Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire

by W. F. Rawnsley

HUGH OF LINCOLN

BISHOP HUGH OF LINCOLN

CANONIZED

“Hugh of Lincoln” is a title which, like Cerberus in Sheridan’s play, indicates “three gentlemen at once,” and it will perhaps prevent confusion if I briefly distinguish the three.

The first and greatest is the Burgundian, usually called from his birthplace on the frontier of Savoy “Hugh of Avalon.” He went to a good school in Grenoble, and, as a youth, joined the monastery of the Grande Chartreuse, where he rose to be procurator or bursar. In 1175, at the request of Henry II. who had, with difficulty, obtained the consent of the Archbishop of Grenoble, he came to England to become the first prior of the king’s new monastery at Witham in Somerset, the first Carthusian house in England. In 1186, much against his will, he was, by the king’s decree, elected Bishop of Lincoln, and took up his residence at Stow, where he at once set to work to master the English tongue. His rule of life was ascetic, and he made a practice of going every year in harvest time to live as a simple monk at Witham. He was a strong man, with high ideals, upright, unselfish and charitable, no believer in the miracles of the day, and so free from prejudice that he always protected the hated Jews, who wept sincere tears at his funeral. He was active in his huge diocese, and was a maker of history, for, besides extending and beautifying the cathedral of Remigius, he eventually became so powerful that he joined the Archbishops in excommunicating their Sovereign, and in 1197 he successfully opposed King Richard I. and his “Justiciar,” who was the great Archbishop Hubert Walter. Walter, when Bishop of Salisbury, had accompanied Richard to the crusade, where he was the king’s chief agent in negotiating with Saladin. He headed the first party of pilgrims whom the Turks admitted to the Holy Sepulchre, led back the English host from Palestine in the king’s absence to Sicily, whence he went to visit Richard in captivity, and repaired to England to raise the £100,000 demanded for his ransom. He was made by the king’s command Archbishop of Canterbury, crowned the king a second time in 1194 at Winchester, and as “Justiciar” had the task of finding means to supply Richard’s ceaseless demands for money for his wars. Hence it was that he had summoned a meeting of bishops and barons at Oxford on December 7, 1197, at which he proposed that they should agree to the king’s latest demand and should themselves furnish him with three hundred knights to serve for twelve months against Philip of France, or give him money which would suffice to obtain them. This was strenuously and successfully opposed by Hugh, seconded by Herbert Bishop of Salisbury, and this action is spoken of by Stubbs as a landmark of constitutional history, being “the first clear case of the refusal of a money grant demanded by the Crown.” Hugh was in France when Henry II. died, but returned in time for the coronation of Richard I. He several times attended both Richard and John to Normandy, and when Richard died he buried him at Fontevrault in 1199, where Henry II. and his wife, Eleanora of Guienne, and John’s wife, Isabella of Angoulême, are also buried. He was back in England for John’s coronation on May 27, but, going again to visit the haunts of his boyhood at Grenoble, he caught a fever and, after a long illness, died next year in the London house of the Bishops of Lincoln, at the “Old Temple.” He was buried in his own cathedral, November 24, 1200, in the north-east transept, King John, who happened to be then in Lincoln, to receive the homage of the Scottish king, taking part as bearer in the funeral procession. Worship of him began at once, and was greatly augmented when the Pope canonized him in 1220. In 1230, when Richard of Gravesend had completed the angel choir, St. Hugh’s body was translated to it in the presence of King Edward I and Queen Eleanor and their children. This was ten years before Eleanor’s death at Harby, near Lincoln. The only thing recorded against Bishop Hugh is that he should have, upon Henry’s death, ordered the taking up of Fair Rosamond’s bones from Godstow Priory.

The story of St. Hugh’s swan is curious but not incredible. Sir Charles Anderson says: “It seems, from the minute description of the bill, to have been a wild swan or whooper.” This swan was greatly attached to its master, and constantly attended him when in residence at Stow Park, where there was a good deal of water, and many wildfowl. It is said, also, that on his last visit the bird showed signs of restlessness and distress. Sir Charles sees no reason to withhold belief from the story, and instances the case of a gander, within his own knowledge, which attached itself to a farmer in the county, and used to accompany him daily for a mile and a half, when he went to look after his cattle in the meadows, waddling after him with the greatest diligence and satisfaction; and, whenever he stopped, fondling his legs with neck and bill.

The “Magna Vita S. Hugonis” in the Bodleian, written by Adam, Abbot of Evesham soon after his death, is the chief source of our information about him; and a metrical life, also, in Latin, is both in the Bodleian and in the British Museum.

BISHOP HUGH OF WELLS

Nine years after St. Hugh’s death, Hugh the Second, or “Hugh of Wells,” was appointed bishop. He carried out the plans of his namesake, and completed the aisles and transepts and added the nave-chapels at the west end with their circular windows. He added to the episcopal palace begun by St. Hugh, and built that at Buckden—a fine brick building which later became the sole palace. The Bishops of Lincoln had a visitation palace at Lyddington, near Rockingham, in which a singularly beautiful carved wood frieze ran all round the large room. In the “Metrical Life of St. Hugh” we read that what St. Hugh planned, but left unfinished, Hugh of Wells completed.

“Perficietur opus primi sub Hugone secundo.”

LITTLE ST. HUGH

He died in 1235, and is buried in the north choir aisle. His extremely harsh treatment of the Jews leads us to the curiously tragic events in the life of the third Hugh, called the “Little St. Hugh.” He was born in 1246, and only lived nine years. That great man Grosteste, or Grostête, had succeeded Hugh of Wells, and died after an active episcopate of eighteen years, in 1254. His successor, Henry Lexington, had procured leave to extend the cathedral close beyond the Roman city wall in order to build the beautiful presbytery or angel choir for the shrine of Hugh I. He was still engaged on this when the persecution which the Jews had long endured produced such a bitter feeling that they were believed to be capable of kidnapping and crucifying, or by less conspicuous methods, putting to death a Christian boy when they had a chance. Hugh was said to be a chorister who disappeared, and his mother, led by a dream, discovered his body in a well outside the Newport Gate. A Jew called Jopin, or Chopin, but in a French ballad Peitevin, was accused of his murder, and is said to have confessed and to have been put to death with others of his nation with no small barbarity. He has left his memory at Lincoln in the name of “The Jews’ House,” which is given to the Norman building on the steep hill. This story was not uncommon, and told with much detail, as having really happened, in several places; nor is the belief in it yet dead. The boy’s body was given to the canons of the cathedral, who buried him with much solemnity in the south aisle of the choir, and set a small shrine over him, to which folk came to worship, and he received the title of “the Little St. Hugh.”

St. Mary’s Guild, Lincoln.

THE JEWS

This story is referred to by Chaucer, who wrote a hundred years later in “The Prioress’ Tale”:—

“O younge Hew of Lincoln sleyn also

With cursed Jewes, as it is notable,

For it nis but a litel whyle ago.”

His story makes the murdered boy reveal himself by singing “O alma Redemptoris Mater” “loude and clere,” although, as he says—

“My throte is cut unto my nekke-bon.”

and he does not stop singing till a ‘greyn’ is taken from his tongue by the abbot

“and he yaf up the goost ful softely.”

Marlowe has a similar story in his “Jew of Malta,” and ballads constantly were made on this theme. Sir Charles Anderson quotes one beginning:—

“The bonny boys of merry Lincoln

Were playing at the ball,

And with them stood the sweet Sir Hugh,

The flower of them all.

Whom cursed Jews did crucify,” &c.

He was buried, in 1255, next to Bishop Grosteste, who had died two years before.

The persistence of this medieval accusation against the Jews is singularly illustrated by a case which is reported in the papers of October 9, 1913, headed “Ritual Murder Trial.” The trial is at Kieff in Russia, of a perfectly innocent man called Beiliss, who has been more than two years in prison without knowing the reason, and is charged with the murder of a Christian boy called Yushinsky “to obtain blood for Jewish sacrificial rites.” The Times says that ritual murder is not now mentioned in the indictment. But that so monstrous a charge should be even hinted at shows how deeply these old malignant calumnies sank into the medieval mind, and how prone to superstition and how ready to believe evil we are even in the twentieth century of the Christian era. The whole idea is on a par with the abominable cruelties of the days when defenceless old women were burnt as witches, and is a cruel and absolutely baseless calumny on a long-suffering and law-abiding people, and yet there are plenty of people to-day in Russia who firmly believe in it.

CHAPTER XI
LINCOLN.—THE CITY

The City—The Corporation—The City Swords—Tennyson’s Centenary and Statue—Queen Eleanor’s Cross—Brayford Pool—Afternoon Tea.

