angles to the western bay of the north chancel chapel, was built as a
chantry chapel by a wealthy family named Hall. It is now entered through
the arch which formerly stood above the founder’s tomb; the small
doorway at the side has been blocked. This building abutted against one
of the pinnacled turrets by which the roof was approached, and blocked
its entrances. This was the last structural alteration to the church
during the Middle Ages. The great building, served by its two vicars
and at least eight chantry priests—to say nothing of the chaplain,
whose stipend bound him to read the Gospel as deacon at the daily mass
at the high altar—stood, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, in
something like its cathedral-like seclusion of to-day. The vicars had
their houses on either side of the church; the chantry priest of St. Mary
lived in a house whose site is now absorbed by the south-west corner of
the churchyard. The houses of the other members of what was now called
the College were either round the church or not far away. A house called
the Chantry House stood in Watergate till the middle of the nineteenth
century; it was then removed and entirely rebuilt in Belton village,
where the date 1470 may be seen above one of the old windows, which was
preserved in the rebuilding. East of the church was the mansion of the
Halls, where Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII., stayed in 1503, on
her way to Scotland to become the wife of James IV. A handsome house
of the later seventeenth century stands on the site; the pretty little
thirteenth-century doorway in the garden wall may possibly have belonged
to the church; its mouldings agree with those of the south doorway and
some of the jamb-shafts of the windows of the south aisle, which are
obviously remains of work of this period. On the north side of the
churchyard still stands the sixteenth-century Grammar School, founded
with the aid of Bishop Foxe in 1528, and endowed by Edward VI. in 1553
with the possessions of the Trinity and Lady chantries. Foxe was born at
Ropsley, in the hilly country south of Grantham. From Woolsthorpe, in
the same district, but further west, came the most famous pupil of the
school, Sir Isaac Newton. Among its earliest scholars was William Cecil,
a native of Bourn, afterwards famous as Lord Burghley; and a third name,
this time of a native of Grantham itself, is that of the metaphysician,
Henry More, the head of the school of Cambridge Platonists. Colley Cibber
was also educated here, an interesting if not altogether illustrious
pupil. The schoolroom was used till within the last few years. Since then
handsome school buildings have been completed on the opposite side of the
headmaster’s house, in the dip through which the Mowbeck used to flow
visibly, and the old schoolroom has been fitted up as a school chapel.
Henry VIII. numbered Grantham among those sees which he intended to
found. Not till lately has a suffragan bishop in the diocese of Lincoln
taken the title of Bishop of Grantham. The dissolution of the chantries
put an end to the “College,” and the vicars of the “prebendary church”
in post-Reformation times had to be content with very small stipends.
Puritanism raised its head in Grantham formidably, as in most parts of
Lincolnshire; and the Corporation, though in the main orthodox, had, in
1620, established a weekly lecture in the church on Tuesday, to which
they invited the most eloquent clergy of the neighbourhood. The preacher
afterwards attended a Corporation dinner, and was allowed a pint of sack.
These lectures, although doubtless intended to afford a substitute for
irregular prophesying, also gave opportunities to lecturers of a Puritan
cast of thought. Preaching was evidently regarded at Grantham as of
more importance than the decency of ritual. The communion-table stood
in the middle of the chancel without a rail round it, and was treated
without reverence. Peter Titley, instituted to the south vicarage in
1625, removed it, set it altar-wise against the east wall, and railed
it in. Unhappily, the Alderman of Grantham in 1627 was a Puritan, and
Titley had made himself unpopular by inhibiting the lecturers. Attending
the church in state, the Alderman ordered his mace-bearers to remove
the altar to its old position. A free fight followed, and Alderman
and Vicar appealed to Bishop Williams. The Bishop delayed a final
decision; and, a few days later, the Alderman, followed by the Vicar,
rode off to seek a personal interview at Buckden. Williams, although
he had expressed approval of Titley’s action, and after Titley’s death
officiated at the altar itself, acted with some partiality towards the
Puritans. His answer to the Vicar, which he sent through the hands of
the inhibited lecturers, raised a controversy beyond Grantham; and the
war of pamphlets, in which Heylyn, Prynne, Burton, and others took part,
became a matter of other than local history. Titley seems to have held
his own, and the altar was still against the east wall after his death
in 1633.[78] During Titley’s incumbency some additions were made to the
church. Possibly the east window, of a very plain Perpendicular type,
resting on a fourteenth-century sill, was inserted at this time.[79]
A clerestory was added to the chancel about 1628, when the roofs of
the church were lowered; and it is much to be regretted that this
was destroyed at a nineteenth-century restoration, in that spirit of
iconoclasm which imagines that, by destroying post-mediæval masonry and
furniture, it is restoring churches to their “original state.” In 1640
the Chancellor of the diocese presented the church with an organ; but
although the Corporation approved, the Puritans opposed the gift for the
time successfully.[80] The organ was erected, but probably was not used;
and the great event of the year was the re-hanging of the bells and the
blocking up of the ground floor of the tower by a wooden ringers’ gallery.
