The Welland, carefully banked by the Romans, is now bridged for one

railway after another, and runs with a street on either side of it and

rows of trees along it right through the town. On your right as you

enter from the south you see across the river, looking over the top of

a picturesque old brick wall, the well-clipped masses of ancient yew

trees which form the shaded walks in the pretty grounds of _Ayscough Fee

Hall_. The house, built in 1429, but terribly modernised, is now used as

a museum, and the grounds form a public garden for the town. Murray tells

us that Maurice Johnson once lived in it, who helped to found the Society

of Antiquaries in 1717, and founded in 1710 the “Gentleman’s Society of

Spalding,” which still flourishes. Among its many distinguished members

it numbered Newton, Bentley, Pope, Gay, Addison, Stukeley, and Sir Hans

Sloane, and Captain Perry, engineer to the Czar, Peter the Great, who was

engaged in the drainage of Deeping Fen.

[Sidenote: SPALDING CHURCH]

Close to it is the fine old church, the body of which is as wide as it

is long owing to its having double aisles on either side of the nave.

It was founded to take the place of an earlier one which was falling to

ruins, in the market-place. It dates from 1284, and was once cruciform in

plan, with a tower at the north-west corner of the nave. The transepts,

which now do not project beyond the double north and south aisles, had

each two narrow transept aisles, but the western ones have been thrown

into the aisles of the nave. The inner nave aisles are the same length

as the nave, but the outer ones only go as far west as the north and

south porches, the tower filling up the angle beyond the south porch.

The chancel is so large that it was used by Bishop Fleming (1420-30) for

episcopal ordinations.

[Illustration: _Spalding Church from the S.E._]

[Sidenote: THE “HOLE IN THE WALL”]

The east end wall is not rectangular, but the south chancel wall runs out

two feet further east than the north wall, as it does also in the church

of Coulsdon, near Reigate, in Surrey. The reason of this is that it is

built on the foundation of an older chapel. The flat Norman buttresses

are still to be seen outside the east end. The tower leans to the east,

and when examined it was found to have been built flat on the surface

of the ground with no foundation whatever. It seems incredible, but

the intelligent verger was positive about it. The spire has beautiful

canopied openings in three tiers, the lower ones having two lights and

being unusually graceful. Standing inside the south porch and near the

tower, and looking up the church, you get a most picturesque effect, for

the church has so many aisles that you can see no less than twenty-three

different arches. The north porch is handsome, and had three canopied

niches over both the outer and the inner doorway, and a vaulted roof

supporting a room over the entrance. A five-light window over the chancel

arch is curious. There is a rood-loft and a staircase leading to it, and

going on up to the roof. The Perpendicular west window is very large

and has seven lights. This dates from the fifteenth century, when the

nave was lengthened and the pillars of the nave considerably heightened

and the old caps used again, and what had previously been an “early

Decorated” church with only a nave and transepts, had Perpendicular

aisles added. The large south-east chapel which, until 1874 was used

as a school, was founded in 1311. An erect life-size marble figure

commemorates Elizabeth Johnson, 1843. There are no other important

monuments. The tower has eight bells and a Sanctus bell-cot at the east

end of the nave. There are stone steps to enable people to get over the

brick churchyard wall, as there are also at Kirton and Friskney. Some

stone coffin-lids curiously out of place are let into one of the boundary

walls of the churchyard. Close by is the White Horse, a picturesque old

thatched and gabled inn. There is another inn here called “The Hole in

the Wall.” I wonder if this title is derived from Shakespeare’s play,

“The tedious brief scene of young Pyramus and Thisbe,” who, says the

story, “did talk through the chink of a wall,” or does it refer to some

breach in the sea wall? To come from fancy to fact, the real name seems

to have been Holy Trinity Wall, the house having been built up against a

wall of that church which, with half a score of others in Spalding, has

been dismantled and utterly swept away. Another puzzling sign I passed

lately was “The New Found out.” The writer of an article in _The Times_

of April 8, on the fire at Little Chesterford, thinks the sign of one of

the burnt public-houses, “The Bushel and Strike,” a very singular one,

not knowing that the strike, like the bushel, is a measure of corn.

_St. Paul’s, Fulney_, to the north of the town, is a handsome new

brick-and-stone church, by Sir Gilbert Scott, who also restored the old

church and removed every sort of hideous inside fitting, where galleries

all round the nave came within four feet of the heads of the worshippers

in the box pews. At that time £11,000 was spent on the restoration. This

was in 1866, in which year the vicar, the Rev. William Moore, died, and

he and his wife are buried in the nave; his parents, who had done so much

for the church, are buried at Weston.

About two miles from Fulney is Wykeham chapel,[33] built in 1310 and

attached to a country residence of the priors of Spalding; it is now only

a ruin.

[Illustration: _N. Side, Spalding Church._]

[Sidenote: PAINTED PILLARS]

[Sidenote: PINCHBECK]

Going out of Spalding northwards, three miles bring us to _Pinchbeck_,

which was an important village in Saxon times, and attached to Croyland

Abbey, where a fine tower with six bells leans to the north-west. It is

approached by a lime avenue. There are two rows of diaper carved work

round the base of the tower, and large canopied niches on either side

of the west door. The old roof on the north aisle is good, the pillars

of the nave are spoilt by a hideous coat of purple paint. A delightful

old brass weathercock is preserved in the church, and over the south

porch is a dial. The high narrow tower-arch is a pleasure to look on.

The altar tomb of Sir Thomas Pinchbeck (1500) has heraldic shields all

round it, but is quite outdone by a brass of Margaret Lambert, a very

ugly one, but adorned with twenty-seven heraldic coats of arms of her

husband and fifteen of her own. The ten fine Perpendicular clerestory

windows of three lights give the church a handsome appearance, and show

the large wooden angels in the roof, who used to hold shields bearing the

achievements of the house of “Pynchebek.”

[Illustration: _Pinchbeck._]

THE CUSTS.

[Sidenote: THE CUST FAMILY]

There is another name connected with this place, for one of the oldest

Lincolnshire families is that of the Custs, or Costes, who have held land

in Pinchbeck and near Bicker Haven for fourteen generations: though the

first known mention of the name is not in the fens but at Navenby, where

one Osbert Coste had held land in King John’s reign.

The neighbourhood of Croyland Abbey, of Spalding Priory, and of

Boston Haven, with its large wool trade, made “Holland” a district of

considerable importance, and led some of the more enterprising mercantile

families to settle in the neighbourhood.

The same causes occasioned the building of the fine fen churches, which

still remain, though the great houses have disappeared. Custs settled in

Gosberton and Boston as well as at Pinchbeck. At the latter place, what

is now the River Glen was in the fifteenth century called the “Bourne

Ee,” or Eau, and the road by it was the “Ee Gate.” Here Robert Cust in

1479 lived in “The Great House at Croswithand,” in which was a large

hall open to the roof and strewed with rushes, with hangings in it to

partition off sleeping places for the guests or the sons of the house,

the daughters sharing the parlour with their parents. Robert is called a

“Flaxman,” that being the crop by which men began to make their fortunes

in Pinchbeck Fen. He continually added small holdings to his modest

property as opportunity arose, and his son Hugh, succeeding in 1492, did

the same; buying two acres from “Thomas Sykylbrys Franklin” for 50_s._

and one and a half from Robert Sparowe for £5, and so on. Hugh is styled

in 1494 “flax chapman,” in 1500 he had advanced to “Yeoman.” He then had

three farms of sixty-nine acres, and by economy and industry he not only

lived, but lived comfortably, and had money to buy fresh land, though his

will shows that things were on a small scale still, so that individual

mention is made of his “black colt with two white feet behind.” After the

death of his two sons, Hugh’s grandson Richard succeeded in 1554, and

married the juvenile widow, Milicent Slefurth _née_ Beele, who brought

him the lands of R. Pereson, the wealthy vicar of Quadring, with a house

at Moneybridge on the Glen, which she left eventually to her second

son, Richard. His grandson Samuel took to the legal profession, and,

disdaining the parts of Holland after life in London, left the house

there to his brother Joshua, who was the last Cust to live at Pinchbeck.

The family were by this time wealthy, and had a good deal of land round

Boston and elsewhere. Samuel’s son, Richard, married in 1641 Beatrice

Pury, and had a son called Pury, whence spring the Purey Custs. The

Pury family then lived at Kirton, near Boston. He left the law for a

soldier’s life, and was “captain of a Trained Band in the Wapentake of

Skirbeck in the parts of Holland.” He succeeded his father in 1663 and

lived, after the Restoration, at Stamford. In 1677, by interest and the

payment of £1,000, he obtained a baronetcy. His son, Sir Pury Cust, who

had been knighted by William III. in 1690, after the battle of the Boyne,

in which he commanded a troop of horse under the Duke of Schomberg, died

in 1698, two years before his father. His wife, Ursula, the heiress of

the Woodcock family of Newtimber, had died at the age of twenty-four

in 1683. Her monument is in St. George’s church, Stamford. She traced

back her family to Joan, “the fair maid of Kent,” through Joan’s second

husband, John Lord Holland, if we are to take it that she was really

married first, and not simply engaged when a girl to Lord Salisbury. At

all events, her last husband was the Black Prince, by whom she was mother

of Richard II. Her father was Edmund of Woodstock, Earl of Kent, the

sixth son of Edward I.

In 1768 Sir John Cust was Speaker of the House of Commons. The present

head of the Cust family is the Earl of Brownlow.

[Illustration: _Surfleet._]

[Sidenote: GOSBERTON]

[Sidenote: THE LEANING TOWER]

Close to Pinchbeck, on whose already sinking tower the builders had not

dared to place their intended spire, is _Surfleet_, where the tower

and spire lean in a most threatening manner. Arches have been built

up to support it, and by the well-known power of old buildings known

as “Sticktion,” it may last for many generations, but it presents a

very uncomfortable appearance. For the next twenty miles we shall be

constantly crossing the great dykes which drain the fens, all running

eastwards. The road which divides after crossing the Hammond Beck and

the Rise-Gate-Eau passes through _Gosberton_, once called Gosberdekirk,

a large village with a very fine Perpendicular church. You enter by a

richly moulded doorway from a very wide porch, over the entrance to which

is a figure. To the right of the porch, arched recesses are seen under

each south aisle window. There is a central tower with large transepts

and a lofty crocketed spire. A Lady chapel adjoins the south transept.

The clerestory is a later addition, and the ground has been filled up

so that the beautifully carved bases of the nave pillars are two feet

below the present paving. A trap-door is lifted to show one of them.

The rood staircase is on the south side, and in the south transept is a

particularly fine window, with two carved cross-mullions. The moulding

of the nave arches is carried right down the pillars, which deprives them

of capitals and gives them a very feeble appearance. A similar absence

of capitals is found in the tower arches at Horncastle. The roof under

the belfry is groined, and a fine screen separates the chapel of St.

Katherine from the body of the church. In this, there is an old plain

chest with three iron bands. An elegant recumbent stone effigy of a lady

and another of a knight in armour, with a shield bearing a Red Cross, are

the only monuments of interest. As early as 1409, in the reign of Henry

IV., Gosberton was a fat living, for in that year we find that the warden

of the hospital of St. Nicholas at Pontefract exchanged the manor of

Methley in Yorkshire for the advowsons of Gosberkirk, Lincolnshire, and

Wathe, Yorkshire. This manor, before the end of that century, became the

property of Sir Thomas Dymoke.

[Sidenote: SHEEP IN CHURCHYARDS]

The church is very well cared for, and I was glad to see sheep in the

churchyard, the only way of keeping the grass tidy without going to an

unwarrantable expense.

[Illustration: _Surfleet Windmill._]

I know quite well the objections which can reasonably be urged to this

plan, that the sheep make the paths and the porch dirty and may damage

the tombstones; but the porch can have wire netting doors, and the

paths can be cleaned up and the sheep excluded for Sunday; and in those

churchyards which are worst cared for there are generally no tombstones

which would be liable to any hurt.

Certainly in one churchyard where I have seen sheep for many years I

never knew of any damage, and they did keep the grass neat where it would

have cost much to keep it trimmed up by hand.

Not far from Gosberton station is Cressy Hall, a modern red brick house,

built on the site of a very ancient one. It had been a manor of the Creci

family from Norman times, and passed from them to Sir John Markham, who

entertained there the Lady Margaret, mother of Henry VII.

Dr. Stukeley, towards the end of the eighteenth century, saw the old

oak bedstead on which she slept. It was then in a farm-house, called

Wrigbolt, in the parish of Gosberton, and was very large and shut in all

round with oak panels carved outside, two holes being left at the foot

big enough to admit a full-grown person—a sort of hutch in fact. The

property subsequently came to the Heron family, who lived there for three

centuries. They kept up a large heronry there, and we read of as many as

eighty nests in one tree, but since the family left the manor, at the

beginning of last century, the birds have been dispersed.