THE MINSTER YARD

The rate at which the soil of inhabited places rises from the various layers of debris which accumulate on the surface is well shown at Lincoln. In Egypt, where houses are built of mud, every few years an old building falls and the material is trodden down and a new erection made upon it. Hence the entrance to the temple at Esneh from the present outside floor level, is up among the capitals of the tall pillars; and, the temple being cleaned out, the floor of it and the bases of its columns were found to be nearly thirty feet below ground. Stone-built houses last much longer, but when a fire or demolition after a siege has taken place three or four times, a good deal of rubbish is left spread over the surface and it accumulates with the ages. Hence, in Roman Lincoln or “Lindum Colonia” pavements may be found whenever the soil is moved, at a depth of seven or eight feet at least, and often more. Thus the Roman West Gate came to light in 1836, after centuries of complete burial, but soon crumbled away; and the whole of the hill top where Britons, Romans, Danes, and Normans successively dwelt, is full of remains which can only on rare occasions ever have a chance of seeing the light. Still there is much for us to see above ground, so we may as well take a walk through the city, beginning at the top of the hill. Here, as you leave the west end of the cathedral and pass through the “Exchequer Gate” with its one large and two small arches, under the latter of which may be seen entrances to the little shopstalls where relics, rosaries, etc., were once sold, you pass along the flat south wall of St. Mary Magdalen’s Church, beyond which the outer Exchequer Gate stood till 1800. The wall in which this and other gates of the cathedral close were inserted was built in the thirteenth or early fourteenth century, to protect the close and the canons. The gateways were all double, except the “Potter Gate,” which is the only other one now extant. It is said that the Romans had a pottery near it; at present the road to the Minster Yard goes both through it and round one side of it.

The Pottergate, Lincoln.

THE CASTLE

Passing from the Exchequer Gate you see a very pretty sixteenth century timbered house, with projecting story, at the corner of Bailgate, now used as a bank. Hard by on your right is the White Hart inn, and on your left you have a peep down Steep Street to the House of Aaron the Jew, a money lender of the reign of Henry II. Near this was once the South Gate of the Roman city, and some of the stones are still visible in the pavement. The gate was destroyed in 1775. Looking straight ahead from the Exchequer Gate you see the east gateway of the castle, a Norman arch with later semi-circular turrets corbelled out on either side of it. Inside is a fine oriel window, brought from John of Gaunt’s house below the hill. The enclosure is an irregular square of old British earthworks, seven acres in extent. The west gate is walled up and the Assize Court within the castle enclosure is near it. In the angles on either side of the east gate are two towers in the curtain wall, one, “the observatory tower,” crowns an ancient mound, and on the south side is a larger mound, forty feet high, on which is the keep, a very good specimen of very early work, in shape an irregular polygon. The castle was one of the eight founded by the Conqueror himself, apparently never so massive a building as his castle, which is now being excavated at Old Sarum, the walls of which, built of the flints of the locality, are twelve feet thick and faced with stone. At Lincoln the Roman walls were ten to twelve feet thick and twenty feet high. Massive fragments of this wall still exist in different places, the biggest being near the Newport Arch. Near here too is “The Mint Wall,” seventy feet long by thirty feet high, and three and a half feet thick, which probably formed the north wall of the Basilica. Most of the fighting in Lincoln used to take place around this spot, as Stephen felt to his cost. The old West Gate of the Roman city was found just to the north of the castle west gate. The line which joined the Roman East and West Gates ran straight then, and crossed the Ermine Street, now called here the Bailgate, near the church of St. Paulinus, but the result of some destructive assaults must have so filled the road that the street now called ‘East Gate’ was deflected from its course southwards and has to make a sharp bend to get back to its proper line.

The Jew’s House, Lincoln.

Remains of the Whitefriars’ Priory, Lincoln.

THE JEW’S HOUSE

THE FRIARS

ST. MARY’S GUILD

Getting back to the ‘Bail,’ or open space between the castle gate and the Exchequer Gate, we can go down that bit of the old Ermine Street called “Steep Street” (and I don’t think any street can better deserve its name) and come into the High Street of Lincoln. If we go right down this, we shall see all that is of most interest in the town below the hill. First is the “Jew’s House” where the murderer of Little St. Hugh is said to have lived, a most interesting specimen of Norman domestic architecture, and more ornate than that at Boothby-Pagnell of a similar date. The house has a round-headed doorway, with a chimney-breast starting from above the doorway arch, and showing that the upper floor had a fireplace. On either side the door now are modern shop windows. Between the stringcourses are two double light windows, with a plain tympanum under a round arch. Belaset of Wallingford, a Jewess, lived here in the reign of Edward I. She was hanged for clipping coin in 1290, the year of the Jews’ Expulsion. At the bottom of the street, No. 333, is another charming old structure called “White Friars’ House” with a projecting timbered front, and a passage round one end like that at the old “God begot” house at Winchester. All Friars, whether White (Carmelite), Black (Dominican), Grey (Franciscan), or Black and White (Augustinian), were to be found in Lincoln as well as at Stamford, and, with the exception of the Dominicans, at Boston too. One more bit of old domestic building is the hall of St. Mary’s Guild, commonly called John o’ Gaunt’s Stables. Here you may see a combination of the round and the pointed arch, which dates it as late Norman. The house is longer than the other two, and the upper story mostly gone, but in Parker’s “Domestic Architecture” it is spoken of as “probably the most valuable and extensive range of buildings of the twelfth century that we have remaining in England.” The house within has round-headed windows with a mid-wall shaft, and a fireplace. The house just opposite was the palace built by John of Gaunt for Katharine Swynford; from which the oriel window inside the castle gateway was taken. These old Norman houses are all small. The really magnificent building which was once the boast of Lincoln was a thousand years earlier than these; this was the Roman Basilica, or Hall of Judgment, near Bailgate, perhaps, the baths at the town of Bath alone excepted, the finest Roman building in England. Figure to yourself a building 250 feet long by seventy feet wide, with a triangular pediment rising from a row of pillars thirty feet high, something like what we still see at Milan. Alas! that only the pillar bases of this fine hall have been found. The pillars ran along the west side of Bailgate facing east.

St. Mary’s Guild and St. Peter’s at Gowts, Lincoln.

SAXON TOWERS

ST. BENEDICT’S

As we pass down the High Street we shall see on our left the Saxon towers of St. Mary le Wigford and of “St. Peters at Gowts.” The “gowts” or sluices were the two watercourses for taking the waters of the “Meres” into the Witham, originally there were small bridges on either side over each, with a ford between them for carts. These towers are tall and without buttresses, having the Saxon long and short work and the upper two-light window with the mid-wall jamb, and only small and irregularly placed lights below. They are in style much what you see in Italy, though the Italian are higher, but certainly none in England are so uncompromisingly plain as the towers at Ravenna and Bologna. St. Andrews in Scotland comes nearest, and bears a really extraordinary likeness to that of St. John the Evangelist at Ravenna. Near St. Mary le Wigford is the picturesque little remnant of a beautiful but disused church, called St. Benedict’s; only the ivy-clad chancel, a side chapel and the recent low tower are left, a very picturesque and peaceful object in the busy town. Its original tower held a beautifully decorated bell, called “Old Kate,” the gift of the Surgeon Barbers in 1585, it used to ring at 6 a.m. and 7 p.m., to mark the beginning and end of the day’s labour. It now hangs in the tower of St. Mark’s.

The name of ‘le Wigford,’ Wickford or Wickenford, indicates the suburb south of the river. In the days when kings used to wear their crowns, an uneasy belief in the old saying—

“The crownéd head that enters Lincoln walls,

His reign is stormy and his Kingdom falls,”

made the monarch take it off on passing from Wickford to the city, and certainly of all the kings who were crowned in the cathedral none wore the crown outside except Stephen, and he, as we have seen, soon had cause to repent it. It has been supposed that both these early Lincoln churches were built by a Danish citizen called “Coleswegen,” who is mentioned in Domesday Book as having thirty-six houses and two churches outside the city. But though Lincoln has not lost nearly so many churches and religious houses as Winchester has, yet, where she now has a dozen she once had fifty, so it must be extremely doubtful whether these two old ones that remain were those of Coleswegen. St. Mary’s now has a Perpendicular parapet, and, besides the curious tower arch, some interesting Early English work, and both churches have some good modern ironwork in pulpit, screen and rails from the Brant Broughton forge.

St. Benedict’s Church, Lincoln.

St. Mary-le-Wigford, Lincoln.

THE “CONDUIT”

THE BRIDGE AND THE STONEBOW

The woodwork in St. Peter’s was done by the parish clerk, a pleasant feature not nearly so common now as it used to be. At the road side, and close to the churchyard rails of St. Mary’s, is a handsome carved drinking fountain, here called a “conduit,” partly made of stones from the demolished Whitefriars monastery founded 1269. Leland speaks of it as new in 1540, and it was repaired in 1672. The Grey Friars conduit and the High bridge conduit are supplied from the same chalybeate spring, which once sufficed to turn the mill at the monks’ house, now standing in ruins a mile to the east of the city. This was one of the good deeds of the Franciscans, to bring good drinking water within reach of the poor. A similar system of “conduits” also due to them, existed at Grantham. A serious epidemic, traced to the drinking water, which broke out in Lincoln a few years ago, caused the town to go to great expense in laying on a new supply which comes twenty miles in iron pipes from Elkesley, Notts, between Retford and Clumber, and crosses the Trent at Dunham on a little bridge of its own.