Three times between 1601 and 1640 had plague visited the town; and early
in 1643 came the scourge of civil war. The Royalists were the first to
occupy the town, their troops being quartered in the tithe-barn of the
prebendaries, to the south-east of the churchyard, and close to the site
of the Castle. In spite of a temporary repulse, they held Grantham
till May 22, 1643, when Cromwell won his first battle on a field to the
north of the town. “Belton fight” was followed by the battle of Winceby,
in October. The year before the Corporation plate had been seized by
order of Parliament, but was fortunately restored to the town. This
year Fairfax demanded a vote of £300 from the Corporation, who did as
they were told; but the town refused to pay, and the Alderman and some
of the Comburgesses were sent to Nottingham Castle. Released in 1644,
they formed a Royalist faction in and outside the town, corresponding
with the garrison at Belvoir, and taking part in the guerilla warfare
of the countryside. But in 1646 came the end of the war. Belvoir and
Newark castles were surrendered, and their fortifications slighted.
Under Puritan rule the Royalist burgesses were deprived of their rights;
but the town returned to something of its old quiet and prosperity. The
woodwork of the church had been destroyed by the soldiers during the
Civil War, who used it for fuel, and probably the state of the building
was rather dreary. When in 1648 an Alderman was elected in church, the
deprived Royalists took the occasion to brawl. The weekly lectures
were restored in 1646, and, somewhat earlier, the poorly paid vicars
had their stipends augmented by the sequestration of the Salisbury
prebends. In spite of this, one of the vicars found it more agreeable
to his conscience to be non-resident. In 1651, the Mercers’ Company,
trustees of an investment left by Lady Campden to form the endowment of
two lectureships, one of which was to be in Lincolnshire, granted the
moiety to Grantham. The Campden Lecture is still preached on Wednesday
morning in every week; and yearly by the provisions of another endowment,
chargeable on the “Angel Inn,” a sermon is preached against the sin of
drunkenness. Of course, after 1646, the colour of the lectures in Church
were strictly Puritan; but the ejected parsons of Boothby Pagnell and
Barrowby, Dr. Sanderson and Dr. Hurst, were living in Grantham; and
their spotless life and example seem to have won the respect of all.
Sanderson became Bishop of Lincoln at the Restoration. It was during the
Commonwealth period, from 1651 to 1656, that Isaac Newton was at school
in Grantham, lodging with one Mr. Clarke, and experimenting with an
amateur sundial and with models of horsemills and windmills.