[Sidenote: QUADRING]

The next village to Gosberton is _Quadring_, a curious name, said to be

derived from the Celtic Coed (= wood). The western tower and spire are

well proportioned, and the tower is quite remarkable for the way in which

it draws in, narrowing all the way up from the ground to the spire. The

rich embattled nave parapet and the rood turrets and staircase are also

noticeable, and, as usual with these Lincolnshire churches, a fine row of

large clerestory windows gives a very handsome appearance. This church

has in it a fine chest; as have Gosberton and Sutterton. The latter very

plain, and both with three iron straps and locks, while at Swineshead is

a good iron chest of the Nuremberg pattern.

Four miles will bring us to _Donington_, once a market town and the

centre of the local hemp and flax trade, of which considerable quantities

were grown both here and round Pinchbeck. It was the flax trade that

attracted the Custs to Pinchbeck in the fifteenth century.

[Sidenote: DONINGTON]

Up to the last century Donington had three hemp fairs in the year, in

May, September, and October, and the land being mostly wet fen, the

villagers kept large flocks of geese, one man owning as many as 1,000

“old geese.” These, besides goslings, yielded a crop of quills and

feathers, and the poor birds were plucked five times a year. The sea

shells in the soil indicate that before the sea banks were made the land

was just a salt-water fen, and it is probable that the men of Donington

had a navigable cut to the sea near Bicker or Wigtoft, for the Roman

sea-bank from Frieston curved inland to Wigtoft and thence ran to

Fossdyke, and the sea water no doubt came up to the bank.

The Romans did much for this village, which lies between their sea-bank

and the Carr Dyke. The former kept out the sea water, and the latter

intercepted the flood water from the hills. This was more effectually

done later by the Hammond Beck, which, coming from Spalding, ran

northwards a parallel course to the Roman Dyke, and with the same

purpose, but some four or five miles nearer to Donington, after passing

which place it bends round to the east and goes out at Boston. Thus

farming was made possible, and potatoes now have taken the place of flax

and hemp.

[Sidenote: FLINDERS AND FRANKLIN]

A large green, bordered by big school buildings, now fills the Market

Square. The church, dedicated to St. Mary and the Holy Rood, is late

Decorated and Perpendicular, and has a splendid tower and spire 240

feet high, which stands in a semi-detached way at the south-east of the

south aisle and is surmounted by a very fine ball and weathercock. The

lower stage forms a groined south porch, over which as well as on each

buttress are large canopied niches for statues, and over the inner door

is a figure of our Lord. The pillars in the nave are octagonal. There

is a large rood bracket, and the rood staircase starts, not from behind

the pulpit, but from the top of the chancel step. The walls of the

Early English chancel are of rough stone, with no windows on the north,

but the east window is a grand five-light Perpendicular one, and three

large windows of the same style are at the west end. In all of these the

tracery is unusually good. A doorway at each side of the altar shows

that the chancel once extended further, and there is a curious arched

recess at the north-east corner with high steps, the meaning of which is

a puzzle. A little kneeling stone figure is seen in the wall of the north

aisle. The responds of the nave arcades, both east and west, have very

large carved bosses. The roof is old and quite plain. In the church are

many memorial slabs to members of the Flinders family, among them one to

Captain Matthew Flinders,[34] 1814, one of the early explorers, who, in

the beginning of last century, was sent to map the coast of Australia,

and having been captured by the French, was kept for some years in prison

in Mauritius.

The Blacksmith’s epitaph, mentioned in the account of Bourne Abbey,

is also found in the churchyard here, with bellows, forge, and anvil

engraved on the stone.

[Sidenote: SWINESHEAD]

_Swineshead_ is but four miles further on, with _Bicker_ half way. The

latter has a far older church than any in the neighbourhood. It is

dedicated to St. Swithun. It is a twelfth-century cruciform building with

massive piers and cushion capitals and fine moulding to its Norman arches

over the two western bays of the nave. The clerestory has Norman arcading

in triplets with glass in the centre light. The east window consists of

three tall Early English lancets. A turret staircase in the south aisle

gives access to another in the tower. The north aisle oak seats have been

made out of portions of the rood screen. The Early English font, being

supported on four short feet, is interesting, as is a holy water stoup in

the porch. This church has been well restored by the Rev. H. T. Fletcher,

now ninety-three years of age, who has been rector for half a century.

In the last half of the thirteenth century a Christopher Massingberd

was the incumbent. It is kept locked on account of recent thefts in the

neighbourhood. As you go to _Swineshead_ you pass a roadside pond with a

notice, “Beware of the Swans.” The village, like Donington, was once a

market town, and has still the remains of its market cross and stocks.

The low spire of the church rises from a beautiful battlemented octagon

which crowns the tower and is _the_ feature of the building. There is a

similar one at the base of the spire of the grand church of Patrington in

Holderness. The tower is at the west end of the nave, and at each of its

corners are very high pinnacles. The belfry is lighted by unusually large

three-light Perpendicular windows, and the clerestory by large windows

with Decorated tracery. The south aisle windows, too, are Decorated,

those in the north aisle Perpendicular. The roof is old, and though

plain in the nave, is richer in the north aisle. The clustered columns

in the nave are slender, and the long pointed chancel arch, having

no shoulders, is curiously ugly. The old iron chest has been already

mentioned.

[Illustration: _The Welland at Marsh Road, Spalding._]

[Sidenote: SUTTERTON]

At Swineshead the road goes east to Boston and west to Sleaford. This we

will speak of when we describe the six roads out of Sleaford, of which

the Swineshead road is by far the most interesting. But we must go back

by _Bicker_, to which the sea once came close up, as testified by the

remains of the Roman sea-bank only two miles off; and perhaps, too,

by the name “Fishmere End,” near the neighbouring village of Wigton.

After seeing _Bicker_ we will retrace our steps through Donington by

Quadring and Gosberton, till we reach the “Gate Eau,” then turning to the

left, strike the direct Spalding and Boston road. This, after crossing

“Quadring Eau-Dyke”—a name which tells a fenny tale—passes over the Roman

bank as it leaves Bicker, and making eastwards after its long inland

curve from Frieston, proceeds to _Sutterton_ and _Algarkirk_. The names

go together as a station on the Great Northern Railway loop line, and

the villages are not far apart. They were both endowed as early as 868,

as mentioned in the Arundel MSS. The churches of both are cruciform.

_Sutterton_ has a tall spire thickly crocketed, and a charming Transition

doorway in the south porch. That of the north is of the same date. The

Early English arcades have rich bands of carving under the capitals

of their round pillars; the two eastern pillars, from the thrust of

the tower, lean considerably to the west; and, showing how much of the

building was done in the Transition Norman time, the pointed arch of the

chancel is enriched with Norman moulding. The large Perpendicular windows

are very good, but the tracery of the Decorated west window is not

attractive. The level of the floor has been so filled up that the narrow

transept-arch pillars are now buried as much as three feet. The fittings

are all pinewood, which gives one a kind of shock in so fine an old

church. There are eight bells and a thirteenth-century Sanctus bell with

inscription in Lombardic letters. The wood of the massive old iron-bound

chest is sadly decayed.

[Illustration: _Algarkirk._]

[Sidenote: THE MAGNIFICENT WINDOWS]

_Algarkirk_, the church of Earl Alfgar, stands within half a mile of

Sutterton, in a park. The parish is a huge one, and the living was,

till recently, worth £2,000 a year, but having been purchased from the

Berridge family and presented to the Bishop of Lincoln, its revenues

have gone largely to endow new churches in Grimsby, and the present

incumbent has only one quarter of what his predecessors had. Like

Spalding, Algarkirk had double aisles to the transepts, but the eastern

aisle on the south side has been thrown into the transept. The Decorated

windows of each transept are very fine ones, and those at the east and

west ends of the nave are extremely large and good, that at the west

filling the whole of the wall space. The clerestory has ten three-light

windows, and the transepts have similar ones. Outside, the nave, aisles

and transepts are all battlemented, which gives a very rich appearance.

The fittings are all of oak, and there are six bells. Every window below

the clerestory has good modern stained glass, and, taken as a whole, the

church is one of the most beautiful in the county.

[Sidenote: AT ALGARKIRK]

It was Easter time when we visited Algarkirk, and the rookery in the park

at the edge of the churchyard was giving abundant signs of busy life.

The delightful cawing of the rooks is always associated in my mind with

the bright spring time in villages of the Lincolnshire wolds. In the

churchyard I noticed the name of Phœbe more than once, but I doubt if the

parents, when bestowing this pretty classic name on their infant daughter

at the font, ever thought of her adding to it, as the tombstone says she

did, the prosaic name of Weatherbogg.

At Sutterton two main roads cross, one from Swineshead to Holbeach,

crossing the Welland near Fosdyke; the other from Boston to Spalding,

crossing the Glen at Surfleet.

From Swineshead two very dull roads run west to Sleaford, and north to

Coningsby and Tattershall, to join the Sleaford and Horncastle road.

This, after crossing the old Hammond Beck, sends an off-shoot eastwards

to Boston, whose tower is seen about four miles off. It then crosses the

great South-Forty-foot drain at Hubbert’s bridge, named after Hubba the

Dane, and the North-Forty-foot less than a mile further on, and, passing

by Brothertoft to the Witham, which it crosses at Langrick, runs in a

perfectly straight line through Thornton-le-Fen to Coningsby. An equally

straight road goes parallel to, but four miles east of it, from Boston by

New Bolingbroke to Revesby.

From what we have said it will be seen that the road from Spalding

northwards is thickly set with fine churches; but that which goes

eastwards boasts another group which are grander still. They are all

figured in the volume of “Lincolnshire Churches,” which deals with the

division of Holland. This was published in 1843 by T. N. Morton of

Boston, the excellent drawings being by Stephen Lewin. His drawing of

Kirton Old Church shows what an extremely handsome building it was before

Hayward destroyed it in 1804.

[Sidenote: MEANING OF ‘PINCHBECK’]

One ought not to close this Chapter without some reference to the term

“pinchbeck,” meaning _sham_, literally base metal, looking like gold, and

used for watchcases.[35] Some Pinchbeck natives still have it that it

was a yellow metal found rather more than a century ago near Pinchbeck,

and now exhausted. But fen soil has no minerals, and really it was a

London watchmaker, who was either a native of Pinchbeck or else called

Pinchbeck, who invented the alloy of 80 parts copper to 20 of zinc. I

remember hearing of a case at Spilsby sessions, where a man was accused

of stealing a watch. The robbed man was asked, “What was your watch? a

gold one?” “Nöa, it wëant gowd.” “Silver then?” “Näay, it wëant silver,

nither.” “Then what was it?” “Why, it wor pinchbeck.”

On a later occasion the thief, asking the same “lawyer feller” to defend

him, said, by way of introduction, “You remember you got me off before

for stealing a watch.” “For the _alleged_ stealing of a watch, you mean.”

“Alleged be blowed! I’ve got the watch at home now.”

[Illustration: _At Fulney._]

CHAPTER XXXIX

CHURCHES OF HOLLAND, EAST OF SPALDING

Weston—The Font—Fertile Country—Colman’s Factory—The

Woad Plant—’Twixt Marsh and Fen—Moulton—The Spire—The

Elloe Stone—Whaplode—Holbeach—Fleet—Gedney—The Mustard

Fields—Long Sutton—Groups of Churches—Fossdyke Old

Bridge—Kirton—Frampton—Wyberton—A Storm—Agricultural

Statistics, 1913—A Legend of Holbeach.

The road which runs east from Spalding passes out of the county to reach

King’s Lynn. But before it does so, it goes through a line of villages

along which, within a distance of ten miles, are six of the finest

churches which even Lincolnshire can show. Going out through Fulney we

begin, less than four miles from Spalding, with _Weston_, where we find

an unusually fine south porch with arcading and stone seats on either

side. At the east end are three lancet lights of perfect Early English

work and four slender buttresses. The nave dates from the middle of the

twelfth century, and has stout round pillars in the south and octagonal

in the north arcades, each set round with slender detached shafts as

at Skirbeck, united under capitals carved with good stiff foliage. The

aisles and transepts are later, and the tower later again.

The Early English font is a splendid specimen and stands on its original

octagonal steps with half of the circle occupied by a broad platform for

the priest. Two good old oak chests stand on either side of the tower

arch, and near the south door two curious musical instruments of the oboe

type are hanging, and seem to be worthy of more careful preservation.