The “High bridge” marks the spot where the Ermine Street forded the Witham. It is the only bridge left in England out of many which still carries houses on it. The ribbed arch is a very old one, twenty-two feet wide. The houses are now only on one side, they are quaintly timbered, and their backs, seen from below by the waterside, are very picturesque. On the other side is an obelisk, set up 150 years ago, to mark the site of a bridge chapel dedicated to St. Thomas of Canterbury. From here you get the most magnificent view that any town can boast, as you look up the steep street to the splendid pile which crowns the height, and see the cathedral in all its beauty.

The length of the High Street is relieved by the “Stonebow.” There was always a gate here from Roman times onward, for when the Roman town was extended southward to a good deal more than twice its original size, it was here that the new wall crossed the Ermine Street. The road had crossed the swampy ground and forded the river, and was now about to enter the city and climb the hill. The mediæval gate which succeeded the Roman ‘porta’ was removed in the fourteenth century, and the present one dates from the sixteenth, and was repaired in 1887, at Queen Victoria’s Jubilee. It has one central and two side arches, with slender towers between, carried up to a battlemented parapet. On the east tower is a tall figure of the Archangel Gabriel, and in a niche on the other tower the Virgin Mary. The patroness of the city and cathedral is represented treading on a dragon. A long room above the arch with timbered roof is used as a Guildhall; in it are portraits of Queen Anne and Thomas Sutton of Knaith, founder of the Charterhouse. The corporation, to whom they belong, has had a long and distinguished existence, for municipal life in Lincoln began in Roman times; and when they left, and Saxons, Danes or Normans ruled, and the counties and towns had to adopt new names under each successive conqueror, Lincoln retained throughout her Roman name and her right of self-government. The corporation, besides their fine Restoration mace, have three civic swords, one apparently made up out of two, but said to have been presented by Richard II. when he visited the city in 1386, to be carried point uppermost, except in presence of the sovereign.

The Stonebow, Lincoln.

THE CIVIC SWORDS

THE “FOX”

The facts about the swords are these: the Charles I. sword, supposed to have been presented to the city at the beginning of the Civil War, in 1642, has been mutilated to supply a new blade to the Richard II. sword. This was done by order of the mayor in 1734. The blade has on it the orb and cross mark and also the running wolf—a fourteenth century German mark—but so common was it on the foreign blades used in England in the sixteenth century that, the figure being taken for a fox—as wolves were not then common in England—the term “Fox” was transformed to the sword; hence in Shakespeare’s “Henry V.” act iv., scene 4, we have Pistol saying to his French prisoner on the field of battle:—

“O Signieur Dew, thou diest on point of fox.”

and in one of Webster’s plays we have—

“Of what a blade is’t?

A Toledo or an English fox?”

The two finest churches in Lincoln were at one time St. Swithun’s and St. Botolph’s. The former was burnt down, but, after a century, was rebuilt badly, but has now been restored by the munificence of Messrs. Clayton and Shuttleworth to its former grandeur, and has a really fine tower and spire, designed by Fowler, of Louth. St. Botolph’s, near the south “Bargate,” had to endure a similar period of decay, but was at last resuscitated, the south aisle being the last gift to the town of Bishop Christopher Wordsworth.

Lincoln’s last new building, the Carnegie Library, designed by Mr. Reginald Blomfield, stands in St. Swithun’s Square. It was opened on February 24th, 1914.

Old Inland Revenue Office, Lincoln.

Two other houses are interesting because of their inmates in the eighteenth century; one the old Jacobean mansion of the Bromheads of Thurlby, whose descendant, Captain Gonville Bromhead, won with Lieutenant Chard undying fame by the defence of Rorke’s Drift in the Zulu War, 1879. The other is a house called Deloraine House, in which once lived George Tennyson, grandfather of the poet; and we cannot quit Lincoln without going to see the fine bronze statue of the poet by G. F. Watts, which stands in the close at the east end of the cathedral.

THE TENNYSON STATUE

THE POET’S WOLFHOUND

In the autumn of 1909 the centenary of the poet’s birth was celebrated at Lincoln. Dean Wickham preached an eloquent sermon to a large congregation in the cathedral nave, after which, the choir, leaving the cathedral, grouped themselves round the statue and sang “Crossing the Bar,” and Bishop King gave a short and memorable address. In the evening the writer read a paper on Tennyson to an intently listening audience of twelve hundred people, which is now published by Routledge & Co., in a little book called “Introductions to the Poets, by W. F. Rawnsley.” Lincoln that day showed how fully she appreciated the great Lincolnshire poet. The statue, a colossal one, represents him looking at a flower, as described in his poem, “Flower in the crannied wall,” and his grand wolf-hound is looking up into his face. This hound was a Russian, whose grandfather had belonged to the Czar Alexander II., he who freed the serfs in 1861, and was so basely assassinated twenty years later. The wolf-hound was a very handsome light brindle, with a curious black patch near the collar. She had a litter of thirteen, and one of these with the mother, “Lufra,” was given to the writer when living at Park Hill, Lyndhurst, in the New Forest. The puppy, “Cossack,” was Mrs. Rawnsley’s constant companion till he died of old age in his sleep; the mother went to Farringford to replace an old favourite that Tennyson had lately lost. Her new owner changed her name to Karenina, and she was his constant companion to the end. Once again, if not twice, she had a litter of thirteen, and the cares of her large family not unnaturally were at times too much for her temper. She is now immortalised with her master in bronze, executed with loving care by his own old friend and quondam neighbour in the Isle of Wight. The inscription at the back of the pedestal is: “Alfred Lord Tennyson, born 1809, died 1892”; and below it is “George Frederick Watts, born 1817, died 1904.”

James Street, Lincoln

Another monument which once adorned Lincoln was the first and one of the very best in the list of Queen Eleanor’s crosses, designed by the famous “Richard of Stowe,” who carved the figures in the angel choir. Only a fragment of this survived what Precentor Venables calls “the fierce religious storm of 1645.” Before starting on its long funeral procession to Westminster, the Queen’s body was embalmed by the Gilbertine nuns of St. Catherine’s Priory, close to which, at the junction of the Ermine Street and Foss Way, the cross was set up, near the leper hospital of Remigius, called the Malandery (Fr. Maladerie) hospital.

THE “STUFF BALL”

Two railway stations and the many large iron and agricultural implement works, which have given Lincoln a name all over the world, occupy the lower part of the town, with buildings more useful than beautiful; for this industry has taken the place of the woollen factories which were once the mainstay of Lincoln. But a tall building with small windows, known as “The Old Factory,” still indicates the place in which the “Lincoln Stuff” was made, from which the Lincoln “Stuff Ball” took its name. In order to increase the production and popularise the wear of woollen material for ladies’ dresses, it was arranged to have balls at which no lady should be admitted who did not wear a dress of the Lincolnshire stuff. The first of these was held at the Windmill Inn, Alford, in 1785. The colour selected was orange; but, the room not being large enough for the number of dancers, in 1789 it was moved to Lincoln, where it has been held ever since, the lady patroness choosing the colour each year. In 1803 the wearing of this hot material was commuted to an obligation to take so many yards of the stuff. The manufacture has long ago come to an end, but the “Stuff Ball” survives, and the colours are still selected.

The swamps of the Wigford suburb have also disappeared, but Brayford Pool, beloved of artists, where the Foss Dyke joins the Witham, still makes a beautiful picture with the boats and barges and swans in front below, and the Minster towers looking down into it from above. This Foss Dyke was a Crown property, until James I., finding it to be nothing but an expense, with economic liberality presented it to the mayor and corporation.

Thorngate, Lincoln.

THE “GREY FRIARS”

The river was always outside of the Roman town, for the south wall, running east and west from the Stonebow, where are now Guildhall Street and Saltergate, turned up by Broadgate Street, and here, just inside its south-east angle, is now the interesting “Grey Friars,” a thirteenth century building consisting of a vaulted undercroft and long upper room, now used as a museum.

AFTERNOON TEA

I have no Lincoln notes of the eighteenth century of any special interest, but from this little extract it looks as if the institution of afternoon tea had been anticipated by a hundred years in Lincoln. The extract is from “A Sketch wrote Aug. 4, 1762, at Lincoln,” and deals with housekeeping expenses. The entries are:—

“Three guineas a year for tea	£3	3	0
“Loave sugar	3	0	0
“Tea, a quarter of an ounce each morning.
“Sugar, half of a quarter of a pound each morning.
“Also an allowance for sometimes in the afternoon.”

CHAPTER XII
ROADS FROM LINCOLN, WEST AND EAST.—MARTON, STOW, COTES-BY-STOW, SNARFORD, AND BUSLINGTHORPE

West—The Foss-Dyke—Marton—Stow—Cotes-by-Stow. East—Fiskerton—Barlings Abbey—Gautby—Baumber—Snelland—Snarford and the St. Poll Tombs—Buslingthorpe—Early Brass—Linwood.

