, at the west end, having been purchased from Frieston,

which, however, retained its two aisle screens. There is a good small

figure of St. Guthlac, the patron saint, over the west window of the

tower, much like that at Frieston. On a tombstone in the churchyard is

the following:—

Interred here lies Anne the wife

Of Bryon Johnson during life

The 25ᵗʰ day of November

In 68 he lost this member.

He only survived her two months, and the next inscription is:—

Now Bryon is laid down by Anne

’Till God does raise them up again.

This rhyme might do for Norfolk or Devonshire, but is not Lincolnshire.

[Sidenote: BOSTON STUMP]

And now two miles more bring us to _Skirbeck_ on the outskirts of Boston.

The only interesting feature of the church here is in the columns of the

nave, which have four cylinders round a massive centre pillar, all four

quite detached except at the bases and capitals, which last are richly

carved. We shall find exactly similar ones at Weston, near Spalding. We

now follow the curving line of the Haven with its grassy banks right

into Boston. The splendid parish church, the sight of whose tower is a

never-failing source of delight and inspiration, stands with its east end

in the market-place, and its tall tower close on the bank of the river.

It has no transepts as the Great Yarmouth church has, but, apart from

its unapproachable steeple, it is longer and higher and greater in cubic

contents than any parish church in the kingdom. The tower, 288 feet, is

taller than Lincoln tower or Grantham spire, and is only exceeded in

height by Louth spire, which is 300 feet. The view of it from across the

river is one of the most entirely satisfying sights in the world.[31]

The extreme height is so well proportioned, and each stage leads up so

beautifully to the next, that one is never tired of gazing on it. Add

to this that it is visible to all the dwellers in the Marsh and Fen for

twenty miles round and from the distant Wolds, and again far out to sea,

and is as familiar to all as their own shadow, and you can guess at the

affection which stirs the hearts of all Lincolnshire men when they think

or speak of the ‘Owd Stump,’ a curious title for a beloved object, but

so slightly does it decrease in size as it soars upwards from basement

to lantern, that in the distance it looks more like a thick mast or the

headless stem of a gigantic tree than a church steeple.

[Illustration: _Boston Church from the N.E._]

[Sidenote: THE BUILDING OF THE CHURCH]

[Sidenote: THE INTERIOR]

There was once here a church of the type of Sibsey, said to date from

1150, of which but little has been discovered. The present building was

begun in 1309, when the digging for the foundation of the tower began

“on ye Monday after Palm Sunday in the 3ʳᵈ yr of Ed. II.” They went down

thirty feet to a bed of stone five feet below the level of the river

bed, overlying “a spring of sand,” under which again was a bed of clay

of unknown thickness. The excavation was a very big job, and the “first

stone” was not laid till the feast of St. John the Baptist (Midsummer

Day) by Dame Margaret Tilney, and she and Sir John Truesdale, then parson

of Boston, and Richard Stevenson, a Boston merchant, each laid £5 on the

stone “which was all ye gifts given at that time” towards the expense

which, we are told, was, for the whole tower, under £500 of the money of

those days. Leland, Vol. VIII., 204, says: “Mawde Tilney who layed the

first stone of the goodly steeple of the paroche chirch of Boston lyith

buried under it.” The work of building up the tower was interrupted for

fifty years, and the body of the church was taken in hand, the present

tower arch serving as a west window. Then the tower began to rise, but

it was finished without the lantern. In the middle of the fifteenth

century the chancel was lengthened by two bays, and the parapets and

pinnacles added to the aisles. The parapet at the east end of the north

aisle is very curious and elaborate, being pierced with tracery of nearly

the same design as that on the flying buttresses of Henry VII.’s Chapel

at Westminster. There were several statues round the building on tall

pedestals rising from the lowest coping of the buttresses to about the

height of the nave parapets; one is conspicuous still at the south-east

corner of the tower and above the south porch. The tower has three

stages, arranged as in Louth church, and then the lantern above. In the

first stage a very large west window rises above the west doorway, and

similar ones on the north and south of the tower, and all the surface is

enriched with panelling both on tower and buttresses. The next stage is

lighted by a pair of windows of great height, finely canopied and divided

by a transom, on each side of the tower; this forms the ringing chamber,

and a gallery runs round it in the thickness of the wall communicating

with the two staircases. On the door of one of these is a remarkable

handle, a ring formed by two bronze lizards depending from a lion’s

mouth. The clustered shafts and springers of the stone vault were built

at the beginning, but the handsome groined roof with its enormous central

boss 156 feet from the ground was not completed until 1852. The next

story has large single-arched windows of a decidedly plain type. These

are the only things one can possibly find fault with, but probably when

the tower had no lantern the intention was to exhibit the light from this

story, the bells being hung below and rung from the ground. Eventually

the eight bells were hung in the third story, and the lantern, by far the

finest in England, was added, which gives so queenly an effect to the

tall tower. Before this was done four very high pinnacles finished the

building, subsequently arches were turned diagonally over the angles of

the tower so as to make the base of the octagonal lantern. The roof of

the tower and the gutters round it are of stone and curiously contrived.