[Sidenote: ‘MARSH’ AND ‘FEN’]

The whole of our route to-day lies through a perfectly flat land, mostly

arable and of extraordinary fertility. The corn crops at the end of May

were standing nearly two feet high, and all around bright squares of

yellow made the air heavy with the scent of the mustard flower. I lately

went all over the great mustard factory of Messrs. Colman at Norwich, in

which the beauty and ingenuity of the machinery for making and labelling

the tins, for filling bags and boxes, or for sorting and folding up

in their proper papers the cubes of blue (of which there is a factory

contiguous) were a perfect marvel. The works cover thirty-two acres, and

everything needed for the business is made on the premises. The mustard

of commerce is a mixture of the brown and the white, both of which, and

especially the best brown, are grown in the greatest perfection in the

fields round Holbeach. It is a valuable crop. In October, 1912, I saw a

quotation of 10_s._ 6_d._ to 13_s._ 6_d._ a bushel for brown, and 8_s._

to 8_s._ 6_d._ for white; 1913 was a much better year, and so I suppose

prices ruled higher. But to return.

Here and there we passed a field with an unfamiliar crop of stiff

purplish plants which showed where the cultivation of the _Isatis

tinctoria_, the woad plant, which added so much to the attractiveness of

our earliest British ancestors, was still kept going. This flat country

is not without its trees, and near the villages park-like meadows, the

remains of ancient manors, showed a beautiful wealth of chestnut bloom,

whilst the cottage gardens were gay with laburnum and pink May. This

was especially the case with the most easterly villages of Holbeach,

Gedney and Long Sutton, but all along this line of road from Weston to

Sutton there were, at one time, manors of the Irby, Welby, Littlebury,

and other families, of which nothing now remains but this heritage of

trees. The line of road is a very remarkable one, for it divides what

once might have been described as the waters that were above from the

waters that were below; in other words the Fen from the Marsh. If you

look at a good map you will see to the north of the road, from west

to east successively, Pinchbeck Marsh, Spalding Marsh, Weston Marsh,

Moulton Marsh, Whaplode Marsh, Holbeach Marsh, Gedney Marsh, Sutton

Marsh, and Wingland Marsh. The last of these lies between Sutton Bridge

and Cross-Keys, on the county boundary; and since the new outfall of the

river Nene was cut, a rich tract has been gained for cultivation where

once the sea had possession, and just where King John lost his baggage

and treasure in his disastrous crossing of the Cross-Keys Wash, at low

tide, shortly before his death in 1216. There is now a good road there.

Now look at the map again and you will see to the south of this Holbeach

road the same names, but with _Fen_ instead of _Marsh_—Moulton, Whaplode,

Holbeach, and Gedney _Fen_.

[Sidenote: RETIREMENT OF THE WASH]

The Marsh country is far the most interesting, and it is clear both from

the nature of the land and from the names of the places that the Wash

used to come several miles further inland than it does now, running up

between Algarkirk and Gosberton as far as Bicker, and penetrating up

the Welland estuary to “Surfleet seas end,” and up the Moulton river to

“Moulton seas end,” to Holbeach Clough, to Lutton Gowt, which is north

of Long Sutton on the Leam, and to the Roman bank which is still visible

at Fleet and again further east between Cross-Keys and Walpole. This

bank probably came by _Tydd St. Mary_, through which a Roman road from

Cowbit also passed. But this was long ago, and many centuries elapsed

before this Spalding and Lynn road, passing between Marsh and Fen, came

into being, with its many magnificent churches, mostly the work of great

monastic institutions between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, and

therefore built with exceptional magnificence.

[Sidenote: MOULTON]

After _Weston_ less than two miles, through a country brightened by the

many red and white chestnut trees in bloom, brings us to _Moulton_,

lying a little to the south of the main road. Here we have a beautiful

Perpendicular tower and crocketed spire, reminding one, by its graceful

proportions, of Louth, though not much more than half the height. The

nave has six bays of Transition Norman work with pillars both round and

clustered, resting on large millstone-like bases, the two western piers

having tall responds built into them, which probably supported the arch

of an earlier tower. The Early English carved foliage on the capitals is

like that at Skirbeck, or in the Galilee Porch at Ely and the transept

of York Cathedral. Some most graceful old work has been restored in the

lower part of the rood-screen, and a new and well-designed canopy added.

The doorway to this rood-loft is on the south side. A curious old oak

alms-box is near the south door, and against the western pier of the

north arcade is a singular font which has been displaced by a modern

square one of no particular merit. In the older one the bowl stands on

the trunk of a tree carved in stone, on either side of which are figures

about three feet high of Adam and Eve, and the Serpent is curling round

the tree.[36] The wooden cover with the figure of a stout Rubens angel

flying and grasping the top has fallen into disrepair. A list of the

vicars from 1237 is in the north aisle.

The clerestory windows are handsomely arcaded outside, with round Norman

arcading on the south and pointed arcades on the north side, and ugly

Perpendicular windows inserted at intervals which occupy the space of two

arcades.

The great beauty of the church is the Perpendicular tower and spire,

built about 1380. It has four stages, and over the great west window

are some canopied niches, two of which still contain their statues. The

buttresses have also niches and canopies, and the tower finishes with

a rich battlement and pinnacles which are connected with the spire by

light flying-buttresses; the whole is beautifully proportioned, and as it

stands in a very wide street one can get a satisfactory view of it.

The dividing of each side by set-off string courses, three on the west

and four on the north and south sides, the canopy work of the buttresses

at each stage, the pleasing varieties in the size of the windows, the

canopied arcading on the west front, the panelled parapet and deep

cornice, the elegant pinnacles at the corners of the coped battlements

from which the light flying-buttresses spring up to the richly ornamented

spire, all help to delight and satisfy the eye in a manner which few

churches in any county can hope to rival.

In a bridge half a mile from the church on the south side of a lane

called ‘Old Spalding Gate,’ or ‘Elloe Stone lane,’ at the fifth milestone

from Spalding, still stands _the Elloe Stone_.

The Shire Mote or hundred court of the Elloe Wapentake, which is a huge

one embracing the whole of Holland between the Welland and the Nene, used

to be held at the four cross-roads near this stone, in pre-Norman times.

The manor courts were introduced by the Normans.

Boy Scouts were very much in evidence when we were in Moulton; they

number over thirty there alone, and I never saw a smarter lot.

[Sidenote: WHAPLODE]

From Moulton we get back to the main road and go on two short miles

to _Whaplode_. In Domesday Book this is spelt Quappelode, the cape on

the lode or creek, the village being built on a spit of land elevated

above the fens and encircled by drains, or lodes, to keep it free from

inundation.

[Illustration: _Whaplode Church._]

The church here was built by the abbot of Croyland in rivalry with

Moulton, which was the work of the prior of Spalding. The nave, of no

less than seven bays, is narrow and 110 feet long, and exhibits in the

low chancel arch and four adjoining arcades quite the most interesting

Norman work in ‘Holland.’ The massive Norman pillars are built in pairs

of different patterns. The three western arches are Transitional and

pointed; of this period the chief feature is the west door with a fine

series of mouldings and a double row of eight detached shafts on either

side, set one behind the other.

The tower is very fine and is in a most unusual position, being south

of the eastmost bay of the south aisle and almost detached, though

once joined by a transept. We quite agree with Mr. Jeans when he says

“Probably it was intended to have two transeptal towers like Exeter

and Ottery, the only two churches in England with them, but a late

Perpendicular transept occupies the place of the North one.” The lower

Transition stage is richly arcaded, the next two Early English stages

have lancet arcading, and the belfry stage, which is early Decorated,

has coupled lights and a parapet above them. The choir-screen stood,

curiously, a bay in front of the rood loft, the stairs to which are on

the south side. The pulpit is Jacobean, the font a copy of a Norman one,

the chancel is of the meanest, and all the windows except one at the east

of the north aisle are incredibly ugly. Some stone coffins are placed in

the west end, where also is the fine canopied monument of Sir Anthony and

Lady Elizabeth Irby with large figures of their children kneeling at the

side. See _Ashby-cum-Fenby_, p. 267.

[Sidenote: HOLBEACH]

Another three miles along this wonderful line of grand churches brings

us to the church of All Saints, _Holbeach_, a magnificent building all

in the latest Decorated style throughout. The spire without crockets,

though higher than Moulton, is rather dwarfed by the large tower

without pinnacles. The nave is very spacious and light, having large

aisle windows with no stained glass, and no less than fourteen pairs

of clerestory windows. The flamboyant tracery in the east window is

very good. The nave has seven very lofty bays on tall, light, clustered

pillars, and the eastern bay does not reach the chancel arch, but leaves

a wall space of six feet to accommodate the requirements of the rood

loft. There is a very large north porch of singular construction, with

heavy, round battlemented turrets like the flanking bastions of a castle

gateway. Above is a parvise. In the north aisle is a well-preserved altar

tomb to Sir Humphrey Littlebury, _c._ 1400, and two brasses; one of

Joanna Welbye, 1458, for both these families once had manors at Holbeach.

[Illustration: _Fleet Church._]

The approach to the town is through a well-wooded country, and a row of

pink chestnuts in bloom lined the churchyard, as we saw it early in June.

Like Moulton, the parish is a very large one, containing, according to

Murray, 21,000 acres of land and 14,000 of water. Somewhere in this huge

parish was born, in 1687, William Stukeley, the antiquarian, who became

in his later years the rector of Somerby, near Grantham.

The “Legend of Holbeach” was probably unknown to him, but it is of some

antiquity, and it is printed at the end of the chapter in the rhyming

form which was given to it more than a hundred years ago by Thomas

Rawnsley of Bourne, D.L.

[Sidenote: A DETACHED SPIRE]

A mile off the road to the right, is seen the spire of _Fleet_ church.

This, too, is mainly in the Decorated style with Early English arcades

and a Perpendicular west window. The tower stands apart from the rest of

the church at an interval of fifteen feet. Other instances of detached

towers are at Evesham in Worcestershire, at Elstow near Bedford, and, I

think, at Terrington in Norfolk; but a detached spire is very rarely seen.

All the churches on the main road are at intervals of three miles,

and that distance will bring us to the tall slender Giotto-like tower

of _Gedney_, ninety feet high with very small buttresses. This, like

Whaplode, was built, by the abbots of Croyland. The spacious nave has

twelve Perpendicular three-light clerestory windows of unusual beauty,

divided by pinnacles rising above the parapet. There are six lofty bays

and a fine Early English tower arch. As at Holbeach and Sutton, there

is a parvise over the south porch. The tower was to have had a spire

instead of its present little spirelet, but only the base of it was

built. Possibly this was because the foundations were not trustworthy,

and, indeed, it may be said to have no foundations but to be built on

a raft in the peat bog on which it floats securely, as did Winchester

Cathedral before the deep drainage trench was cut along the north side

of the close. At Gedney, if you jump on the floor of the porch you will

distinctly perceive the vibration of the ground.

It is enriched at the first stage by lancet windows, then by an arcading

with pointed arches, above which come beautiful twin windows, each with

two lights; and the upper, Decorated, stage of the tower—above the line

where the Black Death so obviously and effectually stopped the work,

as described in the next chapter—has two lofty canopied and transomed

windows in each face, which give a very handsome appearance. There is no

west door.

[Illustration: _Gedney Church._]

[Sidenote: GEDNEY]

Within is a ‘low-side’ window at the south-west end of the chancel which

is sometimes called an ‘Ichnoscope,’ and in the vestry is a ‘squint.’

A thirteenth-century cross-legged knight, the fine brass of a lady

(1390), recently discovered, and the richly coloured alabaster monument

of Adlard and Cassandra Welby (1590) are all worthy of notice; while the

abbots’ inscription over the door, “Pax Xti sit huic domui et omnibus

habitantibus in ea, hic requies nostra,” is to be contrasted with the

worldly-wise motto of John Petty on the old bell-metal door lock, “Be

Ware before, avyseth Johannes Pette.” Let into the door is a very

remarkable crucifixion in ivory.

[Sidenote: THE MUSTARD FIELDS]

As we left Gedney and looked back over the fields the tall and

Italian-looking campanile, whose bells, however, cannot vie with the

eight bells of Holbeach, made a unique and memorable picture. I doubt

if there is anything quite like it in England. We passed on eastwards

another three miles by Gedney Marsh, with its “Cock and Magpie” inn,

while the strong summer scent of the brilliant mustard fields recalled

the apt description of our great Lincolnshire poet:

“All the land in flowery squares,

Beneath a broad and equal-blowing wind,

Smelt of the coming Summer.”

As with Shakespeare, once let anything be described by Tennyson, and no

other form of words can ever again seem so fit and inevitable. How often

does one notice this!