PASSAGES OF THE TRENT

Of the eight roads from Lincoln one goes west, and, passing over the Foss Dyke by a swing bridge at Saxilby, crosses the Trent between Newton and Dunham into Nottinghamshire. The view of Lincoln Minster from Saxilby, with the sails of the barges in the foreground as they slowly make their way to the wharves at the foot of the hill, is most picturesque. Saxilby preserves some interesting churchwarden’s accounts from 1551 to 1569, and, after a gap of fifty-five years, from 1624 to 1790. The “Foss Dyke” is a canal made by the Romans to connect the Witham with the Trent and deepened by Henry I. The road runs alongside of it from Saxilby for two miles. Consequently we get glimpses now and again of the low round-nosed barges with widespread canvas sailing slowly past trees and hedgerows; then we turn north and pass by Kettlethorpe Lodge and Fenton village, through lanes lined with oak trees or edged with gorse, and amidst fields brilliant with corn-marigold, and poppy, till we come, all at once, on a little fleet of barges waiting with their picturesque unfurled sails for a passage through the lock near Torksey, a place of some importance in Saxon times, having two monastic houses. Two miles beyond Torksey is Marton. This place is also approached by the old Roman road, now called “Till bridge Lane,” which branched off from the Ermine Street ten miles above Lincoln, and went to Doncaster and York, crossing both arms of the river Till near Thorpe-in-the-fallows. One mile from Marton this road passes out of the county at Littleborough ferry, the “Segelocum” of the Romans. The ferry is the main means of crossing the Trent where it touches Lincolnshire, as there are but two bridges in twenty miles, one at Gainsborough, and one between Dunham and Newton-on-Trent, where the view from the cliff with the bridge below is very picturesque.

Lincoln from the Witham.

There is a ferry at Laneham, between Newton and Torksey; and below Gainsborough are half a dozen, at Stockwith, Ouston, Althorpe, Keadby, where a bridge is now being built, Flixborough, and Burton Stather, but the latter only takes foot passengers, and the others are all, I believe, of the same calibre. It is just the same on the Ouse, across which Yokefleet and Ousefleet look at each other about a mile apart, but to drive from one to the other is a matter of more than thirty miles.

MARTON

HISTORY OF THE DIOCESE

Marton is a tiny place, but has a very interesting church, with unbuttressed tower and heavily embattled parapet to both nave and chancel. The tower up to the upper stringcourse is entirely built in Norman “Herringbone” work, this is now plastered over outside, but you can trace the herring-bone through the plaster, and inside the tower it is plain to see, and shows courses of thin stone laid horizontally at frequent intervals. Above the stringcourse is the usual two light window with mid-wall jamb, which, like the Long-and-Short work at the angles of the tower, we generally describe as Saxon. Several Saxon stones with interlaced work, parts of a cross probably, are built into the west end of the south aisle at about two feet from the ground outside. I always want to see these very old stones inside, for their better preservation. Above the present nave roof, but below the mark of the earlier and high-pitched roof, is a door which once opened from the tower into the church. The chancel arch is Norman, as are the two lofty bays of the north arcade. The rest of the church is Early English. In the chancel south wall is a large niche with a pedestal, evidently intended for a figure, perhaps of St. Margaret, the patron saint, and there is also a low-side window of one light with a two-light window above it. But the most interesting thing in the chancel is a little stone, nine inches by eleven, now in the north wall, which was lately found in part of the wall where it had been used as building material; this has on it a very early attenuated figure of the crucified Saviour, clothed in long drapery. It might have been part of a cross-head; certainly it is a very remarkable figure, and of very early date. There is a tall cross-shaft and pedestal, now in the churchyard, but this is said to have been a market cross originally. The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings were called in to do the work of repairing and, as usual, their work has been done in an inexpensive manner and on conservative lines. They found that the foundation of the old walls, only two feet below the surface, was just a trench filled with loose pebbles and sand. Three miles to the east of Marton stands the church which, next to the Minster, we may put at the head of the list of all the churches in the county. This is what Murray rightly speaks of as “The venerable church of St. Mary at Stow, the mother church of the great Minster.”

STOW

Stow is thought to be identical with the Roman Sidnacester, and the first church was built there in 678 by the Saxon King Egfrith, husband of Etheldred, the foundress of Ely, at the time when Wilfrid’s huge Northumbrian diocese was divided. From 627, when Paulinus, Bishop of York, preached at Lincoln, baptized in the Trent and built the first stone church in Lincolnshire, to 656, the province of Lindisse, or Lindsey, was under the Bishop of York. From 656 to 678 it was under the Bishops of Mercia, whose “Bishop-stool” was at Repton, and after 669 at Lichfield. In 678 King Egfrith of Northumbria established the diocese of Lindsey, with Eadred as first bishop, with its “Bishop-stool,” and a church of stone built for the See at Sidnacester or Stow. This lasted for 192 years; then, in 870, the Danes overran Mercia and burnt Stow church and murdered Bishop Berktred. Then from 876, when England was divided between Edmund Ironside and Canute, Lincoln became an important Danish borough. This period is marked by the number of streets in Lincoln called ‘gates,’ and by the enormous number of villages in the county ending in the Danish ‘by,’ which we find side by side with the Saxon terminations ‘ton’ and ‘ham.’ The Danes held Lincoln certainly till 940, during which time the province had no bishop. In 958 Lindsey was united with Leicester, and the “Bishop-stool” was fixed at Dorchester-on-Thames till, in 1072, it was transferred to Lincoln, and the province of Lindsey became part of the diocese of Lincoln under Remigius, the first Bishop of Lincoln. Stow being burnt in 870, remained in ruins till about 1040, when Eadnoth, seventh Bishop of Dorchester, rebuilt it, using the materials of the older church as far as they would go, as may be seen in the lower part of the transept walls. He probably built the massive round-headed tower arches. Leofric, Earl of Mercia, and his wife, Godiva, helped liberally both with the building and the endowment. The Early Norman nave, and the upper parts of the transepts are probably the work of Bishop Remigius (1067-1093) who, we are told, “re-edified the Minster at Stow.” The chancel is late Norman, of the best kind, and, together with the rich doorways in the nave, may be assigned to Bishop Alexander (1123-1147) whose great west doorway at Lincoln is of similar workmanship. A few Early English windows, and the Perpendicular central tower, are all that has been added later, so that the church is of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The tower rests on pointed arches, whose piers come down inside the angles formed by the old Norman arches, which remain, and are visible below and outside the pointed arches, and give the very remarkable appearance of double arches supporting the central tower.

COTES BY STOW

A curious loop-moulding goes round the western Norman arch, and is used also on a window in the south transept, and a similar moulding is found at Coleby. The chancel is surrounded by an arcade, and a stone seat runs all round. In restoring the church in 1864 Mr. Pearson left part of the north-west pier of the tower untouched, in order to show the red traces of the fire of 870, and in the north transept a mass of burnt stone is visible behind the organ. This is close to a fine and very early doorway which opens into the north aisle from the west side of the transept, while on the opposite side, in an altar recess, remains, fast fading, are seen of a fresco depicting scenes from the life of St. Thomas à Becket. The steep rood-loft steps start four feet above the pavement from the angle of the north-east pier close by. The stone groining of the chancel has been renewed on the old pattern obtained from several of the old stones which were found built into the walls; and in underpinning the walls in order to replace the groining, the bases of pillars were discovered, showing that a previous chancel with aisles had been either built or else begun and abandoned. The small windows and lack of buttresses give the outside a plain appearance, but the three Norman doorways are rich, and there is a great majesty about the Norman work of the spacious and lofty interior. The font, a very early one, is octagonal, and rests on eight circular shafts. It was late in the evening when we left this wonderful church, but we had only two miles to go to see the beautiful old rood screen at Cotes-by-Stow, which is half way between Stow and the Ermine Street. It is approached by a field road, and stands at the entrance to a farm, but the little chapel, built of small, rough stones, is so shut in by trees that the top of its double bell-turret is the only part of it visible. Inside is a round tub font, with a square base, some old oak benches, four on one side and three on the other; and, what no one would expect in such a tiny remote chapel, the most beautiful of old Perpendicular rood screens, with exquisite carving, and with the overhang complete. Moreover, the gallery is still approachable by the ancient rood loft staircase. The loft is about three feet wide, and there is a tiny pair of keyhole windows, each about ten inches by two, set close together, in the south wall to light it. Of ordinary windows the whole south side has but two, though there are four of different sizes with old leaded panes on the north side. The doorway is Early English. The building was restored in an excellent manner in 1884 by Mr. J. L. Pearson, who put back the original altar slab with its unusual number of six crosses.

Stow Church.

We recrossed the field, and passing between Ingham and Cammeringham, climbed the hill, and, getting on to the ridge, turned to the right for Lincoln, distant about eight miles. As we went along we looked down on Brattleby and Aisthorpe, on Scampton and the Carltons, and passed through Burton to the minster city.

The mists were rising in the flat country westwards, and the ripening corn gave a colour to the fields below us, and, as the sun set at the edge of the horizon, it seemed to us that it would be extremely difficult to find any road in England more striking, or from which so fine a view could be seen for so many miles on end.

FISKERTON

Of the three eastern roads one goes by Greetwell and Fiskerton to Gautby and Baumber. Cherry Willingham lies just to the north where, till 1820, the vicarage was a small thatched house at the end of the village.