After the Restoration the history of Grantham is that of any quiet
country town, until the coming of the railway and the establishment
of the engineering works. The most startling event in its story was
the pulling down of the Market Cross by Mr. John Manners, then lord
of the manor, in 1779. He was compelled to restore it by _mandamus_
the following year. The ecclesiastical history of the town is equally
peaceful. The church was invaded by galleries and box-pews; the
rood-screen, if it had not already gone, was taken down; the western part
of the nave was left unused, and glass screens to shut out the draught
closed in the eastern bays of the nave and the chancel. The ringing
gallery, which blocked up the lower part of the tower, was removed
in 1752; and, though one cannot regret the opening out of the noble
western arch, it is probable that other woodwork in the church might
have been better spared. The encumbrances of the building were removed
during the nineteenth century. Something was done at a restoration which
took place in 1851, during the incumbency of Mr. William Potchett. The
western part of the south aisle was re-roofed, and the present tracery
of the west window of the aisle seems to have been put in. Part of a
fund left in 1795 for the beautifying of the church was applied in 1853
to filling the west window of the north aisle with stained glass of a
painful brilliance, and the staining of the other two windows of the
west front took place between 1852 and 1855. Under Mr. George Maddison,
vicar from 1856 to 1874, Sir Gilbert Scott thoroughly restored the whole
building. This restoration, completed in October 1868, gave us the church
substantially in its present state. While the chancel clerestory was
removed, an act of compensation was performed in the recusping of the
tracery in the windows of the north aisle. Eight years later followed the
restoration of the north porch. Since then, the church has received many
beautiful gifts—Sir Gilbert Scott’s chancel-screen; Mr. G. F. Bodley’s
reredos, which has been heightened of late years to conceal the east
window and add a gradine to the altar; Mr. Kempe’s stained glass; and,
latest of all, the restored reredos in the crypt, the lofty font-cover,
the organ-case, and the restoration of Hall’s chapel, which are the work
of Mr. W. T. Tapper.
One thing remains to be noted in connection with the church—its two
libraries. The second of these is of no special interest. It was given
to the church in 1764 by Dr. John Newcome, Dean of Rochester, and Master
of St. John’s College, Cambridge, and placed within rails at the east
end of the south aisle. It was then removed to Hall’s chapel in 1806,
and found a third home at the west end of the south aisle towards the
end of the century. It has been removed again within recent years. The
other library was given in 1598 by Francis Trigg, vicar of Welbourn, and
was housed in the room over the south porch, which seems to have been
repaired, if not rebuilt, about this time. The books, bound for the most
part in stout oak boards, are set, as in mediæval libraries, with their
leaves outwards, and are chained to rings on an iron rod in front of each
shelf. The collection includes some early printed books of the fifteenth
century, and editions of Fathers and mediæval theologians. The library
was intended for the use of the vicars; and in 1642 one Edward Skipworth
left a small endowment to supply it with firewood in winter, that the
vicars might prosecute their studies. Gifts were made to it from time to
time. Henry More presented his writings to it, and Dr. Sanderson gave it
one of the few copies of Philip II.’s _Polyglot_, printed at Antwerp,
which had escaped destruction by sea. Of the eight volumes, only two and
a fragment remain. A verger is said to have been found lighting a fire
with some of the leaves. Fortunately, the full value of the library is
now appreciated; and, if it does not attract many earnest students, it is
at any rate regarded with intelligent curiosity.[81]
With the gift of Francis Trigg, “_Welborne quondam Concionator
amans_,” we leave Grantham. No longer the small market town, whose
City Fathers never stirred in the streets without their gowns, the
Alderman distinguished by his tippet with its gold clasps, but a busy
manufacturing and railway town, with growing suburbs and a population of
from 20,000 to 30,000, it yet keeps something of its country aspect. The
trees at the back of the church and along the North Road, the splendid
chestnut in Finkin Street, close to the middle of the town, the easy
escape from the houses to the slopes of the Harrowby Hills, or the
canal path to Harlaxton, make it a pleasant place to see or stay in,
and compensate for the bleak features of its approach from the south.
Though no one could claim for its surroundings the privilege of startling
beauty, yet there is no more smiling a piece of country in the English
Midlands than that of which it is the centre. Cut off from the Fenland
flats on the east by a long table-land with a gradual eastward slope,
and on the south by the broken country towards Bourn and Stamford,
it has on the north the long line of pretty villages which mark the
road to Lincoln, and on the west the vale of Belvoir, overhung by the
wooded escarpments of the Leicestershire Wolds. It is the centre of a
country which possesses some of the most beautiful village churches and
the noblest houses in England. Due north of the town is Belton House,
where Wren’s gifts of moderation in proportion and of masterly internal
spacing are at their best; and just beyond is Syston, high on the brow
of a hill, and gazing across the intervening ridges at Belvoir. Between
Grantham and Belvoir are the great modern houses of Harlaxton and Denton.