The lantern has eight windows like those in the second stage of the

tower, but each one pane longer, and the corners are supported by flying

buttresses springing in pairs from each tower pinnacle. The whole is

crowned with a lofty parapet with pierced tracery and eight pinnacles

with an ornamented gable between each pair of pinnacles. Inside was a

lantern lighted at night for a sea mark. The church of All Saints, York,

has a very similar one, and there the hook for the lantern pulley is

still to be seen.

[Sidenote: BOSTON, U.S.A.]

Inside, one is struck by the ample size and height of the church and its

vast proportions. The choir has five windows on each side. But the nave

is spoilt by a false wooden roof which cuts off half of the clerestory

windows. It is a pity this is not removed and the old open timber roof

replaced. In the chancel are sixty-four stalls of good carved work, and

the old and curiously designed miserere seats, often showing humorous

subjects as at Lincoln, are of exceptional interest. Of the once numerous

brasses most are gone, but two very fine ones are on either side the

altar: one to Walter Peascod, merchant, 1390, and one to a priest in a

cope, _c._ 1400; an incised slab of 1340 is at the west of the north

aisle. The Conington tablet in memory of John Conington, Corpus Professor

of Latin in the University of Oxford, on the south wall of the chancel

is to be noticed, and the Bolles monument in the south aisle, and, near

the south porch, the chapel which was restored by the Bostonians of

the United States as a recognition of their Lincolnshire origin. Close

to this is a curious epitaph painted on a wooden panel, which reads as

follows:—

My corps with Kings and Monarchs sleeps in bedd,

My soul with sight of Christ in heaven is fedd,

This lumpe that lampe shall meet, and shine more bright

Than Phœbus when he streams his clearest light,

Omnes sic ibant sic imus ibitis ibunt.

Rich. Smith obiit

Anno salutis 1626.

[Illustration: _Boston Stump._]

CHAPTER XXXVII

ST. BOTOLPH’S TOWN

The River Witham—Drayton’s Polyolbion—The Steeple at

Boston—Monastic Houses—Merchants’ Guilds—Dykes and Sluices—The

Fens reclaimed—Great Floods—High Tides—The Hussey and Kyme

Towers—John Fox—Hallam and Conington—Jean Ingelow—Lincolnshire

Stories.

A not unapt parallel has been drawn between Boston and Venice for, like

the Campanile, Boston steeple is a sort of Queen of the Waters, and

before the draining of the Fens she often looked down on a waste of

waters which stretched in all directions.

Leland, who wrote in the reign of Henry VIII., in Vol. VII. of his

Itinerary, speaks of “the great Steple of Boston,” and describes the town

thus: “Bosstolpstoune stondeth harde on the river Lindis (Witham). The

greate and chifiest parte of the toune is on the este side of the ryver,

where is a faire market place, and a crosse with a square toure. Al the

buildings of this side of the toune is fayre, and Marchuntes duelle yn

it; and a staple of wulle is used there. There is a bridg of wood to cum

over Lindis, into this parte of the toune, and a pile of stone set yn the

myddle of the ryver. The streame of yt is sumtymes as swifte as it were

an arrow. On the West side of Lindis is one long strete, on the same side

is the White Freies. The mayne sea ys VI miles of Boston. Dyverse good

shipps and other vessells ryde there.”

[Sidenote: THE RIVER WITHAM]

Michael Drayton, who wrote in Elizabeth’s reign, was quite enthusiastic

about the merits of the Witham, which runs out at Boston, and makes her

speak in her own person thus:—

From Witham, mine own town, first water’d with my source,

As to the Eastern sea I hasten on my course,

Who sees so pleasant plains or is of fairer seen?

Whose swains in shepherd’s gray and girls in Lincoln green,

Whilst some the ring of bells, and some the bagpipes play,

Dance many a merry round, and many a hydegy.[32]

I envy, any brook should in my pleasure share,

Yet for my dainty pikes, I am without compare.

No land floods can me force to over proud a height;

Nor am I in my course too crooked or too streight;

My depths fall by descents, too long nor yet too broad,

My fords with pebbles, clear as orient pearls, are strow’d,

My gentle winding banks with sundry flowers are dress’d,

My higher rising heaths hold distance with my breast.