[Sidenote: GROUPS OF FINE CHURCHES]

But now we are at _Long Sutton_, or Sutton St. Mary’s, and find there

perhaps the most interesting of this wonderful sequence of exceptional

churches.

Again we have a long nave of seven bays, with Norman pillars, both round

and octagonal. A flat Norman arch to the chancel, and on each side of

the chancel a slender column and two tall arches leading to chancel

transepts. The rood staircase goes up from the pulpit on the north side,

and above the nave arcades is a Transitional clerestory with arcading,

which now serves as a triforium, being surmounted by another clerestory

of the Perpendicular period; indeed the outside of the church, from its

aisle and clerestory windows, has just the appearance of a Perpendicular

building, so that when on entering one finds oneself in a fine Norman

nave, the sight, as Mr. Jeans says, is quite startling.

[Illustration: _Long Sutton Church._]

At the north-east angle is a curious two-storied octagonal vestry,

or sacristy, with a winding stair of fourteenth century date, having

a small window into the chancel. The tower is Early English and is

curiously placed at the south-west angle of the south aisle. That at

Whaplode is at the south-east angle. Both tower and spire are in their

original condition (the latter of timber covered with lead) and are the

best and earliest specimens of their period. The tower stands on four

magnificent arches now blocked, above which outside is a rich arcading

like that in the north transept of Wells Cathedral. Above this the belfry

windows are double, having a three-light window inside, with a two-light

window outside, the mullion coming down to the outer edge of the splay;

a very unusual arrangement. The spire is clasped at each corner by a

spirelet, and rises to the height of 162 feet. Altogether this church

is the fitting crown to our long string of stately churches. There are

larger single churches with twelve to even twenty clerestory windows in

Norfolk and Suffolk, but I doubt if any group in the kingdom can rival

these, though the Sleaford group runs them hard. And certainly the Marsh

churches between Boston and Wainfleet, and the still more characteristic

group round Burgh-le-Marsh and Theddlethorpe have a charm—owing a

good deal to their old oak fittings—which “can only be described in

superlatives.” Next to these for interest I would put the Pinchbeck group

in the triangle formed by Boston, Spalding, and Donington, and the group

of old pre-Norman towers like Clee which are found near together to the

south and west of Grimsby. Of course, Lincoln Minster with Stow, Grantham

with Hough-on-the-Hill, Boston Stump, and Louth spire, stand outside

every group in unapproachable greatness. Long Sutton is not without

neighbours. Two miles to the north is _Lutton_, where Dr. Busby, the

famous headmaster of Westminster, was born. He died in 1695. The large

inlaid Italian pulpit with elegant canopy, put up in 1702, was probably

his gift.

Three miles east is _Sutton bridge_, only separated from Norfolk by the

uninhabited Wingland Marsh, while three miles to the south is the village

of _Tydd-St.-Mary_, the last village on the Wisbech road which is in

Lincolnshire, _Tydd-St.-Giles_ being over the border in Cambridgeshire;

for both Norfolk and Cambridge here touch the county; Wisbech, which

is itself the centre of a grand group of churches, being in the latter

county.

[Sidenote: OLD FOSDYKE BRIDGE]

To finish our day and get into “the parts of Lindsey,” we take the

north road from Holbeach over Fosdyke bridge to Boston. In the church

at _Fosdyke_ we may see a remarkable font with a tall Perpendicular oak

cover similar, but not equal in beauty, to that at Frieston.

Before 1814, people who wished to go from Boston into the eastern half of

Holland and on to Cambridge and Norfolk had to cross the Welland estuary

by ferry or go round by Spalding, but in 1811 an Act was passed for

erecting a bridge at Fosdyke Wash and making a causeway to it over the

sands. The work was designed by Rennie, who had an excellent patron in

Sir Joseph Banks. The account of it, written at the time, is curious. The

bridge was 300 feet long and had eight openings, the three in mid-stream

being thirty feet wide, and the centre one opened with two leaves,

which, having a counterpoise, were easily moved from a horizontal to a

perpendicular position by means of a large rack-wheel and pinion wound by

a common hand-winch. The nine piers were each made of oak trees driven

in whole in clusters of six. These trees were none of them less than

thirty feet long and eighteen inches in diameter, rather larger than the

beams used to carry the floors in Tattershall Castle.[37] Those in the

four central piers were enormous, being forty-two feet long and nineteen

inches in diameter. They were driven in twenty to twenty-two feet below

the bottom of the river and bolted together with timbers a foot thick.

All was carried out in oak, the roadway planks being three inches thick.

I went to see this stout old timber bridge and was disgusted to find that

a grey-painted iron structure had taken its place.

From Fosdyke the road passes Algarkirk and strikes the Spalding and

Boston main road at Sutterton, where it turns north to _Kirton_. After

passing Kirton—the magnificent church of which place was so strangely

altered and mutilated by a ruthless architect called Hayward, in 1804,

who pulled down its noble central tower and its double-aisled transept

and built of the old materials a handsome but new tower at the west

end—we soon see on the right, first Frampton and then Wyberton, the

latter only about a mile south of Boston.

[Sidenote: FRAMPTON AND WYBERTON]

_Frampton_, once cruciform with a good tower and spire, has lost its

north transept, its tall Early English pillars now support arches of a

later style, but a fine oak roof and tall screen remain. There is an

odd monument of ecclesiastical power on a buttress outside at the angle

of the transept. A figurehead grotesquely carved, with the inscription,

“Wot ye whi I sta̅d her [know ye, why I stand here] for I forswor my

Savior ego Ricardus in Angulo,” probably a lasting reference to some

ecclesiastical penance.

Frampton Hall, a good Queen Anne house, is close to the church. Here, as

in several of the Marsh churches, rings to tie horses to during service

may be seen in the wall. Not a mile away northwards is _Wyberton_, which,

if built as planned, would have been a very fine edifice. When it was

restored by G. Scott, Jun., in 1881, the floor of the chancel being

lowered brought to light two magnificent pillar bases. These, with the

grand chancel arch, are indications that a fine cruciform church was

projected but apparently never carried out. Tall arcades with clustered

and octagonal columns and a good Perpendicular roof with carved bosses

and angels are there now, and signs that an earlier building existed are

visible in stones either lying loose or built into the walls. A slab to

Adam Frampton is dated 1325.

The font is a very rich one of the same period as those to the north-east

of Boston, at Benington and Leverton. _The registers begin as early as

1538._ We pass now through Boston, and crossing the sluice bridge, get a

fine view of the tall tower by the water-side and soon strike the Sibsey

and Spilsby road.

A grand black thunder-cloud rolls up across the fen, and having

discharged a tempest of hailstones on the Wolds, descends upon us between

Sibsey and Stickney in torrents of rain. It passes, and the bright

sunshine—the “clear shining after rain” of the Hebrew prophet—contrasted

with the darkness of the moving thunder-clouds as they roll seawards,

makes a fine picture, and one which in that flat land you can watch for

miles as it moves.

[Sidenote: AGRICULTURAL RETURNS]

The agricultural statistics for Lincolnshire in 1913 show that there were

in Lindsey about 860,000, in Kesteven 419,560, and in Holland 243,200

acres under cultivation. The various crops in each were in thousands of

acres as follows:—

+-----------+-------------------------------------------------------+

| |Wheat. |

| | +------------------------------------------------+

| | |Oats. |

| | | +-----------------------------------------+

| | | |Barley. |

| | | | +----------------------------------+

| | | | |Beans and Peas. |

| | | | | +---------------------------+

| | | | | |“Roots.” |

| | | | | | +--------------------+

| | | | | | |Potatoes. |

| | | | | | | +-------------+

| | | | | | | |Clover, |

| | | | | | | |Vetches &c. |

| | | | | | | | +------+

| | | | | | | | |Other |

| | | | | | | | |crops.|

+-----------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+

|In Lindsey | 79 | 69½ | 125½ | 24 | 83¼ | 27 | 109 | 7 |

| ” Kesteven| 44½ | 24 | 67½ | 17½ | 34½ | 8½ | 46¼ | 3¾ |

| ” Holland | 35 | 23 | 18 | 17¼ | 7 | 40⅓ | 15 | 12¾ |

+-----------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+

The table shows that Holland grows a good deal of wheat and oats, but not

much barley compared with the two other divisions, and very few “roots.”

But in 1913 it grew 40,370 acres of potatoes, which is 5,000 acres more

than all the rest of the county; and this was a decrease on the previous

year’s crop of 2,479 acres. Then the big item in Holland under “other

crops” shows the mustard, while 2,500 acres in that column for Lindsey

are taken up with “rape.” The amount of bare fallow last year was, in

Lindsey, 22,940 acres; in Kesteven, 15,385; and in Holland, 5,311. This,

and the number of horses employed on the land—Lindsey, 26,930; Kesteven,

12,412; Holland, 10,892—when it is remembered that the acreage of the

three divisions is in the proportion of 4, 2, and 1, shows how highly

cultivated the Lincolnshire fen-land in Holland is. The arable land in

that division is more than two-thirds of the whole acreage.

Another thing this report brings out is the marked decrease in 1913 in

the number of cattle, sheep and pigs, and especially of sheep in every

part of the county. This decrease was—

+--------------+---------+---------+-------+

| | Cattle. | Sheep. | Pigs. |

+--------------+---------+---------+-------+

| In Lindsey | 8,672 | 35,516 | 1,002 |

| ” Kesteven | 5,675 | 10,462 | 2,801 |

| ” Holland | 3,664 | 9,587 | 4,638 |

+--------------+---------+---------+-------+

| Total | 18,011 | 55,565 | 8,441 |

+--------------+---------+---------+-------+

This shows that Holland suffered more decrease in proportion than the

other two divisions in all respects, and especially in the number of

pigs. Of course the season must always be answerable for a good deal,

and the numbers may all go up this year. But the enormous drop in the

number of cattle and sheep, telling a tale of the absence of “roots” and

“feed,” will hardly be made good in one year.

[Sidenote: THE REVELLERS]

[Sidenote: “A LEGEND OF HOLBECH”]

“A LEGEND OF HOLBECH”

a true story.

Made into this rhyme by Mr. Rawnsley of Bourne, about the year 1800.

In the bleak noxious Fen that to Lincoln pertains

Where agues assert their fell sway,

There the Bittern hoarse moans and the seamew complains

As she flits o’er the watery way.

While with strains thus discordant, the natives of air

With screams and with shrieks the ear strike,

The toad and the frog croaking notes of despair

Join the din, from the bog and the dyke.

Mid scenes that the senses annoy and appal

Sad and sullen old Holbech appears,

As if doomed to bewail her hard fate from the Fall,

Like a Niobe washed with her tears.

From fogs pestilential that hovered around,

To ward off despair and disease,

The juice of the grape was most generous found,

Source of comfort, of joy, and of ease.

At the “Chequers” long famed to quaff then did delight

The Burghers both ancient and young,

With smoking and cards, passed the dull winter night,

They joked and they laughed and they sung.

Three revellers left, when the midnight was come,

Unable their game to pursue,

Repaired, most unhallowed, to visit the tomb

Where enshrouded lay one of their crew.

For _he_, late-departed, renowned was at whist,

The marsh-men still tell of his fame,

Till Death with a spade struck the cards from his fist

And spoiled both his hand and his game.

Cold and damp was the night; thro’ the churchyard they prowled,

As wolves by fierce hunger subdued,

’Gainst the doors they huge gravestones impetuous rolled

Which recoiled at such violence rude.

From the sepulchre’s jaws their old comrade uncased,

(How chilling the tale to relate),

Upreared ’gainst the wall on the table was placed

A corpse, in funereal state.

By a taper’s faint blaze and with Luna’s faint light

That would sometimes emit them a ray,

The cards were produced, and they cut with delight

To know who with “_Dumby_” should play.

Exalted on basses the bravoes kneeled round

Exulting and proud of the deed,

To Dumby they bent with respect most profound

And said “Sir! it is _your_ turn to lead.”

The game then commenced, when one offered him aid,

And affected to guide his cold hand

While another cried out, “Bravo! Dumby, well played,

I see you’ve the cards at command.”

Thus impious, they jokèd devoid of all grace,

When dread sounds shook the walls of the church,

And lo! Dumby sank down, and a ghost in his place

Shrieked dismal “Haste! haste! save your lurch!”

Astounded they stared; but the fiend disappeared

And Dumby again took his seat,

So they deemed ’twas but fancy, nor longer they feared

But swore that “Old Dumb should be beat.”

Eight to nine was the game, Dumby’s partner called loud

“Speak once, my old friend, or we’re done

Remember our stake ’tis my coat or your shroud

Now answer and win—_can you one?_”[38]

“What silent, my Dumby, when most I you need

Dame Fortune our wishes has crossed,”

When a voice from beneath, howled, “your fate is decreed

The game and the gamesters are lost.”