Harlaxton, a palace in size, is set on a terrace at the end of a straight
drive which dips down from the Melton road and then rises gradually
towards the house, and is backed by a view of wood and hill. And on the
south, not comparing with these in size, are the beautiful little houses
which the wool merchants of these parts built for themselves—Anthony
Ellys’ house at Great Ponton, and Thomas Coney’s high stone mansion at
Bassingthorpe, and, farther on, the larger hall which Richard Thimelby
built in 1510 at Irnham. These are all within no long distance from
the town, and all, except Belvoir, within the county. For those whose
acquaintance with Lincolnshire is limited to its legendary reputation
of flatness, fogginess, and, if one may use the word, fenniness, there
could be no better object-lesson than the climb along the lane from Great
Ponton to Bassingthorpe, or the walk from Harlaxton to Grantham, with the
great spire of St. Wulfran’s framed, like the vignette on the title-page
of a book, within the arches formed by the intervening trees.
STAMFORD
BY V. B. CROWTHER-BEYNON, M.A., F.S.A.
Of the picturesque and interesting old towns in which the county of
Lincoln is so rich, it may be questioned whether any can excel, or even
equal, Stamford. Though unable to claim a life-long acquaintance with
this delightful, old-world borough, the present writer confesses to have
quickly fallen a victim to her charm, a feeling which time has only
served to increase.
Possessing, as she does, such strong claims to the attention and
appreciation of the historian, the antiquary and the artist, it is small
wonder that Stamford has provided the theme for a large number of printed
publications, ranging from Butcher’s _Survey of Stamford_ (1646) down to
handbooks issued as recently as 1907 and 1908. Chief among these must be
reckoned Francis Peck’s monumental _Academia tertia Anglicana, or the
Antiquarian Annals of Stamford_, a most exhaustive, albeit a somewhat
wordy and diffuse work, issued in 1727. The present brief account of
Stamford makes no pretension to originality, and represents merely a
compilation drawn from the many excellent works which have already been
contributed by other and abler hands, and to the authors of which the
writer desires to acknowledge his indebtedness.[82]
Situated on the banks of the river Welland, which divides the town into
two unequal portions and which here forms the boundary between the
counties of Lincoln and Northampton, Stamford presents the peculiarity
of a town which is in two counties, in two dioceses (Lincoln and
Peterborough), and under two civil jurisdictions, though the municipal
borough includes the greater part of both portions of the town.
In a volume whose scope is confined to the county of Lincoln, it may
savour of trespass to deal with the Northamptonshire portion of Stamford;
it is, however, hardly practicable to give an intelligible account of the
history of the place without some reference to “Stamford Baron” (as the
part south of the Welland has been designated since the middle of the
fifteenth century),[83] though every endeavour will be made to introduce
as little extraneous matter as possible.
The remote history of Stamford is enveloped in a veil of romance which
present-day knowledge has perforce torn rudely away. The establishment
here of a British University in 863 B.C. by a British prince, Bladud,
seems to rest solely on the statement of Merlin of Caledonia, writing in
the sixth or early in the seventh century A.D., and the fable need not
detain us further.
When we come to the period of the Roman occupation, we might, in view of
the fact that the great military road, Erming or Ermine Street, crosses
the Welland close to the present town, expect to find evidences of a
considerable Roman settlement at this important point of the road. It
is somewhat surprising, therefore, that, with the exception of some
comparatively insignificant discoveries to the west, between Stamford
and Tinwell, nothing has at present come to light which can be said to
point to the existence of a settlement in Roman times on the site of
the present Stamford. Possibly the proximity to the south and north,
respectively, of the important stations of Durobrivæ (Castor) and
Causennæ[84](Ancaster) may have rendered it unnecessary to establish
another and intermediate station. At any rate the fact remains that we
cannot adduce any proof of the existence of a settlement or village here
till Saxon times, and it is probable, therefore, that the name Stamford
or Stanford (a name of Saxon origin, from _stan_, stone, and _ford_) is
the first and only one which the place has borne. The name doubtless
had reference to the ford by which, before the erection of a bridge
substantial enough for horse traffic, communication between the two sides
of the Welland was maintained; and though we find, as is commonly the
case with place-names, many variations of spelling, such as Staunford,
Staunforth, Staundforde, &c., the name has remained substantially the
same.