Thus to her proper song the burthen still she bare;

Yet for my dainty pikes I am without compare.

By this to Lincoln town, upon whose lofty scite

Whilst wistly Wytham looks with wonderful delight,

Enamour’d of the state and beauty of the place

That her of all the rest especially doth grace,

Leaving her former course, in which she first set forth,

Which seem’d to have been directly to the North,

She runs her silver front into the muddy fen

Which lies into the east, in the deep journey when

Clear Bane, a pretty brook, from Lindsey, coming down

Delicious Wytham leads to lively Botulph’s town,

Where proudly she puts in, among the great resort

That there appearance make, in Neptune’s Wat’ry Court.

Polyolbion. Song 25.

[Sidenote: SKIRBECK]

We have no definite information of what Boston was in Roman times, but

as the Witham was the river on which their colony at Lincoln stood, it

is more than probable that they had a station at Boston to defend the

river-mouth, and whatever _they_ may have called it, it is certain that

it has got its name of Boston or Botolph’s town from an English saint who

is said to have founded a monastery here in 654, which was destroyed by

the Danes in 870. St. Botolph was buried in his monastery in 680, and his

remains moved in 870, part to Ely and part to Thorney Abbey. The name

as a town does not appear in Domesday Book, though “Skirbec” does, and

Skirbeck covered all the ground that Boston does, and almost surrounded

it. As the old distich declares—

Though Boston be a proud town

Skirbeck compasseth it around.

[Sidenote: BOSTON PORT]

This name for pride or conceit, whether deserved or not, seems to have

stuck to Boston, for a rhyme of later day runs thus:—

Boston Boston Boston!

Thou hast nought to boast on

But a grand sluice, and a high steeple,

And a proud conceited ignorant people,

And a coast which souls get lost on.

And certainly Boston once had some reason to be proud, for though the

town was quite an infant till the beginning of the twelfth century, in

1113 “Fergus, a brazier of St. Botolph’s town” was able, according to

Ingulphus in his “Chronicles of Croyland Abbey,” “to give 2 _Skillets_

(Skilletas) which supplied the loss of their bells and tower.” The gift,

whatever it was (probably small bells), must have been of considerable

value to Croyland, which had been burnt down in 1091, and argues much

prosperity among Boston tradespeople. Indeed, the town and its trade rose

with such rapidity during the next hundred years that when, in the reign

of King John, a tax or tythe of a fifteenth was levied on merchants’

goods, Boston’s contribution was £780, being second only to the £836 of

London. For the next two centuries it was a commercial port of the first

rank, and merchants from Flanders and most of the great Continental towns

had houses there.

[Illustration: _Custom House Quay, Boston._]

When in 1304 Edward I. granted his wife Queen Margaret the castle and

manor of Tattershall to hold till the heir was of age, he added to it

the manor of St. Botolph and the duties levied on the weighing of the

wool there. This was set down as worth £12 a year. A wool sack was very

large—one sees them now at Winchester, each large enough to fill the

whole bed of a Hampshire waggon—but at 6_s._ 8_d._ a sack the duties

must have been often worth more than £12, for there was no other staple

in the county but at Lincoln, and that was afterwards, under Edward III.

in 1370, transferred to Boston, and whether at Boston or Lincoln, when

weighed and sealed by the mayor of the staple, it was from Boston that it

was all exported.

[Sidenote: THE STAPLE]

When a staple of wool, leather, lead, etc., was established at any

town or port it was directed that the commodities should be brought

thither from all the neighbourhood and weighed, marked and sealed.

Then they could be delivered to any other port, where they were again

checked. In 1353, during the long reign of Edward III., the staple was

appointed to be held in Newcastle, York, Lincoln, Norwich, Westminster,

Canterbury, Chichester, Winchester, Exeter and Bristol. Of these, York

and Lincoln sent all the produce when weighed to Hull and Boston, Norwich

to Yarmouth, Westminster to London Port, Canterbury to Sandwich, and

Winchester (by water or road) to Southampton. In 1370 some of the inland

towns—York, Lincoln and Norwich—were deprived of their staple, and

Hull and Queensborough were added to the list; and, though Nottingham,

Leicester and Derby petitioned to have the staple at Lincoln, which was

much more convenient to them, the answer they got was that it should

continue at St. Botolph’s during the king’s pleasure.

[Illustration: _South Square, Boston._]

In Henry VIII.’s time, when the king passed through Lincolnshire after

“the pilgrimage of grace” and the chief towns made submission and paid

a fine, Boston paid £50, while Stamford and Lincoln paid £20 and £40

respectively.