Then strange! most terrific and horrid to view!

Three Demons thro’ earth burst their way:

Each one chose his partner, his arms round him threw

And vanished in smoke with his prey.

CHAPTER XL

THE BLACK DEATH

Mention being made in the last chapter of the Black Death, the disastrous

effects of which were so visible in the tower of Gedney, it will be not

inappropriate to give some short account of it here.

Edward the Third had been twenty years on the throne when a great change

came over the country. The introduction of leases of lands and houses by

the lord of the manor had created a class of “farmers”—the word was a

new one—by which the old feudal system of land-tenure was disturbed, the

old tie of personal dependence of the serf on his lord being broken, and

the lord of the manor reduced to the position of a modern landlord. And

not only was an independent class of tenants coming into existence who

were able to rise to a position of apparent equality with their former

masters, but among the labourers, too, a greater freedom was growing,

which was gradually loosing them from their local bondage to the soil,

and giving them power to choose what place of employment and what master

they pleased. This rise of the free labourer following naturally on the

enfranchisement of the serf had made it necessary for the landlord to

rely on hired labour, and just when it was most essential for them to

have an abundant supply of hands seeking employment, all at once the

supply absolutely and entirely failed.

The cause of this was the Black Death, which, starting in Asia, swept

over the whole of Europe and speedily reached these shores in the autumn

of 1348. No such swift and universally devastating plague had ever been

known. One half of the population of every European country perished,

and in England more than half. In one London burying-place above 50,000

corpses were interred.

[Sidenote: THE BLACK DEATH]

In Norwich, then the chief east-coast port north of the Thames, we hear

of 60,000 deaths. We hear, too, of whole villages being wiped out, and

nowhere were sufficient hands left to cultivate the soil.

Crops were ungathered, cattle roamed at will. The pestilence lasted

through the whole of 1349, after which, though occasionally recurring, it

died away.

In Lincolnshire it was very bad, and some knowledge of it can be

gathered from the memoranda of the Bishop of Lincoln, John Gynewell, who

held office from September 23, 1347, to August 5, 1362; the appalling

frequency of the institutions to the various benefices in his diocese

give some measure of the severity of this dreadful visitation.

It began at Melcombe Regis in Dorset in the month of July, 1348, but did

not reach Lincoln until May, 1349. It got to London in January of that

year, and was at its height there in March, April, and May. In May, in

the town of Newark, we read that “it waxes day by day more and more,

insomuch that the Churchyard will not suffice for the men that die in

that place.”

From his palace at Liddington, in Rutland, Bishop Gynewell went in May to

consecrate a burial ground at Great Easton, which, being only a chapelry

to the parish of Bringhurst, had no burial ground of its own. The licence

was granted only during the duration of the pestilence. The bishop in

his preamble says: “There increases among you, as in other places of our

Diocese, a mortality of men such as has not been seen or heard aforetime

from the beginning of the world, so that the old grave-yard of your

church [Bringhurst] is not sufficient to receive the bodies of the dead.”

The enormous number of clergy who died in the Diocese of Lincoln is

attested by the fact that in July alone 250 institutions were made and

all but fifteen owing to deaths, a number which is considerably more than

the whole for the first eighteen months of Bishop Gynewell’s episcopate.

The average is over eight a day.

The most singular thing which the statistics point to, is that, on the

high ground round Lincoln and in the parts of Lindsey the mortality

among the clergy was far higher than in other parts of the diocese,

whilst in the low lands and fens round Peterborough, and in the parts of

Holland, the percentage of deaths was almost invariably low, twenty-seven

and twenty-four per cent. as compared with fifty-seven for Stamford

and sixty for Lincoln. The worst months in Lincolnshire were July and

August, yet even then, in spite of the severity of the plague and the

disorganisation which it occasioned in all the social and religious life

of the age, ordinary business, we are told, went on, and the bishop never

ceased his constant journeys and visitations to all parts of his enormous

diocese, reaching as it did from Henley on the Thames to the Humber,

and including besides Lincoln, the counties of Northampton, Rutland,

Leicester, Huntingdon, Bedford, Hertford, Buckingham, and Oxford.

That the nation was not more depressed by this state of things was

doubtless due to the feeling of national exaltation occasioned by the

battle of Cressy in 1346, and the capture of Calais in the next year and

the subsequent truce with France.

[Sidenote: ITS EFFECT ON BUILDING]

One of the results of this plague was the absolute cessation of work for

want of hands, which threw land out of cultivation and suspended all

building operations. At Gedney, as the architect who restored the church

in 1898, Mr. W. D. Caröe, pointed out to me, the history of the Black

Death is distinctly written on the tower, and you may plainly see where

the fourteenth-century builders ceased and how, above the present clock,

the work was recommenced by different hands, with altered design and

quite other materials.

[Illustration: _Gedney, from Fleet._]

CHAPTER XLI

CROYLAND

St. Guthlac—Abbot Joffrid—Boundary Crosses—The Triangular

Bridge—Figure with Sceptre and Ball—Lincolnshire swan-marks.

As you pass in the train along the line from Peterborough to Spalding,

and have got a mile or two north of Deeping St. James station, you can

see to the east in a cluster of trees a broad tower with a short, thick

spire standing out as the only feature in a wide, flat landscape. This,

for all who know it, has a mysterious attraction, for it is the sorrowful

ruin of a once magnificent building, a far-famed centre of light and

learning from whence came the brains, the piety, and the wealth which,

issuing over the fens of south-east Lincolnshire, not only supplied the

first lecturers to Cambridge, but planted those splendid churches for

which the “parts of Holland” are famous to this day. For this is the

great Abbey of Crowland, or Croyland, the home of the good St. Guthlac,

to whose memory this and many another church was dedicated, and to whose

shrine pilgrimage was made for several centuries. It stands alone on a

once desolate and still sparsely inhabited and seemingly endless fen,

and past it the Welland flows down to the long serpentine lake beloved

of skaters, which is spelt Cowbit, but called by all Lincolnshire folk

“Cubbit Wash.”

Croyland is an older name than Crowland, and the fine church and

monastery to which it owes its fame was set up in the eighth century,

by King Æthelbald, in grateful memory of St. Guthlac. Now St. Guthlac

is no legendary saint; he was a member of the Mercian royal house, who,

tired of soldiering, sought a retirement from the world; and certainly

few better places could be found than what was then a desolate, reedy

waste of waters at the point where Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire and

Lincolnshire meet by the edge of Deeping Fen. No road led to it, and the

fenmen’s boats were the only means of passage.

[Illustration: _Cowbit Church._]

[Sidenote: ST. GUTHLAC]

Guthlac was, we are told, the son of Penwald, a Mercian nobleman,

and he was very likely born not far from Croyland. After nine years’

military service he entered the monastery of Hrypadon, or Repton, and

after two years’ study resolved to take up the life of an Anchorite.

So, in defiance of the evil spirits who were reputed to have their

abode there, and who were probably nothing but the shrieking sea-gulls

and the melancholy cries of the bittern and curlew, he landed on a

bit of dry ground two miles to the north-east of Croyland, now called

Anchor-Church-Hill, just east of the Spalding road. Here were some

British or Saxon burial mounds, on one of which he set up his hut and

chapel, while his sister Pega established herself a few miles to the

south-west, at Peakirk. He had landed on his island on St. Bartholomew’s

Day, August 24, 699, a young man of twenty-six, and here he was visited

by Bishop Hædda, who ordained him in 705. In 709 Æthelbald being outlawed

by his cousin King Coelred, took sanctuary with St. Guthlac, who

prophesied to him that he would one day be king, and without bloodshed.

St. Guthlac died in 713 or 714, but Æthelbald, who had vowed to build

a monastery for Guthlac if ever he could, did become king in 716, and

in gratitude built the first stone church and endowed a monastery for

Benedictines at Croyland. Naturally St. Guthlac was the patron saint,

and to him was joined St. Bartholomew, on whose day he had first come to

Croyland.

[Sidenote: FOUNDATIONS OF THE ABBEY]

[Sidenote: ABBOTS OF CROYLAND]

_St. Guthlac_ is represented in his statue as bearing the scourge of St.

Bartholomew, on whose feast day each year little knives were given away

emblematic of his martyrdom by flaying. The custom was not abolished

till 1476. Pictures of the scourge and knives are found in the stained

glass of old windows; for instance, at Bag-Enderby, near Somersby. In

866 the Danes burnt the monastery. Eighty years later the chancellor of

King Edred, whose name is variously given as Turketyl, or _Thurcytel_,

restored the church and monastery, and became the first abbot in 946,

about which time he founded the Croyland library. The first church was

built on a peat bog; oak piles five and a half feet long being driven

through the peat on to gravel, and above the piles recent digging has

shown alternate layers of loose stone and quarry-dust, above which the

stone foundations of the tower were found to go down fifteen inches below

the surface, and to rest on a mixture of rubble and stiff soil which was

brought in boats a distance of nine miles. Thurcytel’s church, which was

cruciform and of considerable size and held one large bell, has almost,

if not entirely, disappeared. The monastery was finished after his death

by his successor, _Egelric_, who added six other bells in 976. The Danes,

by cruel and repeated exactions, ruined the abbey which Thurcytel had

left so richly endowed, in the time of Egelric’s successor, _Godric_,

about 1010. This Egelric must not be confused with the Peterborough abbot

of the same name, who became Bishop of Durham and made the great causeway

from Deeping to Spalding in 1052, probably to give work to the peasantry

in the year of the dreadful famine, 1051.

On so treacherous a foundation the monks wisely built in wood rather

than stone when possible, but they had no preservatives for wood in

those days, hence, in 1061, Abbot _Ulfcytel_ had to rebuild the wooden

erections which were attached to the monastery. He was greatly helped

by the famous Waltheof, Earl of Northampton and Huntingdon, and when,

on the false accusation of his infamous wife Judith, sister of William

I., Waltheof was beheaded at Winchester, the monks got leave from the

Conqueror to have his body buried at Croyland. In 1076 _Ingulphus_

became abbot, and, owing to the carelessness of some plumbers—an old and

ever-recurring story—the whole of the buildings were again burnt down and

the library of 700 MSS. destroyed. It is to the Chronicle of Ingulphus

that we owe most of our knowledge of the early history of Croyland, and

even if the Chronicle were written three centuries after his death, it

still contains much sound and reliable information. Certainly after the

fire his building was patched up for a generation, and the Abbot Joffrid,

a man of extraordinary learning, zeal, and skill, built in 1109 what

may well be called the third abbey. Most of Thurcytel’s work which had

escaped the fire was taken down, and the foundations carried down to

the gravel bed below the peat. Of this building, which was carried out

by Arnold, a lay monk and a very skilful mason, the two western piers

and arch of the central tower remain, but an earthquake in 1113 damaged

the nave, and when in 1143 it was partly burnt down again, for the

third time, Abbot Edward restored it. King Henry had sent for Joffrid

(or Geoffrey) from Normandy. Among other remarkable deeds he sent four

learned monks to give a course of lectures on grammar, logic, rhetoric

and philosophy in a barn which they hired in Cambridge, or Grantbridge as

it was then called. Sermons were also preached there in French and Latin,

both by the monk Gilbert and by the abbot himself, of whom we are told

that, though his numerous hearers understood neither language, the force

of his subject and his comely person excited them to give amply towards

his building fund. The account of the laying of the first stones of his

new abbey is very remarkable. Five thousand persons were assembled and

feasted on the spot, and many distinguished people took part, each laying

one stone and placing on it a handsome offering of money, or titles to

property, or patronage, or land, or possession of yearly tithes of sheep,

gifts of corn or malt or stone, or the service for so many years of

quarriers at the stone pits, with carriage of stone in boats.

Croyland lost a good friend by the death of Queen Maud, wife of Henry

I., in 1118. She had been the especial patroness of the abbot Joffrid,

and had founded the first Austin priory in England in 1108. Twenty

years later King Stephen gave a fresh charter to the abbey, in the time

of Abbot _Edward_, who commenced to re-build the abbey in 1145. The

beautiful west front of the nave, some of which remains, was possibly

planned by _Henry de Longchamp_ in 1190, but was not finished till the

time of _Richard de Upton_, 1417-1427. His predecessor, _Thomas de

Overton_, had rebuilt the nave in 1405, and it was during his abbacy that

Croyland became a mitred abbey.

[Sidenote: THE MASTER MASON]

The architect and master mason under Richard de Upton was one William

de Wernington, or William de Croyland, whose monument is in the tower

now. The effigy wears a monk’s cowl and long robe, and holds a builder’s

square and compasses and has this inscription: “ICI : GIST : MESTRE :

WILLM : DE : WERMIGTON : LE : MASON : A : LALME : DE : KY : DEVY : P″SA :

GRACE : DOVNEZ : ABSOLVTION.”