The earliest contemporary reference to Stamford is found in a charter of
Wolfere, King of Mercia, dated 664, wherein “all that part of the town
of Staunforde ... beyond the bridge,” is stated to belong to the Abbey
of Medeshamstede (Peterborough).[85] It appears, therefore, that even
at this early date the town occupied both sides of the river, and was,
we may fairly suppose, a place of some size. A few years before this,
namely, in 658 (if we may believe the testimony of Prior Wessington of
Durham, writing in the fifteenth century),[86] was founded the earliest
religious house in the Stamford district. This was St. Leonard’s Priory,
erected by Wilfrid, the friend of Oswy, King of Northumbria, and
afterwards Bishop of York. Wilfrid bestowed this new foundation upon the
monastery of Lindisfarne, where he had received his education, and on
the removal of the monks from Lindisfarne to Durham, the Priory of St.
Leonard, Stamford, became a dependency of Durham. The site of this priory
(of which more anon) is about a quarter of a mile eastward of the present
town.
[Illustration: STAMFORD, FROM THE MEADOWS.]
The ninth century was a period of stress in this part of England, and
Stamford was called upon to furnish a contingent of young fighters to
defend the country against the marauding Danes. The Danes, however,
proved too strong, and Stamford soon fell under the foreign yoke and was
joined with Lincoln, Leicester, Derby and Nottingham to form the Danish
“Five Burghs.”
Space will not permit us to narrate the varying fortunes of the opposing
forces—English and Danes—in the almost incessant struggles which marked
the period preceding the Norman Conquest—struggles in which Stamford was
held sometimes by one party, sometimes by the other, and not infrequently
was in the hands of both, when the river formed the dividing line between
the rival camps.
In the year 972 Eadgar granted, or, it may be, confirmed to the Abbey of
Peterborough the privilege of coining money at Stamford, but the exact
position of the mint in the southern part of the town cannot now be
determined. It is an interesting and significant fact that coins of the
Stamford mint have been met with in considerable numbers in hoards found
in Scandinavia.[87]
The fortification on the north bank of the Welland was doubtless
originally a Danish earthwork, an English stronghold being erected by
Alfred in opposition on the south side, near the present Midland Railway
Station. When the Danes had secured a foothold they seem to have replaced
their earthen defences by stone walls which encircled their settlement.
At the present day considerable portions of the Stamford town walls are
in existence, though these have obviously been reconstructed from time to
time, and nothing earlier than Norman work can be positively identified
in the portions still remaining. Perhaps the most striking vestige now
to be seen is a round bastion on the west side of the town, near Rutland
Terrace. Speed’s map of Stamford (1600) shows eleven towers in the line
of the walls, together with seven principal gates and two posterns. The
southern town does not appear to have ever been defended by walls, though
it had five fortified gates.[88] All the gates in both sections of the
town have now been demolished, the last (St. George’s Gate) as lately as
1806. The water-mill, situated near the Castle, was originally built by
Edward the Confessor, and is still known as the King’s Mill, though the
present structure is of the eighteenth century.
Soon after the Conquest the Danish castle was replaced by a substantial
Norman building, and the site is still marked by an Early English gate
and a portion of the arcaded wall of a chamber which was subsequently
used as a manor court. At present the Castle site is occupied by an iron
foundry, and it is among the buildings, sheds and heaps of scrap iron
connected therewith, that the visitor has to search for what remains of
the old mediæval stronghold. It seems a sad pity that a spot of such
historic interest and picturesque position should ever have been allowed
to fall into the state of unsightly neglect which characterises it to-day.