[Sidenote: FRIARIES AND GUILDS]

In 1288 a church of the Dominican or Black Friars which had been recently

built was burnt down, and a few years later a friary was re-established,

which was one of the many Lincolnshire religious houses granted by Henry

VIII. to Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk. In 1301, under Edward I., a

Carmelite, or White Friars, monastic house and priory was founded; and in

the next reign, 1307, an Augustinian, or “Austin,” friary; and only a few

years later, under Edward III., a Franciscan, or Grey Friars, friary was

established. All these three were granted by Henry at the dissolution to

the mayor and burgesses of Boston. He also granted the town their charter

under the great Seal of England, to make amends for the losses they

sustained by the destruction of the religious houses. It is a document

with fifty-seven clauses, making the town a free borough with a market

on Wednesday and Saturday, and two fairs annually of three days each, to

which are added two “marts” for horses and cattle. The ground where the

grammar school stands is still called the Mart-yard, and there you may

still see the beautiful iron gate which was once part of a screen in the

church, and is a very notable piece of good seventeenth-century work.

The charter also gave the corporation, among other things, “power to

assess the inhabitants, as well unfree as free, with a tax for making

a safeguard and defence of the borough and church there against the

violence of the waters and rage of the sea.”

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries there were no less than fifteen

guilds in the town, six of them with charters. The hall of St. Mary’s

guild still exists, the names of St. George’s Lane and Corpus Christi

Lane is all that is left of the others, but the old names indicate the

localities.

[Sidenote: THE WINE-CELLARS]

In 1360 we have mention on the corporation records of William de Spayne,

one of a family of merchants of repute, after whom Spayne’s Place and

what is now Spain Lane were named. William was an alderman of the Corpus

Christi Guild, and sheriff of the county in 1378. Spain Lane had a row of

great cellars, some of which were rented by the abbeys, and a quantity

of wine was shipped from Bordeaux to Boston. King John of France had 140

tuns at one time, the carriage of which to Boston, and some part of it

to the place of his detention at Somerton Castle (_see_ Chap. XIII.),

cost close upon £500. This large supply was sent to him from France,

partly for his own consumption and partly to be sold in order to bring in

money to keep up his royal state, and when we read of the silk curtains

and tapestries, the French furniture for dining-hall and bedrooms which

displaced the benches and trestles of an English castle, the horse

trappings and stable fittings, and the enormous amount of stores and

confectionery used at Somerton, we realise that his daily expenditure

must have been a very large one. The cellars which stowed these large

cargoes of wine were in Spain (or Spayne) Lane, and most of them were,

in 1590, in accordance with Boston’s usual suicidal custom, destroyed,

though the corporation still held two in 1640 which had once belonged to

Kirkstead Abbey.

[Illustration: _Spain Lane, Boston._]

[Sidenote: THE SILTING OF THE RIVER]

In the sixteenth century several trade companies—cordwainers, glovers,

etc.—received charters. In this century Queen Elizabeth gave the mayor

and burgesses a “Charter of Admiralty” over the whole of the “Norman

Deeps” to enable them to repair and maintain the sea marks, and to levy

tolls on all ships entering the port. But trade was then declining owing

to the silting up of the river. This, in 1569, when the town was made

a _Staple_ town, had been in good order, and navigable for seagoing

ships of some size, the tide water running up two miles inland as far

as Dockdyke (now Dogdyke), and then a large trade was done in wool and

woollen goods between Boston and Flanders. Hence it was that when, in the

reign of Henry VII., a council was held to discuss the two great needs

of the town, _viz._, the restraining the sea water from flooding the

land, and the delivery of the inland waters speedily to the sea, it was

to Flanders that the Boston men turned for an engineer, one Mahave Hall,

who built them a dam and sluice in the year 1500. This is called the Old

Sluice, and was effectual for a time. But in Queen Elizabeth’s reign the

river below Boston was getting so silted up again that the waters of

South Holland were brought by means of two “gowts” (go outs), or “clows,”

one into the Witham above Boston at Langrick, and one below into the

harbour at Skirbeck, to scour out the channel. The Kesteven men, from a

sense of being robbed of their waters, opposed, but their objections were

over-ruled by the chief justices. In 1568-9 the “Maud Foster” drain was

cut and named after the owner, who gave easement over her land on very

favourable terms.

In the map to the first volume of the “History of Lincolnshire,”

published by Saunders in 1834, the Langrick Gowt (or gote) finds no

place; but the “Holland Dyke” is probably meant for it. The Skirbeck dyke

is marked very big and called “The South Forty-foot,” which, along with

the North Forty-foot and Hobhole drains, and others of large size, aided

by powerful steam pumps, have made the Fens into a vast agricultural

garden.