The noble west window, which has lost all its mullions and tracery, must

have been one of the very finest in England.

In the days of Henry II. a dispute arose between the Abbot of Croyland

and the Prior of Spalding, the prior going so far as to claim Croyland as

a cell to Spalding. This quarrel continued through the reigns of Richard

I. and John, when the Abbot of Peterborough joined the fray with a fresh

dispute about the rights of common and pasture, and the payment of tolls

at Croyland bridge. In these controversies Croyland generally was worsted.

[Illustration: _Croyland Abbey._]

[Sidenote: THE RUINS]

_John de Lytlyngton_ succeeded Abbot Upton and ruled for forty years.

In his time Henry VI. and Edward IV. both visited Croyland, the latter

being on his way to Fotheringay. A three months’ frost, followed by two

years of famine, and later a great flood, followed by a pestilence and

a fire which destroyed nearly all the village, but spared the abbey, are

among the records of his abbacy. He vaulted the roofs of the aisles,

glazed the windows, had the bells recast, and gave the choir an organ;

also he built the great west tower for the bells and the porch with its

parvise. He died in 1469. The short steeple was added to the tower later.

The last abbot was _John Welles_, _alias_ Bridges. Another campanile had

been built beyond the east end of the choir by Abbot _Ralph Marshe_,

1260, which gave the abbey two separate peals, as once at Lincoln. After

these many vicissitudes the greater part of the beautiful building was

destroyed at the dissolution in 1539, the nave, of nine bays, being

preserved for a parish church. The north aisle had been used for the

purpose before, and is so still. Besides this there is left now the

west front, consisting of a tower with short spire and a very fine

Perpendicular window, and all but the gable and window tracery of the

beautiful ornate west end of the nave. This had originally no less than

twenty-nine statues under canopies, in seven tiers, covering the wall on

either side of the doorway and window, and also above the window. The

handsome doorway is entered by a deeply moulded single arch enclosing

two smaller ones, and in the tympanum is a large quatrefoil illustrating

the life of St. Guthlac. The tower has a western porch under a six-light

window. Much has been done by the rector, the Rev. T. H. Le Bœuf, to

preserve this magnificent ruin, and since 1860, under Sir G. Scott and

Mr. J. L. Pearson, sound restoration has been carried out. Besides the

west front and the western tower and spire, one of the most remarkable

parts of the abbey still existing is the stone screen which, contrary to

usual custom, filled the west arch of the central tower, and is pierced

by two doors, one on either side of the altar. Of this the side looking

west is plain and probably had wooden panelling, but the eastern side is

handsomely carved and panelled in stone. The north aisle has Lytlyngton’s

groined roof, five large Perpendicular windows, and a rood-screen. Of St.

Guthlac’s Shrine, which was destroyed in 870 and newly erected in 1136,

and moved in 1196, nothing remains.

Of the old glass fragments have lately been found buried in the

churchyard.

An epitaph on the north wall, dated 1715, has the following apt lines:—

Man’s life is like unto a winter’s day,

Some brake their fast and so departs away;

Others stay dinner then departs full fed,

The longest age but supps and goes to bed.

[Illustration: _Croyland Bridge._]

[Sidenote: THE BOUNDARY CROSSES]

[Sidenote: TRIANGULAR BRIDGE]

The boundaries of Croyland, which in Æthelbald’s Charter were rivers,

were staked out more definitely when disputes between this abbey and

Peterborough arose, by stone crosses; and though these are in part

destroyed or broken down, six crosses, or parts of them, are still

standing in fields or hedges, which are all mentioned by name, in later

charters. One of them, “Turketyls or Thurcytels Cross,” is placed at

the junction of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire. In this, as in all the

others, the cross is missing. The shaft is of obelisk form, on a shapely

base, and has been restored. Parts of other crosses are “Guthlac’s

Stone,” near the Assendyke, four miles from Croyland; “Finestone,” or

“Fynset,” “Greynes,” “Folwardstaking,” and “Kenulph’s Stone.” One of the

boundaries mentioned as early as the charter of Edred, A.D. 943, is “The

Triangular Bridge.” The present is an extremely curious thirteenth- or

fourteenth-century structure, doubtless replacing an earlier one. Like

the triangular lodge near Rothwell, in Northamptonshire, it was probably

intended to be emblematic of the Trinity. It has three pointed arches,

with a way for a stream to flow under each, and three roadways over the

arches, but the arches are too low, and the roadways too narrow for

vehicles and too steep for any convenient traffic. Hence it may have

been the basement of a large cross approached by three flights of steps,

where now we have the steep inclines. The parapet walls are perhaps a

later addition. Still it served as a bridge too. Roads from Stamford,

Peterborough and Spalding meet at the bridge, and tributaries of the

Welland and Nene, now covered in, flow under it. The height of the arches

is nine feet, and their span sixteen and a half. It would not require

that span now, but the streams were bigger when this bridge was built,

for we are told that Henry VI. came to Croyland by water in 1460, and

that Edward IV. embarked at the wharf just below the bridge, in 1468, for

Fotheringay Castle, which is on the banks of the Nene, a distance of some

two and twenty miles by water.

[Sidenote: FIGURE ON THE BRIDGE]

There is a stone bench along the left side of the bridge parapet, as you

approach from Peterborough, and on this you find an ancient stone figure

seated: it is often called Æthelbald holding a globe in his hand or a

loaf of bread; but it is far more likely that it is the figure of our

Lord, from the centre of the gable above the great west window of the

nave, holding in his hands what Shakespeare in the lines below calls “the

sceptre and the ball.” The shallowness of the statue and its height—six

feet when seated but even the knees only projecting ten inches—make it

certain that it was only meant to be seen from the front and at a good

height. Moreover, the workmanship of the statue corresponds with that of

the other statues on the west front of the abbey.

The rector states as a fact that the west gable of this west front was

taken down in 1720, and the statue placed on the bridge, where it must

be admitted that it looks very much out of place and uncomfortable. The

bridge is said to be in three counties—Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and

Northamptonshire—so, though the abbey is entirely in Lincolnshire, we can

in a few steps leave the county of which Croyland is the last place we

have to describe.

The “ball,” or orb, is carried by the monarch at the coronation service

in one hand and the sceptre in the other as symbols of imperial power.

There is no finer passage in English literature than the soliloquy of

King Henry V. on the eve of the battle of Agincourt, the last part of

which runs thus:—

’Tis not the balm, the sceptre and the ball,

The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,

The intertissued robe of gold and pearl,

The farced title running ’fore the king,

The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp

That beats upon the high shore of this world,

No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony,

Not all these, laid in bed majestical,

Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave,

Who with a body fill’d and vacant mind

Gets him to rest, cramm’d with distressful bread;

Never sees horrid night, the child of hell,

But, like a lackey, from the rise to set

Sweats in the eye of Phœbus, and all night

Sleeps in Elysium; next day after dawn,

Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse,

And follows so the ever-running year,

With profitable labour, to his grave:

And, but for ceremony, such a wretch,

Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep,

Had the fore-hand and vantage of a king.

The slave, a member of the country’s peace,

Enjoys it; but in gross brain little wots

What watch the king keeps to maintain the peace,

Whose hours the peasant best advantages.

_Henry V._, Act IV. Scene 1.

[Sidenote: LINCOLNSHIRE SWAN-MARKS]

In the Museum of the Record-office is a long brown-paper roll with a

double column of swans’ heads, the bills painted red and showing in black

the marks of the different owners in two counties, of which Lincolnshire

is one. These marks were in use in the years 1497-1504, a few being added

for the year 1515.

One of the plainest to read is the name of Carolus Stanefeld de

Bolyngbroke; among others are the marks of the parsons of Leek and

Leverton, the vicars of Waynflete, Frekeney and Sybsa, the Bayly of

Croft, the abbot of Revysbye and Philip abbas de Croyland.

CHAPTER XLII

LINCOLNSHIRE FOX-HOUNDS

BY E. P. RAWNSLEY, ESQ., M.F.H.

Brocklesby—Burton—Blankney and Southwold—Note by Author.

[Sidenote: THE BROCKLESBY]

Except the fen country and a small corner in the extreme north-west,

the whole of Lincolnshire is hunted by fox-hounds. Four packs, namely,

the _Brocklesby_ (Lord Yarborough’s), the _Burton_, _Blankney_ and

_Southwold_ hunt entirely in Lincolnshire; while the Belvoir and

Cottesmore hunt partly in Lincolnshire. Premier position must be given

to the _Brocklesby_. It is one of the very few packs maintained entirely

by the master, and for over 150 years the Earls of Yarborough have done

this for the benefit of the residents and farmers in the large tract of

country they hunt over. The country hunted extends from the Humber on

the north to a line drawn from Louth to Market-Rasen on the south, and

from the sea on the east to the river Ancholme on the west. The country

is mostly wold, and consequently plough, but very open, the only big

woods being those that surround Brocklesby itself. The hounds having

been so long in one family are of the best, and there are few kennels

in England but have a large infusion of the Brocklesby blood, famous

for nose, tongue, and stoutness. For upwards of 100 years the family

of Smith carried the horn and did much to establish the notoriety of

the pack, while in more recent years Will Dale, a great huntsman and

houndman, and Jem Smith, no relation of the former huntsman, have kept it

up. Possibly sport in the country was never better than when W. Dale and

Mr. Maunsell-Richardson each hunted one pack; when one was hunting the

other was always out to render assistance, and as both knew the country

perfectly, the result was more good runs and more foxes caught at the

end of them than was ever done in the country before or since.

With the exception of Brocklesby there are not many residences in the

country, though the Upplebys of Barrow, the Alingtons of Swinhope, the

Nelthorpes of Scawby in old days joined the chase; and it is related of

the first, grandfather of the present owner of Barrow, that after a good

run he was found riding on his pillow shouting at the top of his voice,

“Mind you keep your eye on Blossom,” a noted bitch at that time in the

pack. At the present time a great supporter is Mr. Haigh of Grainsby, who

cannot have too many foxes, though he does all his hunting on foot. Mr.

Pretyman’s covers at Riby are equally well stocked; while Bradley Wood,

the property of Mr. Sutton-Nelthorpe, is the key of all that side of the

country. Probably hunting will continue longer over cultivated country,

such as the Brocklesby, than in most parts of England. There are few

railways, the country is not adapted to small holdings, the farmers are

all sportsmen, and occupy large farms, delighted to have a litter of cubs

reared on their land and to see a couple of fox-hound puppies playing in

their yards, while such a thing as a complaint about hounds and field

crossing their land is unknown.

[Sidenote: THE BURTON AND THE BLANKNEY]

_The Burton_ comes next in point of antiquity, and takes its name from

Burton, Lord Monson’s place near Lincoln, where Lord Monson first started

the hounds in 1774. Many notable sportsmen have held the mastership.

The old Burton country was of very wide extent, stretching from Brigg

on the north to Sleaford on the south, and from Stourton by Horncastle

on the east to the Trent on the west. It is now divided into _Burton_

and _Blankney_, the present southern boundary of the Burton being the

river Witham and the Fossdyke. The most notable Masters of the country

when undivided were Mr. Assheton-Smith, Sir Richard Sutton, Lord Henry

Bentinck, who bred a pack of hounds which for work were unequalled, and

their blood is still treasured in many kennels, and Mr. Henry Chaplin,

to whom Lord Henry gave his hounds, and when the old Burton country was

divided Mr. Chaplin took this pack with him. The Burton country as it

is now was established in 1871; Mr. F. Foljambe being the first master,

a great houndman with a thorough knowledge of the science of hunting,

he very soon established a pack, and with Will Dale as huntsman, sport

of the highest order was the result. Mr. Foljambe was succeeded by Mr.

Wemyss, Mr. Shrubb and again Mr. Wemyss for short periods; then Mr. T.

Wilson came, and for twenty-four years presided over the country. He bred

an excellent pack of hounds, and sport, especially during the latter part

of his reign, was very good; the country, when he gave up, being better

off for foxes than it had ever been; this was in 1912. Sir M. Cholmeley

succeeded Mr. Wilson. The Burton country is a fair mixture of grass and

plough, with some very fine woodlands on the east side of it, known as

the Wragby woods. It is far the best scenting country in Lincolnshire,

and being little cut up with railways or rivers, is the best hunting

country in all the shire. There are not many residences in the country,

but excellent support in the way of foxes is given by the landowners.

The Bacons of Thonock have ever assisted; then the Amcotts family of

Hackthorn and Kettlethorpe, the Wrights of Brattleby, the owners of most

of the Wragby woods, and of Toft, Newton and Nevile’s gorses are perhaps

most conspicuous; but the whole country is well provided.