Fiskerton was given by Edward the Confessor to Peterborough, and the gift still holds. The charter was copied by Symon Gunton in his famous history of Peterborough, of which he was prebendary from 1646 to 1676, and at the same time rector of Fiskerton, where Dean Kipling was also rector in 1806. Only a few years ago what is either the original charter of the Confessor or an early copy was discovered in the cathedral library. The unique chronicle of the abbey and monastery called ‘Swapham,’ and written in MS., was saved from Cromwell’s soldiers who were burning all the books, etc., by Gunton’s son, who tucked it under his arm, saying that it was exempt from destruction being a Bible, as any fool could see. That, too, is now one of the treasures of the cathedral library. The Fiskerton Register is one of the earliest, beginning in 1559. In that book is the following entry for 1826:—

“The driest summer known for the last 20 years. Conduit water taken from Lincoln to Boston. No rain from April Fair 20th to the 26th of June. The river was deepened this summer, packet went to Boston by the drain; prayers for rain during Hay harvest.”

Barlings Abbey lies three miles to the north-east, across Fiskerton Moor. It was founded in 1054 for Premonstratensian canons by Ralph de Hoya, and a grand tower, 180 feet high, was still standing in 1710. Half-way to Gautby we reach Stainfield, founded by Henry Percy at about the same time for Benedictine nuns.

At Gautby was once a hall belonging to the Vyner family, and in the church are monuments dated 1672 and 1673. Here, too, is a slab in memory of F. G. Vyner, who was one of the party so infamously murdered by Greek brigands in 1870.

From here Baumber is quickly reached. This church, whose massive tower base is Norman, is the burial place of the Duke of Newcastle’s family. Here, too, an old hall once stood, close by, in Sturton Park, just below a spur of the South Wold.

THE SNELLAND SHREW

From Baumber, going four miles south, we reach Horncastle. The main eastern road from Lincoln to Wragby is described later in the Louth-to-Lincoln route. It is the Roman road to Horncastle. At the seventh milestone, shortly after passing Sudbrooke Holme, the house of Mr. C. Sibthorpe, where the garden is one of the most beautifully kept and tastefully planted of any garden in the county, the road divides to the left for Market Rasen, by Snelland, Wickenby, Lissington, and Linwood; and to the right for Wragby, where it again divides for Louth on the left, and on the right for Baumber and Horncastle. The third of the roads takes a north-easterly direction by Dunholme to Market Rasen. All this route between Nettleham and Linwood lies in the flat strip of country some eight miles wide, which runs up from the Fens to the Humber, narrowing in width after reaching Brigg, from whence it is drained by the river Ancholme and the Wear dyke, which discharge into the Humber opposite Read’s Island, between South Ferriby and Winteringham. Half way across this flat-land, on the way to Market Rasen, and two miles to the left of the Wragby road, is Snelland. This place is called in Domesday Book Esnelent, and also Sneleslunt; and we find that land was held here by Thomas of Bayeux, Archbishop of York and chaplain to the Conqueror, while another land-holder was William de Percy, founder of Whitby Abbey and commander of the fleet which brought the Conqueror over. It is now the property of the Cust family. The following rhymed marriage entry is in the Snelland register for the year 1671, Mr. R. S. having presumably married a well-known scold:—

“The first day of November

Robert Sherriffe may remember

That he was marryed for all the days of his life

If God be not merciful to him and take his wife.”

THE ST. POLL TOMBS

North of Snelland is Snarford, which we should visit, not so much to see the four inner arches of the church tower, which are Norman, as to inspect the wonderful tombs of the St. Poll family. The earliest is in the chancel, where Sir Thomas lies on an altar tomb in plate armour, with helmet under his head, bearing as crest an elephant and castle; he wears both sword and dagger, and holds in his hand a book. They seem to have been a literary family, for his wife, in a long flowing robe with girdle and a peculiar head-dress, also holds a book, and the side panels have a projection on each face also supporting a book. A son and a daughter are kneeling below; and a canopy supported on pillars and having a richly moulded cornice bears, over each pillar and between the pillars, kneeling figures—ten in all. Shields of arms enclosed in wreaths form further decorations, but both this, which is dated 1582, and the other large monument in the north chantry are much defaced, and the heavy canopies look as if they might fall and destroy the figures beneath them at any moment. It is no good shouting “police!” but where is the archdeacon? This north chantry has been boarded off from the church, which has an ugly effect. The monuments in it are first to Sir George St. Poll, 1613, and his wife Frances, daughter of Chief Justice Sir Christopher Wray of Glentworth, whom he married in 1583. This is very large, being eleven and a half feet in height and width. Sir George reclines on his elbow; he, also, is in armour, his wife is by his side; and below is their little daughter Mattathia, with cherubs weeping and resting their inverted torches on skulls. The wife, after putting up this monument, took for a second husband Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick; and opposite to the monument of herself and her first husband she re-appears as the Countess of Warwick, on a round tablet, with medallions of herself and the earl, her second husband, who died in 1618. His first wife was Lady Penelope Devereux, by whom he had two sons, Robert and Henry, and two daughters, Lettice and Essex. A brass on the south side of the chancel has a quaint Latin inscription, by the Snarford parson, telling us that Frances Wray, after marriage, was twelve years without issue, and then had a daughter who died before reaching her second birthday, “cut off while on her way to Bath.” This was a terrible loss of a most precious treasure, and he mentions that he had christened her Mattathia, and goes on to tell us that the “mother passes no day without tears of poignant anguish,” and ends with “How I wished, alas in vain, that I the writer, instead of thee, had been the subject of a funeral elegy. John Chadwick, Sept. 9th, 1597.”

“Hos tibi jam posui versus Mattathia Sct. Poll,

Qui primum in sacro nomina fonte dedi.

Quam vellem (at frustra), te nempe superstite, scriptor

Essem funerei carminis ipse mihi.”

THE BUSLINGTHORPE BRASS

Close to the St. Poll monument in the chantry is a stone in memory of George Brownlow Doughty, 1743, who married a Tichborne heiress, and took the name in addition to his own. From Snarford, less than four miles brings us to Buslingthorpe, where is a Crusader’s effigy, which, like the priest at Little Steeping, had been turned upside down and used as a paving-stone, possibly for the sake of saving it from destruction. This may be Sir John de Buslingthorpe, c. 1250. But the great treasure of the church is a brass half-effigy on a coffin-lid, which also had been buried, and was only recovered in 1707. This represents a knight in armour, holding a heart and wearing remarkable scaled gauntlets. The inscription in Norman French is without date, but reads: “Issy gyt Sire Richard le fiz sire John de Boselyngthorp,” and is probably not later than 1290. This is earlier than the somewhat similar brass in Croft Church, which is assigned to 1300 or 1310, but is not so early as the fine brass of Sir John d’Abernoun at Stoke d’Abernon in Surrey, which is dated 1277. Anyhow, it is the earliest in Lincolnshire. From here, less than four miles brings us back on to the Market Rasen road at Linwood, only two miles from Rasen.

LINWOOD

Instead of going by Snarford and Buslingthorpe we might have reached Rasen by a more direct route from Snelland through Wickenby to Lissington. Here the road divides, the right hand going to Legsby and Sixhills, and then turning left-handed to join the Louth and Rasen road at North Willingham; or, if the day is clear, the traveller can go straight on from Sixhills and climb the Wold, which with a rise of one hundred feet will give him a view and bring him to the crown of the same road at Ludford. The left-hand road from Lissington will bring us to Rasen viâ Linwood. This is a pretty road just elevated above the flat, whence the church spire is visible for a long way. This interesting church, dedicated to St. Cornelius, Bishop of Rome, A.D. 251, is of the Early English period with Perpendicular tower. The brasses, which are good, have been removed from the south chantry to the north aisle and placed at the west end. We have John Lyndewode, wool stapler, and his wife, under a double canopy, date 1419. In his shield are three Linden leaves, which shows the name of the village to mean ‘the Linden (or Limetree) wood.’ There is also one to their son John, a wool stapler, dated 1421, and a figure of a bishop in the south chancel window, probably commemorates another son William, who became Bishop of St. David’s. A cross-legged effigy of a knight has been torn from its matrix. The old Lyndewode Manor once stood close to the church.

Continuing northwards for two miles we find ourselves at Market Rasen.

CHAPTER XIII
ROADS SOUTH FROM LINCOLN

The Foss Way—The Sleaford Road and Dunston Pillar on “The Heath”—The Ermine Street and the Grantham Road on “The Ridge”—Canwick—Blankney—Digby—Rowston—Brant-Broughton—Temple Bruer and the Knights Templars and Hospitallers—Somerton Castle and King John of France—Navenby—Coleby—Bracebridge.

Besides these three roads going east from Lincoln, there are three great roads which run along “the ridged wold” northwards, and two going south; but these two, as soon as they are clear of Lincoln, branch into a dozen, which, augmented by five lines of railway, all radiating from one centre and all linked by innumerable small roads which cross them, form, on the map, an exact pattern of a gigantic spider’s web. Of this dozen the three trunk roads southwards are the Foss Way to Newark in the flat country, and the Sleaford road over “the heath,” both of which roads avoid all villages (though the Sleaford road passes through Leasingham, described in Chap. [VIII.], about two miles north of Sleaford, and has that curious erection, the Dunston pillar, at the roadside about eight miles out from Lincoln, described in the chapter on Nocton); and thirdly, the Grantham road, on the ridge between the two, which has a village at every mile. Others run, one to Skellingthorpe, one to Doddington with its interesting old Hall, which we will revert to shortly; one all down the Witham valley to Beckingham on the border, going by Basingham with its ninth-century Saxon font, and Norton Disney with its fine Disney tombs and remarkable brass, also to be described later; and one to Brant Broughton.