[Sidenote: THE GRAND SLUICE]

But the Elizabethan expedient was only successful for a time, and in 1751

a small sloop of forty to fifty tons and drawing about six feet of water

could only get up to Boston on a spring tide. To remedy this and also to

keep the floods down, which, when the cutfall was choked, extended in wet

seasons west of the town as far as eye could see, an Act of Parliament

was passed to empower Boston to cut the Witham channel straight and

set to work on a new sluice. This “Grand Sluice,” designed by Langley

Edwardes, had its foundation carried down twenty feet, on to a bed of

stiff clay. Here, just as, near the old Skirbeck sluice, where Hammond

beck enters the haven, at a depth of sixteen feet sound gravel and soil

was met with, in which trees had grown; and at Skirbeck it is said that a

smith’s forge, with all its tools, horseshoes, etc., complete, was found

at that depth below the surface, showing how much silt had been deposited

within no great number of years. The foundation stone of the present

Grand sluice was laid by Charles Amcotts, then Member of Parliament and

Mayor of Boston, in 1764, and opened two years later in the presence

of a concourse of some ten thousand people. He died in 1777, and the

Amcotts family in the male line died with him. In Jacobean times much

good embankment work under Dutch engineers had been begun, and had met

with fierce opposition from the Fen men, and the same spirit was still

in existence a hundred and fifty years later, for when, in 1767, an Act

was passed for the enclosure of Holland, the works gave rise to the most

determined and fierce riots which were carried to the most unscrupulous

length of murder, cattle maiming, and destruction of valuable property,

and lasted from 1770 to 1773. But at length common sense prevailed,

and a very large and fertile tract of land to the south-east of Boston

was acquired, which helped again to raise the fortunes of the town to

prosperity. Following on this in 1802 a still larger area was reclaimed

on the other side of Boston in the East, West, and Wildmore Fens. But,

as in all low-lying lands near the coast which are below the level of

high-water mark, constant look-out has to be kept even now, both to

prevent the irruption of the sea and the flooding of the land from

storm-water not getting away quickly enough.

[Sidenote: GREAT FLOODS]

The Louth Abbey “Chronicle,” a most interesting document, extending from

1066 to the death of Henry IV., 1413, records disastrous floods in the

Marsh in 1253 and 1315, and a bad outbreak of cattle plague in 1321. From

other sources we have notice of a great flood at Boston in 1285; another

in ‘Holland,’ 1467; and again at Boston in 1571 a violent tempest, with

rain, wind, and high tide combining, did enormous damage. Sixty vessels

were wrecked between Newcastle and Boston, many thousands of sheep and

cattle were drowned in the Marsh, the village of Mumby-Chapel was washed

into the sea and only three cottages and the steeple of the church left

standing. One “Maister Pelham had eleven hundred sheep drowned there.” At

the same time “a shippe” was driven against a house in the village, and

the men, saving themselves by clambering out on to the roof, were just in

time to save a poor woman in the cottage from the death by drowning which

overtook her husband and child. So sudden and violent was the rise of the

flood that at Wansford on the Nene three arches of the bridge were washed

away, and “Maister Smith at the Swanne there hadde his house, being three

stories high, overflowed into the third storie,” while the walls of the

stable were broken down, and the horses tied to the manger were all

drowned.

At the same time the water reached half way up Bourne church tower.

This shows the tremendous extent of the flood, for those two places are

forty-four miles apart. This is the “High tide on the Lincolnshire Coast”

sung by our Lincolnshire poetess, Jean Ingelow. She speaks of the Boston

bells giving the alarm by ringing the tune called “The Brides of Mavis

Enderby.”

The old Mayor climbed the belfry tower,

The ringers ran by two by three;

‘Pull if ye never pulled before,

Good ringers, pull your best,’ quoth he.

Play uppe play uppe, O Boston bells;

Ply all your changes, all your swells,

Play uppe “The Brides of Enderby.”

This tune, which Miss Ingelow only imagined, was subsequently composed,

and is now well known at Boston, for, besides the ring of eight bells,

the tower has a set of carillons like those at Antwerp. They were set

up in 1867, thirty-six in number, by Van Aerschodt, of Louvain, but not

proving to be a success, were changed in 1897 for something less complex,

and now can be heard at 9 a.m., and every third hour of the day playing

“The Brides of Mavis Enderby.”