_The Blankney_ was first formed as a separate country in 1871, when Mr.

Henry Chaplin took command, and as he brought the pack given to him by

Lord H. Bentinck, and H. Dawkins as huntsman, very good sport was shown.

On Mr. Chaplin giving up he was succeeded by Major Tempest. Then followed

Mr. Cockburn, and for a short time Lord Londesborough joined him; Mr.

Lubbock followed, then an old name in Lord Charles Bentinck; Mr. R. Swan

came next and is still in command. Changes have been rather frequent, as

in many countries.

The Blankney country is now a good deal intersected by railways, and the

vale towards the Trent has two rivers, the Brant and Witham, which cut

it up further. The Wellingore vale is looked on as the best part, having

a large proportion of grass, “the heath,” in the centre, is all light

plough and very bad scenting country, while on the east there is a strip

of country bordering on the fen of good hunting character, and a portion

of the Belvoir country towards Sleaford, which is lent to the Blankney,

is also very fair.

[Sidenote: THE SOUTHWOLD]

_The Southwold_ was the last part of Lincolnshire to be established as

a separate country (later, that is, than either the Brocklesby or the

Burton); it was not till 1823 that it was hunted regularly. It has a

wide range, extending from the sea on the east to the river Witham on

the west, and from Market-Rasen and Louth on the north to the fens on

the south. It is probably more varied than any part of Lincolnshire.

The marsh with its wide ditches comes on the east; the wolds, mostly

light plough, in the centre; while on the west they dip into a mixed

country of grass and plough. The fen country, all ditches and plough,

is in the south; hounds, however, only occasionally get into it, as

there are hardly any covers. Very short masterships have been the rule,

but a committee ruled for nearly twenty years (1857-76), at the end of

which time foxes were very scarce in the country. Mr. Crowder then came

for four years, and in 1880 Mr. E. P. Rawnsley took the country, and is

still master. With latterly the aid of Mr. J. S. V. Fox, and now of Sir

W. Cooke, so great an alteration has taken place that whereas formerly

four days a week sufficed to hunt the country, now it is always hunted

six days, Sir W. Cooke taking the north side and Mr. Rawnsley the south.

Sir W. Cooke has a pack of his own, while Mr. Rawnsley hunts the pack

which belongs to the country and has been bred from all the best working

strains of blood obtainable. Though there are some very big woods on the

edges of the country, the centre is all open; there are few railways

and no rivers, the scenting conditions are fair, and it is probably the

second best hunting country in Lincolnshire.

Conspicuous supporters of the hunt are the Heneages of Hainton, and the

large extent of covers and country owned by them has always been open to

hounds. The Foxes of Girsby and Mr. Walter Rawnsley of Well Vale have

been the same. The late Captain J. W. Fox was for many years chairman

of the committee when it ruled the affairs of the hunt, and his son was

for seven years joint master with Mr. Rawnsley, during which time the

sport was of higher average merit than it had ever attained. Many more

residents now come out than was formerly the case, and everywhere the

stock of foxes is far better than thirty years ago.

Somersby, the birthplace of Tennyson, is situated in the centre of

the hunt, but we never heard of the Poet Laureate joining the chase

in his young days. Then Spilsby, the birthplace of Sir John Franklin,

and Tattershall Castle, noted as one of the finest brick buildings in

England, are both of them in the Southwold country.

NOTE BY AUTHOR

[Sidenote: MASTERS OF THE SOUTHWOLD]

It appears that Mr. Charles Pelham, who was the last of the Brocklesby

Pelhams, was the first M.F.H. of _The Brocklesby_, at first as joint and

then as sole master, till his death in 1763. Also that Lord Yarborough

hunted what is now the Southwold country for a month at a time in spring

and autumn, having kennels at Ketsby until 1795, by which time his gorse

covers round Brocklesby had grown up and he was able to dispense with the

country south of Louth. Then till 1820 a pack of trencher-fed harriers

hunted fox and hare indiscriminately. These from 1820 to 1822 were called

“_The Gillingham_” and were hunted by Mr. Brackenbury from Scremby, after

which the kennels were transferred to Hundleby and the name changed to

“_The Southwold_.” They now kept to fox entirely, and the Hon. George

Pelham, then living at Legbourne, was the first master.

The following is a complete list of the masters of the Southwold up to

the present date, 1914:—

Hon. G. Pelham 1823-6

Lord Kintore 1826

Mr. Joseph Brackenbury 1827-9

Sir Richard Sutton, combining it with the Burton 1829-30

Captain Freeman, who brought hounds from “The Vine” 1830-32

Mr. Parker 1832-35

Mr. Heanley, who brought his own hounds 1835-41

Mr. Musters, who brought his own hounds 1841-43

Mr. Hellier 1843-52

Mr. Henley Greaves 1852-53

Mr. Cooke 1853-57

A Committee, presided over part of the time by Captain

Dallas York 1857-76

Mr. F. Crowder 1876-80

Mr. E. Preston Rawnsley 1880

From this it will be seen that until the days of the committee no one

hunted the pack for even five years, with the exception of Mr. Heanley

and Mr. Hellier, until the present master, Mr. E. P. Rawnsley.

[Sidenote: BELCHFORD KENNELS]

With the reign of the committee central kennels were established for the

hunt at Belchford in 1857. Previously each master fixed his kennels as it

suited him, either at Louth, Horncastle, Hundleby or Harrington.

Now, April 1914, Sir William Cooke having given up, Lord Charles Bentinck

has succeeded him. He brings his own pack with him, and the country no

longer is divided into north and south, but hunted as a whole again.

APPENDIX I

The altar tombstone from which John preached is near the chancel door.

Epworth people will tell you that the mark of his heels is still visible

on the stone. Really they are segments of two ironstone nodules in the

sandstone slab. The inscription is a remarkable one:

“Here lieth all that was mortal of Samuel Wesley, A.M., who was

Rector of Epworth for 39 years and departed this life 15th of

April, 1735, aged 72.

As he lived so he died, in the true Catholic faith of the Holy

Trinity in Unity, and that Jesus Christ is God incarnate and

the only Saviour of mankind.—Acts 4, 12.

Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord: yea, saith the

Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works

do follow them.—Rev. 14, 13.”

APPENDIX II

Dr. Wm. Stukeley, 1687-1765, was a famous Lincolnshire antiquarian. He

practised medicine, first at Boston and then at Grantham from 1710 to

1726. He was made an F.R.S. in 1717, and in that or the following year

he helped to establish the Society of Antiquaries in London, and was for

the first nine years secretary to that Society. In 1719 he became an M.D.

of Cambridge and was made a member of the “Spalding Gentlemen’s Society”

in 1722. In 1727 he took Holy Orders and from 1730 to 1748 officiated

as Vicar of All Saints at Stamford, where he founded the short-lived

“Brazenose Society.” He was a great friend of Sir Isaac Newton and kept

up his interest in scientific matters to the end, inasmuch as he put off

his service on one occasion in order that his congregation might watch

an eclipse of the sun. Whilst still Vicar of Stamford he was made Rector

of Somerby near Grantham, 1739-1747, but he retired from both livings

in 1748, and spent the rest of his life in London, where at the age of

75 he preached his first sermon in spectacles, taking as his text “Now

we see through a glass darkly.” He wrote five volumes of Notes of the

proceedings of the “Royal Society,” which are now in the library of

the “Spalding Gentlemen’s Society,” and he dedicated his “_Itinerarium

curiosum_” to Maurice Johnson, the founder of that society. He took, for

many years, antiquarian tours all over England; writing at some length

on Stonehenge and the Roman Wall, and often illustrating his articles,

for he was a skilful draughtsman. He died in London in his seventy-ninth

year.

APPENDIX III

A LOWLAND PEASANT POET

I had not long ago a couple of poems put into my hands by one who,

knowing the author, told me something of his life and circumstances.

Being much struck by the poems I set to work to make inquiries in the

hope of getting something further. But he seems to have written very

little. His nephew copied out and sent _The Auld Blasted Tree_ and added

“I made inquiry of my aunt if she had any more; she says those you have

seen along with this one I now enclose were all he wrote, at least the

best of them.” The relatives allowed me to see the account of his funeral

with an appreciation of the man as it appeared in the local newspaper. It

ran as follows, and was published in _The Peebleshire Advertiser_, July

7, 1906.

THE LATE MR. FARQUHARSON, LONELYBIELD.

Our obituary of Saturday last contained the name of one whose

memory will be for long in this district. We refer to the

late Alexander Forrester Farquharson. His “mid name” takes us

back to the first baptismal scene of by-gone long occupants

of Linton Manse, viz., the Rev. Alexander Forrester, whose

father, too, was minister before. Born in Carlops sixty-nine

years ago, there are but few now amongst us who were children

then. When six years old, his father, of the same vocation as

himself, removed to the picturesque hamlet at the foot of the

“Howe,” and here his lifetime was spent. Married to one of a

family of long pastoral connection with our district, who still

survives to cherish the happy memories of their long sojourn

together, in this, their quiet and peaceful home, they reared

their family. By his departure, there has gone from amongst us

one of the finest types of Scotchmen that our country districts

develop, both, it may be said, in lineaments of feature and

character. But, added to the possession generally of the

best features of our race, there was in him truly a special

element, which seemed to be gathered from the classic scenes in

which he was reared. It is not too much to say that his manner

and language (quaint to a degree) were a living, embodied

personification of the genius of the place, as pictured in

the pages of the immortal Pastoral of Ramsay. Gifted with

musical powers and some inspiration from the Muses—which,

however, not often saw the light—these were fostered in his

wanderings amid the lovely scenes, o’er moor and fell, whither

his daily vocations led. And with such characteristics, added

to his stores of local lore and story, and knowledge of bird,

beast, and fossil, it may be gathered how entertaining were

the “cracks” in the homesteads he visited, and how much these

would be looked forward to and welcomed. And not less so were

those in the cosy home in the “Bield,”[39] to which many a

one of kindred spirit specially pilgrimaged. Evidence of this

was ample from the large gathering from all parts to his

resting-place with his “forbears” in Linton’s “auld kirkyaird.”

Thus far the newspaper of 1906; and a correspondent who knew the family

writes under date March 18, 1912, “Alexander Forrester Farquharson (the

subject of the foregoing notice) was born on Sept. 26, 1836, and was

named Forrester after the minister of West Linton Parish. He was the

son of Andrew Farquharson, mole catcher and small Farmer, and Isabella

Cairns, both natives of the Carlops district who lived there at a house

called Lonely Bield. Alexander lived in the same house, and followed his

father’s occupation. His son died lately and the mother has now left the

House.” From this somewhat meagre account we may gather that the whole of

his life was spent in Nature’s lonely places

“up on the mountains, in among the hills”

and in this respect he resembles Allan Ramsay who drank in the poetry

of Nature when a boy at Leadhills high up on the Crawford moor in

Lanarkshire, where hills, glens, and burns, with birds and flowers and

ever-changing skies were his to watch and study and take delight in, at

the impressionable season of boyhood; whereby Nature herself laid the

foundations of his poetic fancies. And this opportunity to walk with

Nature came also to Farquharson, in even a greater measure than it did

to Ramsay; for he, like Burns, lived and laboured in the country after

he had grown to manhood. But Farquharson had not so good an education

as the other two, nor did it fall to him, as it did to them, to have

at the outset of his career books put into his hands which directed

his attention more especially to poetry. Thus, what the selection of

English Songs, which he called his _Vade mecum_, did for Burns, Watson’s

collection of Scottish poems did for Ramsay, and among these, notably,

one by Robt. Semphill called “The life and death of the Piper of

Kilbarchan” and another by Hamilton of Gilbertfield, “The last dying

words of Bonnie Heck.” Later, Hamilton, who by this poem first inspired

Ramsay with the desire to write in verse, heartily recognised his merit

and himself wrote of him

“O fam’d and celebrated Allan!

Renowned Ramsay! canty callan!

There’s nouther Hieland man nor Lawlan

In poetrie,

But may as soon ding doun Tantallan

As match wi’ thee.”

This source of inspiration from books of poetry never, as far as we

know, fell to the lot of Farquharson, whose education was altogether on

a lower plane. He was born and died just a Scottish peasant; but his

communing with Nature gave him the power of observation, whilst the love

of reading, which has for generations been the heritage of the Scots even

in the humblest walks of life, taught him how to express the thoughts

which came to him, and he had undoubtedly a gift for verse. His poems

on his old “Hardie” fiddle, and on the Sundew are so good that they

might have been written by Burns. But, like Burns and Ramsay too, he is

best when he sticks to the vernacular. When he begins to write English

he is less convincing. It is well to remember that Ramsay could owe

nothing to Burns, as he died in 1758, the year before Burns was born; but

Farquharson, whose widow is still alive, died only the other day, and was

acquainted with the works certainly of one and probably of both of them.