CANWICK

ROWSTON

A sign-post in Lincoln points to this village, because, though twelve miles distant, there is nothing on the way; indeed you may follow up the valley of the Brant River another six miles to its source near Hough-on-the-Hill, and then go on another six as it curves round into Grantham, and not pass through anything but Marston, and there is nothing to see there but the old seat of the Thorold family, Marston Hall, now a farmhouse. All these are on the low ground to the west. Then on the ridge itself is “the Ermine Street,” and east of the Sleaford highway is a desolate road over “Lincoln Heath” to Scopwick, where a stream, crossed by several single planks, runs right through the village. East of this, another somewhat important road goes across the low and once swampy ground south of Lincoln, where the Witham gets through the gap in the cliff ridge to Canwick. Here the church, which has a rich Norman chancel arch and arcade, and an Early English arcaded reredos in the vestry, once a chantry chapel, rises, without any other footing, from a Roman pavement; here, too, from the grounds of Mr. Waldo Sibthorp’s house, Canwick Hall, where the cliff begins again, you get a most beautiful view of the minster about two miles distant; indeed, those who live near Lincoln and can see the minster may boast of a view which for grandeur has few equals in the land. This walk from Lincoln is a favourite one, and passes a well-planted cemetery of twenty-five acres, part of which was taken from the common, which rejoices in the delightfully bucolic name of “the Cowpaddle.” The road is really the continuation of the Wragby road, and, curving down Lindum road passes into Broadgate, then crossing the Witham and the Sincel dyke and the intersection of the Midland and Great Northern Railways, crosses yet two more lines before it reaches the cemetery. After Canwick the road goes through Branston and passes, near Nocton, Dunston, and Metheringham, to Blankney. The hall here, the home of Mr. Henry Chaplin, than whom no Lincolnshire man is better known or more popular, is now occupied by Lord Londesborough. The church has a curious tomb-slab to John de Glori, with a bearded head looking out of a cusped opening, and a beautiful sculpture by Boehm of Lady Florence Chaplin. This is one of the few churches in which the ringing of the Curfew-bell still obtains. After Blankney the road passes Scopwick and curves round through Digby, Donnington and Rushington to Sleaford. Of these villages Digby is worth seeing, and so is Rowston, lying one mile north of it. At Digby the village cross has been restored, but with a very indifferent top, and at the other end of the village is a curious stone lock-up, like a covered well-head, and hardly capable of holding more than one man at a time. Lingfield in Surrey has a larger one called ‘Ye Village Cage’; it has two steps up inside, and is capable of holding a dozen people. The tower has three stages, Early English, Decorated and Perpendicular. The south door is transition Norman, the north arcade aisle and chancel Early English, the south arcade and aisle Decorated, and the font, screen and clerestory Perpendicular. In this the six tall two-light windows are distributed in pairs. Rowston, which is dedicated to St. Clement, has a spire rising from a tall tower, so little wider than itself that it may safely be said to cover less ground than any tower in England, for it measures only five and a-half feet inside; it is blank except for a rather heavy window in the upper stage. The first thing that strikes you on entering is the extraordinary loud ticking of the clock. It has to be stopped during service, as no one can compete with it. The next thing is that the thirteen windows are all filled with painted glass and of the same type, striking in design, though not of quite first-rate excellence. One window has figures of the three Lincolnshire saints—St. Guthlac, St. Hugh, and St. Gilbert. The church is in very good order, having been recently restored, and some Saxon stones with interlaced work have been built into the outside wall of the chancel. It would have been better to have put these inside. But there is inside a very good head of a churchyard or village cross, and the base and broken shaft of one, possibly the same, is just outside the churchyard. This head is of the usual penthouse form, with a carved figure on either side; it was found quite recently built into a cowshed. In the nave the pillars are all different. The vestry was over the burial chapel of the Foster family; later it was, as was so often the case, used for a school. A beautiful bit of an old carved oak screen separates it now from the north aisle. A heavy timber floor cuts across the top of the tall tower arch, and below a very curious pillar stands against one side of the arch. An Early English priest’s door, with a flat-arched lintel, is in the south wall of the chancel. It is impossible to walk round the slender tower, as a garden wall runs into it on both the north and south sides, leaving part of the tower in a neighbouring garden, the owner of which once claimed half the tower as his property, and considered that he had a right to pierce a door through it for easier access to his pew.

GRANTHAM ROAD

We have now but one road south of Lincoln to describe—for what we have to say about Norton Disney and Nocton can come afterwards; this is the Grantham road, a road curiously full of villages mostly perched on the western edge of the ridge, whilst the Ermine Street running so near it on the east has no villages at all on it, and the Sleaford road over “the Heath,” a little to the east of the Ermine Street, is, as we have said, just as bare. The number of roads in Lincolnshire which have no villages on them is very remarkable, though not hard to explain. We have already, in treating of the roads from Grantham, through the villages of Manthorpe, Belton, Syston, Barkstone, Honington, Carlton Scroop, Normanton, Caythorpe and Fulbeck, brought the account of this road northwards as far as Leadenham. Here the Sleaford and Newark main road crosses it, and Leadenham spire is a fine landmark for all the neighbourhood. It is to be noted that, common as the Danish termination ‘by’ is in all parts of the county, the Saxon ‘ton’ just about here and on the west side generally, is even more frequent.

This spire is crocketed, but has no flying buttresses. The nave and arcades are lofty, with bold clustered columns, and the doorways, which are quite different in style, are both very good. There is some good Flemish glass, and a stone monument of the Beresford family has long been in use as an altar. Wellbourn, on an Early English tower, has one of those ugly, Perpendicular “sugar loaf” spires, with a sort of bulge in the middle, and that to a worse degree than at Caythorpe. The nave and aisles are the work of John of Wellbourn, the munificent treasurer of Lincoln in the middle of the fourteenth century.

Brant Broughton.

BRANT BROUGHTON

THE VILLAGE SMITH

To the right and left of Wellbourn are two places which should not be missed. Brant Broughton, with its beautiful spire, and Temple Bruer, where are the remains of a preceptory of the Knights Templars. The church of Brant Broughton (pronounced Bruton) is a beautiful structure, and all in perfect order, the magnificent lofty chancel having been built to match the rest of the church by Bodley and Garner in 1876. To take the woodwork first, the tall handsome screen and the chancel stalls are in memory of the late rector, Canon E. H. Sutton, as is also the lofty carved font cover, whose doors open and display three carved and coloured figures, one being St. Nicholas, the patron saint, with the three children in a pickling tub, whom he is said to have raised to life after their murder by a butcher, as is so quaintly represented in the famous black font in Winchester Cathedral. The roof, which in the first instance was of a higher pitch, as seen by the string course, is an exact reproduction, both in shape and colour, of the old Perpendicular one which it replaced, and is in appearance upborne by figures of angels with outspread wings. The three tall arches of the aisle arcades and chancel are Early English, two of the pillars are octagonal. These arches are very high, though not so high as those in Hough-on-the-Hill, which are of about the same date. The three-light clerestory windows, five on each side, and the roof to the nave, were added with the upper stages of the tower in 1460, and the Perpendicular aisle windows are large and handsome, and have a transom running across the tracery in the head of each. They are filled with most interesting glass, good in design, and mostly good in colour, all of which was made in the village by the late Canon Sutton, who also filled several windows in Lincoln Minster. The ironwork in the church was also made by Mr. F. Coldron and Son at the village forge, where excellent work is always being done and sent to all parts of the country. All the work inside the church, and the chancel in particular, is beautifully finished in every detail, and bears the impress of being all the work of one mind, and as that mind was Bodley’s, and he took the utmost pains with it, it need hardly be said that it comes very near perfection.

Among the things to notice are the long stone responds of light clustered pillars between each clerestory window, which support the roof timbers. This is seen in other churches in this part of the county, but is otherwise by no means common. Another is that at intervals on the outer moulding of some of the doors and windows are carved rosettes which give a very rich effect and are, I believe, unique. The excellent lectern eagle is a copy of one at Oxborough in Norfolk, and a similar one is in the neighbouring church of Navenby. Thus far I have spoken of the inside, but it is the outside of the church which gives the greatest delight, for it is a very perfect specimen, built of good stone, of the finest proportions, and richly ornamented. The nave and chancel have each an ornate parapet, while the nave is also embattled and pinnacled. The tower has the most glorious base-mouldings, and the pinnacled and crocketed spire soars up 175 feet. Both tower and spire date from about 1320, the period of the Flowing Decorated style. But the two porches, which are a little later, are absolute gems of architecture. They have groined roofs, their parapets are pierced and ornamented, thickly set with gargoyles, and supported by canopied buttresses. Over the entrance of the south porch is a figure of Christ seated, and in the north porch is an ornamental roof ridge of carved stone. These porches are as beautiful as anything can well be; altogether it would be hard to find in a country village anything architectural, more pleasing than Brant Broughton Church.