[Sidenote: AND HIGH TIDES]

A violent gale is recorded on February 16, 1735, which did much damage,

and in 1763-4 there was a great flood, not owing to any high tide but

simply, as in 1912, from continued heavy rains, and we are told that the

flood lasted for many weeks. Just lately, in 1912, this was aggravated

by the bursting of a dyke in the Bedford level which flooded miles

of fenland. In August, 1913, the land was parched by drought, but in

1912 it was a melancholy sight to see, in August, on both sides of the

railway between Huntingdon and Spalding the corn sheaves standing up

out of the water, and the farm buildings entirely surrounded, while the

rain continued to fall daily. Even after three weeks of fine weather in

September, though the drenched sheaves had been got away, water still

covered the fields, stretching sometimes as far as eye could see. In

1779, when the reclamation of the Holland ‘Fens’ had been carried out,

many vessels are said to have been driven by a violent gale nearly two

miles inland on the ‘Marsh.’ This was long spoken of as “The New Year’s

Gale.”

Exceptionally high tides, each four inches higher than its predecessor,

in the streets of Boston are recorded for October 19, 1801, November 30,

1807, and November 10, 1810. This last accompanied by a storm of wind

and rain. On this occasion the water was all over the streets of Boston

and flowed up the nave of the church as far as the chancel step, being

nearly a yard deep at the west end. Since then high-water marks were cut

on the base of the tower showing how deep the nave was flooded in 1883

and 1896. In 1813 another high tide caused the sea-bank assessment to

rise to 13_s._ 8_d._ an acre, the normal rate then, as it is now, for the

drainage tax in the east fen, amounting to 3_s._ an acre. Even that seems

to be pretty stiff, £15 a year on a hundred acre farm! Of course it is an

absolute necessity, and has been recognised from the earliest times. We

know that in the reign of Edward I. an assessment was levied on all who

had land to keep the drains in repair. This was as long ago as 1298.

[Sidenote: PICTURESQUE BOSTON]

[Sidenote: THE GUILDHALL]

The great feature of Boston is the wonderful church tower. But the town

is from many points very picturesque. The deep-cut channel of the tidal

river goes right through it. Passing close up against the western side

of the great steeple, it goes with houses almost overhanging its eastern

bank down to the bridge, a structure of no beauty. After this it runs

alongside the street. From the windows you look across and see the masts

of the small sea-going craft tied up to the bank, which, with all the old

weed-grown timbers of landing-stage and jetty, the natural accompaniments

of a tidal river, make quaint and effective pictures. In another street

the boys in their old-fashioned blue coats and brass buttons let you into

the secret of Boston’s many educational charities. One is in Wormgate

(or Withamsgate), one in White Friars Lane, dating from the beginning of

the sixteenth century, and another in Shodfriars Lane. The very names

of the streets in Boston are full of history, and the recently-restored

“Shod Friars Hall,” to the south-east of the Market Place, helps, with

its abundant timbers and carved gables, to take one right back to the

fourteenth century, though the name was only recently bestowed on this

particular building.

[Illustration: _The Haven, Boston._]

[Illustration: _The Guildhall, Boston._]

But alas, not only all the monastic buildings, but nearly all the

domestic buildings which once made Boston like a medieval Dutch town

are gone, though the fifteenth-century brick Guildhall remains. The

citizens seem to have had a fatal mania for pulling down all that was

most worth preserving of their old buildings. Gone, too, is much else

which Bostonians might well have preserved. Such, for instance, as “the

prodigious clock bell which could be heard many miles round, and was

knocked to pieces in the year 1710.” It is but a few years ago that some

of the Boston Corporation plate was sold in London for immense prices,

and when astonished people asked how it came to the hammer they heard

a miserable tale how the fine collection of civic plate, and it was

unusually fine, had been sold in 1837 for £600, nothing approaching to

its value, by the corporation itself, for the purpose of liquidating some

civic debt. But any sin Boston may commit, such as the crude colouring of

the interior of the much-renovated Guildhall, and painting and graining

of the deal panels only last year, will be forgiven, so long as they have

their uniquely glorious church tower to plead for them.

Lord Hussey’s tower and the Kyme tower are ruins, built about the end of

the fifteenth century, and at the end of the eighteenth century a big

house was still standing which may have been Lord Hussey’s. The brick

tower stands near the school fields, not far from the Public Gardens,

which are a credit to Boston, and have some first-rate salt-water baths

close by, which belong to the corporation.

The Kyme tower is also called the Rochford tower, that family having held

it before the Kymes. It is a massive tower, also of brick, as may be seen

from the illustration. It stands about two miles outside the town to the

east.

