leading up to the belfry. Miss Spurrier, the Rector’s daughter, assisted by the coachman, have improved the church by renovating the screen. This lady has also carved a cover for the font in very delicate pattern, the ironwork being done by the village blacksmith, Mr. Priestley.
In the village is an old hostel, partly of the Tudor style, with pointed gable ends, projecting upper story, and constructed, externally, of brick and woodwork.
In the parish register, at the bottom of the page containing the entries for the year 1584, by way of accounting for the number of funerals (51), is the following note: “This yeare plague in Haltham.” Although Haltham and Roughton are ecclesiastically united, and, in position, contiguous, there were, in that year, no extra deaths in Roughton; while in the year 1631–2 there were 43 burials at Roughton, and no increase of mortality at Haltham. The only peculiar record which I can find in connection with Haltham is a “Feet of Fines, Lincoln, 9 Henry III., No. 52,” too long to be quoted in full, which contains an agreement between Henry del Ortiay and Sabina his wife on the one hand, and Ralph de Rhodes on the other hand, tenant of lands with appurtenances, in Horncastre, Upper Tynton, Cuningbye, Holtham, &c., whereby the said Henry and his wife recognise the said lands &c. to be the right of Ralph; he on his part granting to Henry and Sabina other land with appurtenances, in Upper Tynton; certain of the lands being designated Pese-wang, Leir-me-Wang, Whete-wang, and Krunce Wong, with Hethotenacre (Heath of ten acre), Sexacre, and other names. These names illustrate what was said on a previous page regarding the field named “the Wong,” at Horncastle. A very curious feature of the agreement is that the said Henry and Sabina are “to have and to hold” these lands “of the aforesaid Ralph and his heirs forever, rendering therefor, by the year, one pair of gilt spurs, or 6d., at Easter, for all service and exaction.” [217]
Having thus made our halt at Haltham, we bid adieu to the place, and push on southward. Passing Tumby Lawn, the residence of Sir H. M. Hawley, surrounded by leafy groves, within whose shade (teste scriptore) Philomel doth pour forth (malgré the poets) his flood of song, while a whole coterie of other birds in “amorous descant” join; and sheltered from the east by the extensive woods of Haltham, Fulsby, and Tumby, remains of the whilom “Tumby Chase,” we find ourselves, at the end of some three and a half miles, entering the main street of Coningsby. Here again, we might ask, with love-sick Juliet, “What’s in a name?” But, in sooth, a name may be an epitome of history. There is an old proverb that “knowledge is power,” and we might say, the name of Coningsby is a territorial exemplification and perpetuation of this adage. In the language once spoken in these parts, [218] the conning, cunning man and the king were one and the same; the king was king because he was the conner, the thinker, and so overtopped his fellows in cunning. He embodied in his own person the moral of every age of progress, that brute force must yield the palm to skill and judgment. Mob-rule may for a while snatch at, and hold, the mastery; but ’tis the man who has the cunning to bide his time, and then seize the opportunity, who will be borne in triumph on the shoulders of those who once hustled and jostled him. Within some miles northward of where I am writing lies Kingthorpe, “the king’s village”; and at just about the same distance
southward lies Coningsby, with precisely the same meaning. Both names imply the presence at one time of a king; who he may have been we do not know, but he put down his foot there, and the stamp remains. There was once a castellated residence here, the home of the Coningsby family; and one of them, Thomas, was created Earl of Coningsby, but, dying without issue, the title became extinct in 1729. I may here mention that the tomb of the last Countess of Coningsby is in the north chantry chapel of Heydour church (between Sleaford and Grantham); it is a marble monument by Rijsbrach. There is also a slab to the last Viscount, 1733, who is traditionally said to have been taken from his cradle by a pet monkey, and dropped by it, in the terror of pursuit, from the roof of the house on to the stone pavement below, and so killed. The position of this old Coningsby mansion is not precisely known; but in a field on the south side of the main street there is an ancient dove-cot, and some fine trees, such as one might expect about a baronial residence. The Coningsbys moved from Coningsby to Hampton Court in Herefordshire more than two centuries ago. [219a] There was a very fine collection of pictures at this place, a list of which was given in the “Gentleman’s Magazine” of April 26, 1826. Among these was a painting of the old mansion of Coningsby. Hampton Court is now the residence of John Arkwright, Esq., and is situated between Hereford and Leominster. But “vixere fortes ante Agamemnona,” and there were men of mark at Coningsby long before those who took its name as their patronymic. In Domesday Book we find that Sortibrand, the son of Ulf, the Saxon, who was one of the Lagmen of Lincoln, and had “sac and soc [219b] over three mansions in that city,” as successor to his father (loco Ulf patris sui), held a berewick (a corn farm) in Coningsby.
When the powerful favourite of the Conqueror, Robert Despenser, laid claim to a fishery and certain land in Coningsby, the Jurymen of the Wapentake of Horncastle decided that his claim was good, because Achi, his Saxon predecessor,
had held the same in the time of Edward the Confessor. Moreover, the said Robert Despenser already held in Coningsby a berewick—“bere” (barley) land—of nine oxgangs, or some 225 acres, of meadow and wood, besides land in a score more parishes. And, again, from the same source we learn that a noble Fleming, Drogo de Bruere, who fought under the Conqueror at the battle of Hastings, and was rewarded by the gift of the whole of Holderness in Yorkshire, and other manors in Lincolnshire and elsewhere, also held land in Coningsby. Of this noble, Camden relates that the Conqueror valued his services so highly that he bestowed his own niece upon him in marriage; but that he destroyed her by poison, and then fled the country, all attempts to discover him having failed down to the time of the Domesday Survey being taken. [220a]
In the List of the Gentry of Lincolnshire, made on the Herald’s Visitation of the county in 1634, and still preserved at the Herald’s College, are the names of John Carter and Clinton Whichcote, of Coningsby. [220b]
In a Chancery Inquisition, post mortem, taken 31st May, 10 Henry VII., No. 72 (1495), it was found that Robert Taillebois, Knight, and John Gygour, Clerk, Warden of the College of Tatteshale, were “seized in their demesne as of fee of the manors of South Kyme, North Kyme, Conyngsby, Dokdyke, Byllingay,” and other properties. [220c] While, as an evidence of the trade of Coningsby, in a list of “Lincolnshire Town and Traders’ Tokens,” made by the late Mr. C. J. Caswell, of Horncastle, there occurs one of a Coningsby tradesman, bearing on the obverse side, “John Lupton—The Baker’s Arms,” and on the reverse side, “Of Cunsby, 1663—J. A. L.” [220d] Mr. Caswell adds a note that “where three initials are given, as in this case, the issuer’s wife is included, sometimes
joined in a true lover’s knot. Mr. John Lupton (in the present day) is a well-known and respected farmer of Pinchbeck West. His daughter married T. A. Roberts, Esq., M.R.C.S., late of Coningsby.”