The Ermine Street at Temple Bruer.

THE ERMINE STREET

We passed through the village, visited the Coldron forge, and then by a road constantly turning first right then left, with fields of scarlet poppy or brilliant yellow corn-marigold on either hand, and with a stormy sky which ever and anon brought us a squall of rain, we drove across the flat country eastwards till we crossed the railway and reached the ridge. Climbing this, we come to Wellbourn, on the Grantham road, and going on eastwards over Wellbourn Heath we reach the Ermine Street, here only a wide grassy track. This we cross and go forwards through a well-cultivated, but almost uninhabited plain, till we see on the left a farm road leading over a field to a big farmyard, in the middle of which stands a solitary square-built Early English tower, with windows irregularly placed, and steps on one side. This is all that is left of a Preceptory of the Knights Templars, founded early in the thirteenth century in the reign of Henry II. by the Lady Elizabeth de Canz at Temple Bruer.

THE TEMPLARS

One does not always like to confess one’s ignorance, but I am sure many people may read that word “preceptory” without at all knowing what it may mean, or what the difference is between a Preceptory and a Commandery. So we may as well say something about the Templars, and the kindred order of the Hospitallers. And here I may say that I am indebted for my facts to a paper read at Lincoln by Bishop Trollope in 1857.

The first, then, of these, in point of time, were the Hospitallers. But as they long outlived the Templars we will take the history of the Templars first. This famous order, half-religious and half military, was founded in 1118, during the first Crusade, by nine French knights, whose object was to protect pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. At first they were bound by laws of poverty, and were termed “Poor Knights,” but Baldwin II., having given them lodging in a part of his palace at Jerusalem, the abbot of the Temple Convent, which adjoined the palace, gave them further rooms to live in, and from this they got the name “Templars.” In 1128 they adopted a white distinctive mantle, to which a red cross on the breast and on their banner was added in 1166. The fame of their feats of arms and chivalry induced many members of noble houses to join the society, and land and treasure were so freely offered them that they became known for their wealth, as at first for their poverty. Their head was termed “Grand Master,” and their headquarters were in Palestine, until they moved, in 1192, to Cyprus. In other countries each section or “Province” was governed by a “Grand Preceptor.” They first came to England in the early part of Stephen’s reign, and had a church in London, near Southampton Buildings, called “The Old Temple,” from which they migrated in 1185 to the spot where the circular Temple Church still stands. Their wealth was the cause of their downfall, morally and physically; and the monarchs, both of France and England, becoming jealous, Philip IV., in 1307, seized and imprisoned every Templar in his dominion, 200 in number, on the vague charges of infidelity, sorcery, and apostasy, and eventually confiscated all their property and burnt more than fifty of them alive, relegating the rest to perpetual seclusion in some monastic house. Edward II. did much the same here, except that there were no burnings or executions. Old Fuller, the historian, was probably thinking of those in France when he says in his inimitable way: “Their lives would not have been taken if their lands could have been got without; but the mischief was, the honey could not be got without burning the bees.” In 1312 the Pope, Clement V., who was under Philip’s thumb at Avignon, and had helped him to coerce Edward II., abolished the order, which was found to be possessed of no less than 9,000 manors and 16,000 lordships, besides lands abroad. Grants were made to favourites, and also to those who had claims for some benefaction to any Templar’s estate. Thus Robert de Swines (Sweyne’s)-thorp was to receive 3d. a day for food, and another 3d. for himself and 2d. for his groom; and his daughter, Alice Swinesthorpe was to have for life (and she drew it for thirty years) “7 white loaves, 3 squire’s loaves, 5 gals of better ale, 7 dishes of meat and fish on Saturday for the week following, and an extra dish (interferculum) of the better course of the brethren, at Xmas, Easter, Whitsuntide, Midsummer, The Assumption, and Feast of All Saints, and 3 stone of cheese yearly and an old gown of the brethren.”

THE HOSPITALLERS

Twelve years later Edward granted the whole of their property to the similar society of “Knights Hospitallers.”

This society came into existence some fifty years before the Templars, and originated in a band of traders from Amalfi, who got leave from the Caliph of Egypt to build a church and monastery for the Latins near the Holy Sepulchre, in order to look after the sick and poor pilgrims who used to come in large numbers to Jerusalem. Soon a hospital, or guest house, was added, and a chapel dedicated to St. John the Baptist; but the society did not take the distinctive name of Hospitallers, or guest receivers, until 1099, when Jerusalem was in the hands of the Christians. They then assumed a white cross as their badge, and were termed Knights of the Hospital, Knights Hospitallers, or Knights of St. John.

In 1154 they procured a Papal bull, relieving them from payment of tithes, and exempting them from all interdicts and excommunications, and giving them other privileges, but binding them never to leave the order. These marks of Papal favour seem to have made them presumptuous, and great complaints soon arose of their insolence. They were accused before the Pope, but they managed to clear themselves and to keep their privileges. Hence we find that Temple Bruer, which came to them after the destruction of the Knights Templars, still remains exempt from the payment of tithe, and from episcopal jurisdiction, as being extra parochial.

KNIGHTS OF MALTA

The head of the order had the title of “Grand Prior,” and when the Christians were expelled from Palestine, the Knights retreated to Cyprus, after which they took from the Turks the island of Rhodes, which they held against the Sultan until 1522, when Solyman II., after a long siege, forced them to capitulate. A few years after that, the Emperor Charles V. gave them a home in Malta, and they thenceforth were commonly called Knights of Malta. They fortified the island, and imported soil to make it productive, and putting to sea with their galleys they made constant war upon all Turkish vessels. Solyman at length determined to drive them out of Malta. He despatched a fleet of 180 galleys, carrying 30,000 men. The Turks took the fort of St. Elmo, but with a loss of 8,000 men; and when the Emperor sent an army to assist the Knights, La Valette, the Grand Prior, a famous leader, drove the Moslems off. After this they remained in Malta until the order was dissolved at the close of the eighteenth century by order of Napoleon, when most of the Knights took service in the French army. Whilst the society existed it had branch establishments in England, where the chief or Prior took precedence of all the barons, and had a seat in Parliament. Their establishments were called “commanderies”—while those of the Templars, who were ruled by “Grand Preceptors,” were called “preceptories.” Of these there were three in Lincolnshire: at Willoughton, four miles south of Kirton in Lindsey; at Aslackby, two miles south of Falkingham; and at Temple Bruer; all three situated close to the Ermine Street or “High Dyke” as they call it, on Lincoln Heath, and it is from the heath that one of them gets its name Templum de la bruère, or the temple on the heath, shortened into Temple Bruer.

TEMPLE BRUER

The lands of these Knights Templars, which were handed over by Edward II. in 1324 to the Knights Hospitallers, were all sequestrated in England at the time of the dissolution of the monastic and religious houses in 1538, and, like so many other Lincolnshire estates, granted by Henry VIII. to his relative, Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk. Henry, with his wife, Katherine Howard, dined at Temple Bruer when on his way to Lincoln in 1541. The buildings then were of considerable size, and the circular church, whose pillar bases have been laid bare, a little to the west of the existing tower, was fifty feet in diameter. It is modelled on the plan of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, having, as may still be seen in London, Cambridge, and Northampton, a corridor running round between the circular arcade of the church and the outer wall. The existing tower is of the Early English period, fifty feet high, and having three storeys; the walls of the lower storey are decorated by arcading on two sides, and the rising levels of the floor indicate that an altar was placed at the east end, so that it was probably the domestic chapel of the Grand Prior. The roof of this and the next storey is vaulted, and above the third storey was a parapet. The rooms were reached by a winding staircase in the north-west angle. A well nine feet in diameter, and never dry, was in the precincts, and another, discovered in the eighteenth century, was found to have in it three large bells. The Earl of Dorset, who owned this interesting property in 1628, sold it to Richard Brownlow of Belton, whose daughter and co-heiress carried it to the family of Lord Guildford, and he sold it to the ancestors of Mr. Chaplin of Blankney.

Temple Bruer Tower.

KNIGHTS AT RHODES

It shows that the interest in the Order of the Knights of Jerusalem is not yet extinct when we read the following, which appeared in The Times of December 21, 1913:—

“HOUSE OF THE KNIGHTS AT RHODES.

“(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

Rome, Dec. 23.

“The Tribuna announces that the House of the Knights at Rhodes has been acquired for France by the French Ambassador at Constantinople, M. Bompard. The house, which is one of the most beautiful in the island, is a Gothic edifice dating from the 15th century, and was originally the residence of the French Priors of the Order of Jerusalem.

“⁂ This appears to refer to the Auberge of the “Langue” of France, with its shield-adorned façade in the famous street of the Knights in Rhodes, which is still preserved in fair condition. Under the Ottoman regime no Christian was allowed to own a house or to sleep within the walled town of Rhodes, and before the revival of the Constitution foreigners were jealously excluded from the majority of the medieval buildings of the city. It is probably due to this suspicious and exclusive attitude that no such step as that just taken by France has been attempted before. It is to be hoped that the palace of the Grand Masters of the Order of the Hospital, which ruled the island from 1309 until 1522, is now no longer to be used as a common prison.”