[Sidenote: FAMOUS BOSTONIANS]

Of celebrated folk born in Boston we have, to begin with, John Fox,

author of the “Book of Martyrs,” who was born there in 1517. He was sent

to Brasenose, Oxford, and worked very hard, but was expelled as a heretic

when he forsook the Roman Catholic religion. The Warwickshire family of

Sir Thomas Lucie, a name made famous by Shakespeare, gave him shelter

and employment as a tutor; and later he tutored the children of the Earl

of Surrey who, in the reign of Queen Mary, helped him to escape from

Bishop Gardiner’s deadly clutches. Like so many who suffered persecution

for their religion, he made his home at Basle till Elizabeth’s accession

allowed of his return. He then spent eleven years on his “Acts and

Monuments,” and died in 1587.

At about this time the plague raged at Boston, 1585, and broke out again

in 1603. Boston and Frampton had, as the Registers show, suffered an

unusual mortality in 1568-9. The water was not good, and as late as 1783

a boring to a depth of 478 feet was made in a vain search for a better

supply. The town was at that time supplied from the west fen through

wooden pipes.

[Illustration: _Hussey’s Tower, Boston._]

[Sidenote: CROMWELL AT BOSTON]

Hallam, the historian, and Professor John Conington, whose monuments are

in the church, were both of Boston families, as was also Jean Ingelow;

and the statue near the church preserves the memory of John Ingram,

Member of Parliament for the town, and founder of the _Illustrated London

News_. Saunders tells us that Oliver Cromwell lay at Boston the night

before he fought the battle of Winceby, near Horncastle, October 10,

1643. He must have been up betimes, for a crow couldn’t make the distance

less than sixteen miles, and fen roads at that time were a caution.

[Sidenote: “MY OWD SON”]

Boston is a great centre for the fen farmers, and, as at Peterborough,

you may see and hear in the market much that is original. It was at

Peterborough that the “converted” sailor made his famous petition when

asked to do a bit of praying in the open: “O Lord! bless this people!

bless their fathers and mothers! and bless the children! O Lord bless

this place! make it prosperous, send thy blessing upon it and make

it—make it, O Lord! a sea-poort-town!” Boston having the Marsh farmers as

well as the Fen-men meeting in her market, preserves a more racy dialect.

I was once in the Boston Station waiting-room as it was getting dusk on a

winter evening; three people of the sea-faring class were there—a tall,

elderly man standing up, his son asleep on the floor, and the son’s wife

sitting and apparently not much concerned with anything. The father,

seeing me look at the sleeper, said “He’ll be all right after a bit. My

owd son yon is. He’s a bit droonk now, but he’s my owd son. A strange

good hand in a boat he is, I tell ye. They was out lass Friday i’ the

Noorth Sea and it cam on a gale o’ wind, they puts abowt you knooa, an’

runs for poort. The seäs was monstrous high, they was, and the gale was a

rum un, an’ the booat she was gaff-hallyards under. The tother men ‘She’s

gooing!’ they says, ‘She’s gooing!’ But my owd son he hed the tiller.

‘_She’s_ all right,’ he säys, and mind ye she was gaff-hallyards under,

but ‘_She’s_ all right,’ he säys, and he brings her right in. Aye he’s a

rare un wi’ a booat is my owd son, noan to touch him. He’s a bit droonk

now, but he’s my owd son.”

On another occasion at Boston I heard one farmer greet another with

“Well, Mr. Smith, how’s pigs?” a very common inquiry, for in Lincolnshire

pigs fill a large space on the agricultural horizon. Witness the reply

of an aged farmer, probably a little unmanned by market-day potations,

to a vegetarian who, with a cruelty hardly to be suspected in the votary

of so mild a diet, had attacked him with “How will you feel at the day

of Judgment when confronted by a whole row of oxen whose flesh you have

eaten?” “’Taint the beasts I’d be scared on; it’s the pigs; I’ve yetten a

vast o’ pigs.”

CHAPTER XXXVIII

SPALDING AND THE CHURCHES NORTH OF IT

Potato Trade—Bulb-growing—The Welland—Ayscough Fee

Hall—The Gentleman’s Society—The Church—Pinchbeck—Heraldic

Tombs—The Custs—Surfleet—Leaning Tower—Gosberton—Churchyard

Sheep—Cressy Hall—Quadring—Donington—Hemp and

Flax—Swineshead—Bicker—Sutterton—Algarkirk.

Three main roads enter the town of _Spalding_, the last town on the

Welland before it runs out into Fosdyke Wash. They come from the north,

south, and east. The west has none, being one huge fen which, till

comparatively recent times, admitted of locomotion only by boat. The

southern road comes from Peterborough and enters the county by the bridge

over the Welland at Market Deeping, a pleasant-looking little town

with wide market-like streets and its four-armed signpost pointing to

Peterborough and Spalding ten miles, and Bourne and Stamford seven miles.