This does not, however, make him less deserving of notice; for little

as he wrote, the two poems just mentioned show, I cannot help thinking,

a high degree of poetic merit, being not merely surprising as the work

of a peasant, but—extremely good _per se_, and serve to show how the

true poetic gift may lurk unsuspected in a country village. In his poems

_Fair Habbies Howe_ (or hollow) and _Monk’s Burn_ he refers to the fact

that the descriptions of Nature in Allan Ramsay’s pastoral _The Gentle

Shepherd_ are taken from the Carlops district, about twelve miles from

Edinburgh, in which he himself lived. The second scene of the first act

of _The Gentle Shepherd_ begins thus:

_Jenny._ Come, Meg, let’s fa’ to wark upon this green,

This shining day will bleach our linen clean;

The waters clear, the lift’s unclouded blue

Will make them like a lily wet wi’ dew.

_Peggy._ Gae farer up the burn to Habbie’s Howe,

Where a’ the sweets o’ spring an’ simmer grow:

Between two birks, out o’er a little lin,[40]

The water fa’s an’ maks a singan din:

A pool breast-deep, beneath as clear as glass,

Kisses wi’ easy whirls the bord’ring grass.

We’ll end our washing while the morning’s cool;

An’ when the day grows het, we’ll to the pool,

There wash oursells—’tis healthfu’ now as May,

An sweetly cauler on sae warm a day.

_The Gentle Shepherd_, the poem on which Allan Ramsay’s reputation is

mainly founded, is a pastoral of great beauty and charm. The original MS.

was presented by the author to the Countess of Eglinton. It is a folio

Vol. of 105 pages, clearly written by his own hand, and has a few comic

pen-and-ink sketches added at the beginning or end of the acts, and at

the close is this note:

“Finished the 29ᵗʰ of April, 1725, just as eleven o’clock

strikes, by Allan Ramsay.

All glory be to God. Amen.”

We will now turn to the seven bits of verse we have been able to collect

by the Shepherd of Lonely Bield.

FAIR HABBIE’S HOWE.

(May be sung to the tune “Craigielea,” with first verse as the Chorus).

O Habbie’s Howe! Fair Habbie’s Howe,

Where wimplin’ burnies[41] sweetly row;

Where aft I’ve tasted nature’s joys,

O Habbie’s Howe! Fair Habbie’s Howe.

Roond thee my youthfu’ days I spent,

Amang thy cliffs aft ha’e I speil’d.

Thou theme o’ Ramsay’s pastoral lay;

O hoary, moss-clad Craigy Bield.

The auld oak bower, wi’ ivy twined,

Adorns thy weather-furrowed brow,

A trysting-place where lovers met

When tenting flocks in Habbie’s Howe.

When April’s suns glint through the trees,

The mavis lilts his mellow lay;

And, deep amid thy sombre shades

The owlet screams at close of day.

Amang thy cosy, mossy chinks,

The fern now shows its gentle form

And through thy caves the ousel darts,

To build his nest in early morn.

The scented birk, and glossy beech,

Hang o’er thee for thy simmer veil;

And gowany haughs[42] aroond thee bloom,

Where shepherds tauld love’s tender tale.

Sweet Esk, glide o’er thy rocky path,

And echo through thy classic glen;

Where can we match, in flowery May,

Fair Habbie’s Howe, and Hawthornden?

ALEX. FARQUHARSON.

Lanely Bield. Carlops, 1885.

MONK’S BURN.

Doon in Monk’s bonnie verdant glen

A sparklin’ birnie murmurs through

Dark waving pines, ’mang hazel shaws

Decked with the hawk-weed’s golden hue.

It ripples aft ’neath ferny banks

With fragrant birks and briers spread

Till o’er the linn its echo sings,

Deep cradled in a rocky bed.

Here Auld Dame Nature gaily haps

Frae ilka side her crystal streams;

And soaring high o’er leafy bowers,

On hovering wing, the falcon screams.

Aboon Glaud’s yaird the burnie meets

Esk dancing to the morning sun,

An’ glintin’ bonnie through Monk’s Haugh,[43]

Where Pate and Peggie[44] aft hae run;

Noo joined wi’ silv’ry limpid Esk,

Gangs merrily singing tae the sea.

Ilk bird and flower the chorus join

Till wilds and braes resound wi’ glee.

Sing on, ye warblers ’mang the trees,

Bloom fair, ye blue-bells on the plains,

And deck the banks of infant rills

That wander through my native glens.

ALEX. FARQUHARSON.

Lanely Bield, _16th January 1886_.

THE AULD BLASTED TREE.

The blasted ash tree that langsyne grew its lane,

Whilk Ramsay has pictured in his pawky strain,

Wi’ Bauldy aboon’t on the tap o’ the knowe,

Glowrin’ doon at auld Mause[45] in aneath, spinnin’ tow,

Is noo whommilt doon ower the Back Buckie Brae,

Baith helpless, an’ lifeless, an’ sair crummilt away,

’Mang the bonnie blue speedwell that coortit its beild,

Tho’ its scant tap e’en growin’ but little could yield.

For years—nigh twa hunner—it markit the spot

Whaur Mause the witch dwalt in her lanely wee cot;

But dour Eichty-sax sent a drivin’ snaw blast,

An’ the storied link brak ’tween the present an’ past.

Tho’ in summer ’twas bare, an’ had lang tint its charms,

Scarce a leaf e’er was seen on’t to hap its grey arms,

Yet it clang to the brae,[46] rockit sair, sair, I ween,

Wi’ the loud howlin’ winds that blaw doon the Linn Dean.

An’ mony a squall warsled at the deid ’oor o’ nicht.

When Mause took in her noddle to raise ane for a flicht,

On her auld besom shank, lowin’ at the ae en’,[47]

That she played sic pranks on when she dwalt i’ the glen;

Some alloo she could loup on’t clean ower Carlops toon,

Gawn as heich i’ the air as Dale wi’ his balloon,

Wi’ nocht on but her sark an’ a white squiny much—

A dress greatly in vogue in thae days wi’ a wutch.

But thae fashions, like wutches, hae gane oot o’ date

E’en the black bandit squiny has shared the same fate,

The lint-wheels they span on are just keepit for fun,

Or tae let lasses see the wey hand-cloots were spun.

Feint a trace o’ the carlin’ there’s noo left ava—

Her wee hoosie’s doon, an’ the auld tree an’ a’,

That waggit ayont it for mony a year

Ere anither bit timmer took thocht to grow here.

A. FARQUHARSON.

Lanely Bield (1887?).

EPISTAL TO ALAN REID. EDINBURGH. 1888.

Gin August wiles oot wi’ her smile

Auld Reekie’s sons when freed frae toil,

There ane’ comes here tae bide awhile,

A clever chield;

Ilk place he’s paintit in grand style,

E’en oor wee bield.

He’s craigs an’ castles, cots an’ ha’s,

Lint mills, auld brigs, an’ water fa’s,

Auld stumps o’ trees an’ cowpit wa’s[48]

A treat to see’t.

O’er vera hills he’s gi’en a ca’,

Frae Rullion Green yont ta’ Mentma’;

An’ brawer pictures I ne’er saw,

They’re fair perfection:

They’d even mense[49] a baron’s ha’

That rare collection.

Thanks tae ye, noo, for paintin’ bonnie

The “Lanely Bield,” whaur dwells a cronie,

Wha likes a nicht wi’ ane sae funny

An’ fu’ o’ glee:

I trow Auld Reekie has nae mony

Tae match wi’ thee.

It mak’s me dowie the news I hear

That ye’re no comin’ oot this year;

They tell me that ye’re gaun tae steer

For Lunnon toon:

Losh, man, I’ll miss ye sair I fear

No’ comin’ doon.

But gif I’m spared wi’ health ava,

A holiday, or may be twa,

I’ll tak’ an’ come tae see ye a’,

An’ bide a’ nicht;

An’ faith we’ll sing tae the cock’s craw

At “grey daylicht.”

ALEX. FARQUHARSON.

Lanely Bield.

ADDRESS TO THE SUNDEW.

(One of the insect-eating plants).

Wha e’er wad think sae fair a flow’r

Wad be sae pawky[50] as to lure

A midge intae its genty bow’r

O’ bristles bricht,

An’ syne at leisure clean devour

It oot o’ sicht?

Your crimson colour’s sae enticin’

In simmer gin the sun be risin’

I daursay they’ll need nae advisin’

Tae step in ow’r

Tae view an’ find the plan surprisin’

O sic a bow’r.

For oot again they canna wun;

Tho’ wee an’ gleg,[51] they’re fairly done,

I wad they’ll get an awfu’ stun

Gin its deteckit

They’ve death tae face an’ no’ the fun

That they expeckit.

It serves them richt, the wicked crew,

De’il gin the lave were in your mou’!

For oh! they’re ill tae thole the noo

When bitin’ keen,

Dingin’ their beaks intae ane’s broo

Up tae the een!

Ilk foggy[52] sheugh aroond ye scan,

An’ nip as mony as ye can,

’Twill help a wee tae gar ye stan’

The winter weather,

For fient a midge ye’ll pree[53] gin than

Amang the heather.

I kenna hoo ye’ll fend ava

Gin a’ the muirs are clad wi’ snaw.

I doot ye’ll hae tae snooze awa’

Sax months at least,

An’ aiblins then your chance is sma’

Tae get a feast.

But gin I happen ere tae stray

Neist August roond by Jenny’s Brae,

I hope tae see ye fresh an’ gay,

Wee muirlan’ plantie!

Wi’ routh[54] o’ midges then tae slay

Tae keep ye cantie.

A. F.

Lanely Bield.

ADDRESS TAE A MATTHEW HARDIE FIDDLE.

Ae blink at you an’ ane could tell

That ye’re nae foreign factory shell,

But a Scotch mak’, an’, like mysel’,

Made gey and sturdy;

An’ as for tone, there’ll few excel

Ma guid auld Hardie.

Ye’ve been ma hobbie late and sune,

Noo sax an’ twenty years come June,

An’ noo and than I tak’ a tune;

Yet gin I weary.

Altho’ it’s but a kin’ o’ croon,

It keeps ane cheery.

Gin ower ye’re thairms[55] I jink the bow,

Bright notions bizz intae ma pow,

For worl’y cares ye them can cow,

An’ a’ gangs richt,

When ower I stump[56] ‘Nathaniel Gow,’

Or ‘Grey daylicht.’

Wi’ reek an’ rozet noo ye’re black

An scarted sair aboot the back,

But what tho’ tawdry ye’re ne’er slack

Tae lilt a spring[57]

Wi’ ony far fecht fancy crack

They e’er will bring.

In silk-lined cases ower the seas

Scrawled oot an’ in wi’ foreign lees

Aboot their S’s, scrolls, an’ C’s,[58]

An’ eke a name

Wad tak’ a child that’s ta’en degrees

Tae read that same.

An’ nocht but bum-clocks[59] at the best

Wi’ shinin’ coats o’ amber drest;

Och! what o’ that? their tones but test!

Sic dandie dummies!

Lyin’ in braw boxes at their rest,

Row’d up like mummies.

For a’ the sprees ye hae been at,

Haech! nae sic guide-ship e’er ye gat,

But took your chance tho’ it was wat,

Ay, e’en wat snaw

I’ve seen or noo a denty brat[60]

Oot ower ye a’.

I never kent ye tak’ the gee,[61]

But aye sang sweet at ilka spree,

Tho’ I played wild at times a wee

Gin I gat fou.

The fau’t lay wi’ the wee drap bree,[62]

An’ no’ wi’ you.

Sae noo I trust gin I’m nae mair,

Some fiddlin’ frien’ will tak’ guid care,

And see that ye’re nae dauded[63] sair,

When frail an’ auld;

For Hardies noo are unco rare

Sae that I’m tauld.

A. F.

Lanely Bield.

SONNET IN MEMORY OF ELEANORA BROWN.

Gone! noble spirit, from our mortal view,

The still form shaded by the sombre yew

In Mary’s Bower, a spot remote from din,

Save when in flood the shrill gush of the linn

From wailing waves is wafted o’er her tomb,

Retiring soft round her parental home,

Where trained with pious care to womanhood,

Henceforth her motto, Ever doing good;

Gentle with youth, and comforting the old,

In faith and hope to gain the promised Fold.

Alas! the link has snapped in Friendship’s chain.

Kind Ora’s call we’ll sigh for now in vain,

Amid her native flora laid to rest,

The modest speedwell a remembrance on her breast.