[2b] It would appear, however, that water was a more marked feature of the locality 100 years ago. Sir Joseph Banks, writing of the antiquities of Ashby, in an article contributed to “Archæologia” at that time (vol. xii., p. 96), mentions the “sloping hills with brisk rills of water running through almost every valley.” It should not be forgotten that formerly a tract of forest extended all along this district, so that (as I have mentioned elsewhere) a Dutch sportsman spent a whole season in hunting “in Lincolniensi montium tractu,” among the Lincolnshire hills. When that forest was cleared away, as a natural consequence the streams would shrink in volume, or disappear altogether.
[4] The Elands were landowners in Stourton, East Kirkby, and other places. One of them resided at East Kirkby as late as 1870. Sir William Eland was Constable of Nottingham Castle, 1330, and M.P. for the county in 1333 (Bailey’s “Annals,” vol. i., p. 223). The Gedneys were considerable owners in the neighbourhood. In the church at Bag Enderby there is a handsome stone mural monument of Andrew and Dorothy Gedney, with their two sons and two daughters kneeling before prayer desks. This Andrew Gedney married Dorothy, daughter of Sir William Skipwith, of South Ormesby, by his wife, Alice Dymoke.
[5] John de Kirketon (or Kirton), near Boston, received the honour of knighthood from Ed. II., owned Tattershall and Tumby, and was summoned to Parliament 16 Ed. III. They had large property in Boston in 1867 (Thompson’s “History of Boston,” p. 226).
[6a] The pedigree of the Littleburys is given in the Herald’s “Visitation of Lincolnshire” 1562–4; edited by W. Metcalf, F. S. A. (Bell and Sons, 1881).
[6b] Sir Thomas Meeres was knighted 11 June, 1660. He was almost continuously M.P. for Lincoln from 1660 to his death in 1708. (“Architect. Soc. Journal,” 1891, p. 13.)
[7] The late Poet Laureate, in his poem “Walking to the Mail” (Poems, 1842), tells of a farmer who was so pestered by the presence of this ghost about his house, that he harnessed his horse to his cart and started to leave home to get rid of it:—
“The farmer, vext, packs up his bed,
And all the household stuff, and chairs,
And with his boy betwixt his knees, his wife
Upon the tilt—sets out and meets a friend,
Who hails him, ‘What! Art flitting?’
‘Yes, we’re flitting,’ says the ghost,
For they had packed her among the beds.
‘Oh! Well!’ the farmer says, ‘You’re flitting with us too!
‘Jack, turn the horse’s head, and home again.’”
There are sundry other ghosts, or witches, remembered in the neighbourhood, which may be heard of by the curious.
[9] Among the lists of institutions to benefices, preserved in the Archives at Lincoln, is that of “Thomas Hardie, clerk, presented by the Dean and Chapter, Vicar, A.D. 1567.” This was in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; the patronage, therefore, was probably granted to that body by her father, Henry VIII., on the dissolution of the Tattershall College. (“Institutions, 1540–1570,” edited by Rev. C. W. Foster.)
[10] The writer has reason to remember the hollowness of the beck, for on one occasion, when riding with the foxhounds, there being a steep descent to the beck, and the beck itself having rotten, hollow banks, the soil gave way beneath his horse’s hind legs, and, although they landed on the other side, the horse was all in a heap, and the rider shot over its head. They, however, recovered themselves, and no other riders attempting it they gained a considerable advantage over the rest of the field. When shooting along its banks he has seen places where the hollowness was still more marked, the beck itself being barely more than two feet wide, and four feet, or even more, deep.