History
Botulf (i.e. Ruling Wolf) is said by Bede to have been born in the seventh century of a gentle Saxon family, and to have studied with his brother Adulf on the Continent. On his return (Adulf remaining to preside over a monastery at Utrecht, and becoming Bishop of Maestricht), Botulf begged permission of Ethelmund, King of East Anglia, to found a monastery in some retired and desolate spot, and chose Icanho (Ox Island) beside the Witham, probably the site of Boston. At Icanho he died on 17th June 655. The monks’ huts were burnt by the Danes in 870, but the relics of the saint had been safely translated, part to Ely, and part to Thorney, and the site of Boston was in later Saxon times included in the wapontak of Skirbeck. After the Norman Conquest the greater part of the parish of Skirbeck, with its two churches, one of which presumably stood on the site of Boston Church, was granted as part of the honour of Richmond in Yorkshire to Alan Rufus, who, shortly before his death in 1089, obtained the ordination of the rectory of Boston, and granted the patronage to the Benedictine Abbey of St. Mary at York, the monks of Boston constituting a priory of that abbey, and the church, which was probably of wood, apparently serving both the parish and the priory. A new church of stone was built at once. It consisted of a nave 25 feet by 60 feet, with aisles each 12 feet wide, a chancel, and a western tower 9 feet square; the floor level was about 4 feet below the present floor. The foundations were exposed in the restoration, 1851-53. The priory buildings were on the north side of the church. In 1309, when the fervour excited by the preaching of the friars was still felt, and the prosperity of the town was at its height, the pious gratitude of the burghers led them to begin the present magnificent church, the foundation-stone being laid on the Monday after St. John Baptist’s Day by Dame Margaret Tilney, assisted by Richard Stephenson, merchant, and John Truesdale, the rector. This church originally consisted of a nave of seven bays with aisles, a chancel originally of three bays, and a south porch. In the Perpendicular Period the chancel was lengthened by two bays, when Fleming, formerly rector of Boston, was Bishop of Lincoln; and the magnificent tower was added outside the former west window. A chamber was also added over the porch, and there were six subsidiary chapels (all but one of which have now been destroyed), besides, at least, two others (those of St. Mary and SS. Peter and Paul) at the east ends of the south and north aisles respectively, screened off within the church itself. The whole was probably completed about 1500; as it now stands the church is, in cubical content, the largest purely parish church in the kingdom, and is only surpassed in floor area (20,270 square feet) by those of St. Michael, Coventry (24,015 square feet), and of Yarmouth (23,265 square feet).
In 1480 the Knights Hospitallers, who had a commandery in the parish, founded by the De Multons about 1230, purchased the advowson from St. Mary’s Abbey, and made the parish church their collegiate church. They also obtained an appropriation of the rectory, and a vicarage was ordained. The Knights maintained a college of ten priests, living in a house in Wormgate (i.e. Withamgate). The old church of the Knights was deserted, and was eventually pulled down in 1626, the material being used to repair St. Botulf’s. After the sale of the advowson the priory became of small importance, and was dissolved in 1536. The Order of the Knights was dissolved in 1540, and its possessions confiscated by King Henry VIII., who, in 1545, sold the endowment of the rectory and the patronage of the vicarage to the newly-created corporation of Boston, subject, however, to the payment of the vicar’s stipend, and to the duty of repairing the chancel. At the Reformation the screens were broken away, and the church despoiled of its furniture and decoration.
During the great rebellion it was used as a cavalry stable, the horses being tethered to iron rings fixed in the pillars. The Antipædobaptists then had a congregation in Boston (which was revived and endowed in 1756, and is still flourishing), and were influential in the neighbourhood; this led to the destruction of the mediæval fonts in Boston and many of the neighbouring churches. The brasses also were torn up, and what remained of the stained glass and stone imagery was broken, and the chapels and other buildings encircling the church were gradually removed during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
On the resumption of the Church services at the Restoration of Charles II., some slight attempts at improvement were made, a new font and reredos and a beautiful pulpit and altar rails being provided. Towards the end of the eighteenth century the present ceiling was put up. The original ceiling of the nave was a flat wooden one, doubtless elaborately carved and gilded, nailed on the under surface of fifteen huge beams which cross the church between each pair of clerestory windows. The ceiling seems to have been injured by fire, and the beams themselves became rotten at the ends, and tended to sag in the centre, and were therefore supported by uprights nailed against the wall with trusses at an angle of 45°; these uprights and trusses were then concealed by panelling which was made to resemble the springers of a sham vault, and was painted a dirty yellow. The lean-to roofs of the aisles were similarly concealed by sham vaulting, and the chancel, hitherto covered with a semi-octagonal roof, divided by boldly moulded ribs into panels, had a sort of sham tunnel vault at a much lower level, so low, indeed, as to have to be tilted upwards to bring it above the crown of the chancel arch. An organ was provided and placed in the chancel arch, having in front of it a gallery supported on oaken columns (now in the Roman church in Boston). The western portion of the church was shut off by a high screen with wrought-iron gates, and the remaining portion of the nave arranged with the pulpit in the centre, and square pews gradually sloping upwards so as to be level with the sills of the windows. The chancel was used only for the quarterly communion. In 1835 the Municipal Reform Act vested the patronage in the Bishop of the diocese, who twice collated under this Act, but the corporation was permitted to sell, and in 1853 did sell, the advowson to Mr. Ingram; he devised it to his widow; she, in turn, devised it to Sir E. Watkin, her second husband, whose representatives in 1906 conveyed it to the Bishop of Lincoln in right of his see. The restoration of the church was begun in the middle of the nineteenth century, about £11,000 being spent under the direction of Sir G. Gilbert Scott. The fabric was put in good repair generally, the stone vaulting of the tower was inserted, a new font was erected, the pews were replaced by oaken benches, the organ placed in a chamber to the north of the chancel, the east window provided with new tracery and filled with poor stained glass, a new altar table with a good red frontal, and some new plate, were purchased, and canopies, copied from Lincoln Cathedral, were added to the stalls; provision was also made for lighting and warming the church. An offering from the Bostonians of America was devoted to restoring the sole remaining chapel, which is situated on the western side of the south porch. The church was re-dedicated in 1853.
Since then there have been a few slight improvements; six of the sixteen windows in the aisle have had stained glass inserted, and it is generally good. The chapel has had three of its windows fitted with stained glass, and has been furnished with an altar and reredos, and a screen separating it from the church provided; two additional frontals have been given for the high altar, and it is backed by an elaborate, though as yet incomplete, reredos of carved oak, designed by Weatherley. The church is still much disfigured by the ugly ceiling, and has a cold unfurnished look, to remedy which screens, stained glass, and colour decoration would be required; unfortunately, the church is so large that nothing can be done which does not involve a considerable expenditure.