[Sidenote: THE WELLAND]

From Deeping to Spalding the road is a typical fen road—three little inns

and a few farm cottages and the occasional line of white smoke on the

perfectly straight Peterborough and Boston railway is all there is to see

save the crops or the long potato graves which are mostly by the road

side.

[Illustration: _The Welland at Cowbit Road, Spalding._]

[Illustration: _The Welland at High Street, Spalding._]

[Sidenote: BULB-GROWING]

The potato trade is a very large one. Every cart or waggon we passed at

Easter-time on the roads between Deeping and Kirton-in-Holland was loaded

with sacks of potatoes, and all the farm hands were busy uncovering

the pits and sorting the tubers. Donington and Kirton seemed to be the

centres of the trade, Kirton being the home of the man who is known as

the potato king, and has many thousands of acres of fenland used for this

crop alone. Spalding itself is the centre of the daffodil market, and

quantities of bulbs are grown here and annually exported to Holland,

it is said, to find their way back to England in the autumn as Dutch

bulbs. I do not vouch for the truth of this, but certainly the business,

which has been for years a speciality of Holland, where the lie of the

land and the soil are much the same as in the South Lincolnshire and

Cambridgeshire Fens, is now a large and lucrative industry here, and is

each year expanding. The Channel and Scilly Islands and Cornwall can, of

course, owing to their climate, get their narcissus into bloom earlier,

but the conditions of soil are better in the Fens. Still, a liberal

supply of manure is needed to insure fine blooms, and sixty or seventy

tons to the acre is none too much, a crop of mustard or potatoes being

taken off after its application before planting the bulbs. Hyacinths are

still left to Holland, in one part of which, at Hillegom, near Haarlem,

the soil has just that amount of sand and lime which that particular

bulb demands. Tulips, however, are grown in England with great success;

crocuses are seldom planted as they make such a small return on the

outlay. For this outlay is very considerable, nine or ten women are

needed to each plough for planting, which alone costs 45_s._ an acre,

and then there is the constant weeding and cleaning of the ground, the

picking, bunching and packing, which needs many hands at once; also

there is the heavy cost of the bulbs themselves for planting, Narcissus

poeticus will cost £50 an acre of 400,000 bulbs, but 270,000 of Golden

Spur will cost £300 and fill the same space; others will cost prices

halfway between these two. Tulips want more room, and at 180,000 to the

acre some will cost as much as £500. Growers like to advertise big

bulbs, but the harder and smaller English-grown bulb will often give

as fine a bloom as the larger imported article. The whole industry is

comparatively new, and a very pleasant one for the many women who are

employed.

[Sidenote: A DISTRIBUTING CENTRE]

The town is a very old one, and the Welland going through it with trees

along its banks and the shipping close to the roadway gives it rather

a Dutch appearance. It is noteworthy as being the centre from which we

shall be able to see more fine churches, all within easy distance, than

we can in any other part of the county or kingdom. As early as 860 the

fisheries of the Welland, together with a wooden chapel of St. Mary

here, which became the site afterwards of the priory, were given by Earl

Alfgar to Croyland. Ivo Taillebois, the Conqueror’s nephew, with his

wife Lucia the first, lived here in the castle in some magnificence as

Lord of Holland. They were both buried in the priory church, founded

by Lady Godiva’s brother, Thorold of Bokenhale, and over possession of

which Spalding and Croyland had frequent disputes. One of the priors

subsequently built Wykeham chapel. The Kings Edward I. and II. stayed

at the priory, and from Bolingbroke, John of Gaunt and Chaucer were

not infrequent visitors. The building was on the south side of the

Market-place, and a shop there with a vaulted roof to one of its rooms

had probably some connection with it. At the dissolution it was valued

at £878, a very large sum, and next only to Croyland, which was by far

the richest house in the county and valued at £1,100 or £1,200. Thornton

Abbey was only set at £730.

The river is navigable for small sea-going vessels, and many large

barges may generally be found tied up along its course through the town,

discharging oil cake and cotton cake, and taking in cargoes of potatoes,

both being transhipped at Fosdyke from or into coasting steamers running

between Hull and London.

But water carriage though cheap is limited in that it only goes between

two points, whereas Spalding is the meeting-place of at least three

railways, making six exits for Spalding goods to come and go to and from

all the main big towns in Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire or Norfolk, as

well as to all those in our own county. Thus there are twice as many ways

out of Spalding by rail as there are by road.

[Illustration: _Ayscough Fee Hall Gardens, Spalding._]

[Sidenote: AYSCOUGH FEE HALL]