SOMERTON CASTLE

From Temple Bruer we return to the “High Dyke,” and, crossing it, make westward for the Grantham road; but before we go along it, by Boothby Graffoe to Navenby, we must pause on the Ridge, or “Cliff,” as they call it there, and look down on a solitary round tower on a slight elevation about a mile across the flat plain which extends westward from the Wolds to the Trent. This tower and its grassy mounds are all that is left of a once fine stronghold, built, about 1281, by Antony Bec, Archdeacon of Durham, second son of Walter Bec, Baron d’Eresby. He was consecrated Bishop of Durham in the presence of Edward I., on January 9, 1284, and he was wise enough, a few years later, when his growing magnificence excited the jealousy of his sovereign, to present Somerton to Edward I., and it remained a royal castle for some three centuries, passing afterwards through several families, among whom were the Disneys of Norton and Carlton. Edward, son of Thomas Disney of Carlton-le-Moorland having purchased it from Sir George Bromley, and being succeeded in 1595 by his son Thomas, who having lost both his sons, sold it to Sir Ed. Hussey. Hence we find that his son Charles, afterwards Sir Charles Hussey of Caythorpe, is described in his marriage licence, April 10, 1649, as Charles Hussey, Esq., of Somerton.

After the battle of Poictiers, in 1356, John, son of Philip of Valois, King of France, was brought captive to London, together with his third son Philip. Hence, after a short residence at the Savoy Palace, they went to Windsor as guests of the King and Queen Philippa, and were subsequently sent to Hertford Castle. Edward III. soon thought it wiser to transfer them to Somerton, where they were placed under the custody of William, Baron d’Eyncourt of Blankney, during the years 1359 and 1360. The expensive furnishing of the castle (see Chap. [XXXVII.]) and the provision made for the maintenance of the large number of the king’s French suite, and of the officers and men who were appointed to guard the prisoners, and the style of life there, the tuns of French claret, and the enormous amount of sugar to make French bon-bons, together with the subsequent history of King John, who, on being set at liberty, returned in the most honourable way to England in 1363, because his son Louis, Duc d’Anjou, had broken his parole as a hostage and left England for France, is fully related by Bishop Trollope. King John died in 1364, at the palace of the Savoy.

Somerton Castle, which we must now visit, was a fortified dwelling-place with outer and inner moats, and with round towers at each corner of an irregular parallelogram, only one remains now at the south-west angle. This is forty-five feet high, and has three storeys—the lower one vaulted, the highest covered with a conical roof and having two chimneys, rising well above the plain parapet, which is still perfect, and springs from a bold and effective moulding. Each floor is lit by small lancet windows, the middle one much enlarged of late years, for it is still inhabited, together with some building adjoining it on the east, as a farm house. The large earthworks around the castle, which are especially noticeable on the south, are very remarkable, and must be much earlier than the castle, which seems to have been planted inside these rectangular embankments, of which the northern side has been levelled, probably at the time of the building. The earthworks are not Roman in character, and are probably of very great antiquity. Outside these are at least two round artificial hills, which have not been as yet explained with certainty.

NAVENBY

Leaving the castle, and driving over the rough field road which leads to it, we regain a highway which takes us up “the cliff” to the village of Navenby. This is situated on a spur jutting out from the edge of the cliff, with a deep little valley sweeping round on the south side and breaking down into the plain. Nestling in the curve of the hill are some picturesque farm buildings and stacks, and above is an old windmill; whilst over the horizon peeps through the trees the spire of Wellingore Church. The chancel of Navenby Church, as at Heckington, is as long as the nave, and almost as high; indeed, this Decorated chancel is as fine as any to be found, no other being built on at all so magnificent a scale, except Hawton in Notts, and Heckington and perhaps Merton at Oxford. The tower, which probably had a spire, fell in the eighteenth century, and the whole church was restored about forty years ago, by Kirk of Sleaford, who made the chancel roof of too high a pitch, and kept the nave roof too low. The pillars in the nave, of which there are two on each side, have shafts clustered round a central column, four shafts of coursed masonry alternating with four light detached monolithic shafts, all united under a circular capital. But the north-west pillar is thicker than the others, and belongs to the latter part of the twelfth century. The tower arch is a low one; the fine Decorated east window of six lights, restored in 1876, has superb tracery, and is nearly as fine as that at Heckington. There are four large chancel windows, and a good Early English window in the south aisle. There is also a rood-loft staircase, and a rood-loft with canopy, or ‘hang over,’ and a modern rood-beam above bearing a large crucifix and two almost life-size figures carved and painted. An octagon panelled font stands on a pedestal of slender columns. The roof of both nave and aisles is painted. The clerestory, added later, has five three-light windows. The east window is filled with white glass, slightly toned, and is half hidden by a tapestry screen used as a reredos, by no means beautiful, and twice as high as it need be. The Jacobean pulpit and the fine copy of an old brass eagle lectern, as at Brant Broughton, are to be noticed; but the main glories of the church are in the chancel, where, besides the splendid windows, there are, on the south side, three rich sedilia and a piscina; and on the north, just east of the canopied arch for the founder’s tomb, in which is now placed a trefoiled stone with Lombardic lettering of Richard Dewe, priest, is a priest’s door and a very beautiful Easter Sepulchre. This is only surpassed by those at Heckington, Lincoln, and Hawton, near Newark. It has only one compartment, with three Roman soldiers, with mutilated heads, below the opening, and above it, amongst the delicately carved foliage of the canopy, are two figures of women. Few churches can give more pleasure to the lover of church architecture than this; and its fine position on the edge of the cliff, with the wide view over the plain westward, makes a visit to Navenby very memorable.

COLEBY

Going on northwards along the cliff road we pass Boothby Graffoe, where the old church was actually blown down, or, as the Wellingore register has it, “extirpated in a hurricane,” in 1666—and come to Coleby. Here is an early unbuttressed tower with a rude original arch over the door of the tower staircase, and with two keyhole windows in the south side, as in the early Lincoln towers or those at Hough-on-the-Hill, and Clee. Part of the original tower arch is visible inside the tower, which is entered from the nave through a very tall narrow arch supported by two very small pilasters with plain rectangular caps.

TREVENEN PENROSE

The two arches of the north arcade are Transition Norman; those on the south Early English, with good stiff foliage. The tall, plain porch had once a room over it, and retains its richly moulded Transition doorway. The font is of the same date, being a massive cylinder with Norman arcading cut on it, and with four equidistant pillars which give it a square appearance. The crocketed spire is a good one, Perpendicular in style, and of better stone than the tower. The three lancet windows at the east end are filled with good glass, and the seats are of oak with poppy-heads throughout. The fellows of Oriel College, Oxford, to whom the living belongs, helped in its restoration by Bodley and Garner in 1901. The wall at the west end of the south aisle, which runs up to the tower and also forms the west side of the porch, as the aisle has no window, is one long blank face, which has a singularly ugly look outside. Inside, there are some good bench-ends, and there is an inscription by Sir John Coleridge to the Rev. Trevenen Penrose, who spent the greater part of a long life as vicar of the parish.

Navenby.

The Hall is a gabled house of 1628, built by Sir W. Lester, now the property of the Tempest family, and having classic temples in the grounds, one of them adapted from the Rotunda in the baths of Diocletian at Rome.

Harmston, the next village, has a tower of the pre-Norman type, with a mid-wall shaft to the window of the belfry in which are eight bells. A brass plate commemorates Margaret Thorold who had a family of eight sons and eleven daughters, and lived to be eighty.

BRACEBRIDGE

Waddington has some very good Early English work in its clustered columns and carved capitals. Here the string of villages, one at every milestone, ceases, and we go on for three miles seeing the beautiful minster tower in front of us on the height, and arrive at Bracebridge, a very dark church, but with some most interesting Long-and-Short work in the tower, in the angles of the nave, and in the south porch, and a Norman west door to the tower, which is a very early one with mid-wall shaft to the belfry window. The Norman north door is now blocked. There is a curious rectangular opening, twice as wide as its height, in the south aisle, near the porch, which allows a view between the pillars and through the hagioscope or “squint” on the right of the chancel arch to the altar. Another squint is on the left side of the chancel arch, which is a very narrow and early one, through a thick wall.

The nave pillars, two on each side, are cylindrical with four banded shafts attached. The north aisle and transept are modern. A fine Transition Norman font is mounted on a new base, and on the pulpit is still to be seen the old hour-glass stand, as at Leasingham; though there and at Belton in the Isle of Axholme it is attached to a pillar, at Sapperton and Hammeringham it is on the pulpit. There is also an old cracked Sanctus bell.

The road over the heath unites with the Grantham road near Bracebridge, and runs into Lincoln by the Stonebow, and on up to the Minster Hill.

So much for the roads east, west, and south. The roads north of Lincoln demand another chapter. But a few words about Nocton and Norton Disney shall come first.

CHAPTER XIV
PLACES OF INTEREST NEAR LINCOLN

Nocton—Norton Disney—Doddington—Kettlethorpe.