Torksey was, undoubtedly, one of the first towns in Lincolnshire, in the Saxon period. Only three of the towns in the county are classed in Domesday Book, and it is one of them: "Lincoln mans. 982; Stamford 317: Terchesey 102." (Turner's Hist. of the Anglo-Saxons, 1836, vol. iii. page 251.) Writers of parts of the county history,—(for a complete history of Lincolnshire has not yet been written,)—affirm that Torksey is the Tiovulfingacester of Venerable Bede; but Smith, the learned editor of the Cambridge edition of Bede, inclines to the opinion that Southwell is the town indicated by the pious and industrious monastic. The passage in Bede leaves every thing to conjecture: he simply relates that a truth-speaking presbyter and abbot of Pearteneu, (most likely, Partney, near Horncastle, in Lincolnshire,) named Deda, said that an old man had told him, that he, with a great multitude, was baptized by Paulinus, in the presence of King Edwin, "in fluvio Treenta juxta civitatem quæ lingua Anglorum Tiovulfingacaestir vocatur"—in the river Trent, near the city which in the language of the Angles is called Tiovulfingacaestir (Smith's Bede: Cambr. 1722, page 97.)—This passage occurs immediately after the relation of the Christian mission of Paulinus into Lindsey, and his conversion of Blecca, governor of Lincoln, and his family, while the good King Edwin reigned over East Anglia, to which petty kingdom Lincolnshire seems sometimes to have belonged, though it was generally comprehended in the kingdom of Mercia, during the period of the Heptarchy.
If Stukeley be correct in his supposition that the "Foss-dyke," or canal which connects the Trent here with the Witham at Lincoln, be the work of the Romans,—and I know no reason for doubting it,—Torksey, standing at the junction of the artificial river with the Trent, must have been an important station even before the Saxon times. These are Stukeley's words relative to the commercial use of the Foss-Dyke: "By this means the corn of Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, Northamptonshire, Rutland, and Lincolnshire, came in;—from the Trent, that of Nottinghamshire; all easily conveyed northward to the utmost limits of the Roman power there, by the river Ouse, which is navigable to the imperial city of York. This city (York) was built and placed there, in that spot, on the very account of the corn-boats coming thither, and the emperors there resided, on that account; and the great morass on the river Foss was the haven, or bason, where these corn-boats unladed. The very name of the Foss at York, and Foss-dyke between Lincoln and the Trent, are memorials of its being an artificial work, even as the great Foss road, equally the work of the spade, though in a different manner." (Stukeley's Palæographia Britannica: Stamford, 1746: No. 2, page 39.)
In the superb edition of Dugdale's Monasticon Anglicanum, edited by Sir Henry Ellis and others (1825), occurs the following note, also evidencing the extent of ancient Torksey:—"Mr. T. Sympson, who collected for a history of Lincoln, in a letter preserved in one of Cole's manuscript volumes in the British Museum, dated January 20, 1741, says, 'Yesterday, in Atwater's Memorandums, I met with a composition between the prior of St. Leonard's in Torksey and the nuns of the Fosse, by which it appears there were then three parishes in Torksey: viz. All Saints, St. Mary's, and St Peter's." (Vol. iv. page 292.)
At what date this "composition" took place between the prior and nuns, we are not told: of course, it must have been before the dissolution of the religious houses. Leland's account of Torksey, which is as follows, applies to a period immediately succeeding that event.
"The olde buildinges of Torkesey wer on the south of the new toune, [that is, at the junction of the Trent with the Fosse] but ther now is litle seene of olde buildinges, more than a chapelle, wher men say was the paroch chirch of olde Torkesey; and on Trent side the Yerth so balkith up that it shewith that there be likelihod hath beene sum waulle, and by it is a hill of yerth cast up: they caulle it the Wynde Mille Hille, but I thinke the dungeon of sum olde castelle was there. By olde Torkesey standith southely the ruines of Fosse Nunnery, hard by the stone-bridge over Fosse Dik; and there Fosse Dike hath his entering ynto Trente. There be 2 smaul paroche chirches in new Torkesey and the Priory of S. Leonard standith on theste [the East] side of it. The ripe [bank] that Torkesey standith on is sumwhat higher ground than is by the west ripe of Trent. Trent there devidith, and a good deale upward, Lincolnshire from Nottinghamshire." (Itinerary: Oxon, 1745: vol. i. page 33.)
[II.]
Thorold.
The high character for generousness and hospitality assigned to this most ancient of Lincolnshire families, by history and tradition, was my only reason for giving its name to an imaginary lord of Torksey. Ingulphus, the Croyland chronicler, in a passage full of grateful eloquence,—(commencing, "Tunc inter familiares nostri monasterii, et benevolos amicos, erat præcipuus consiliarius quidam. Vicecomes Lincolniæ, dictus Thoroldus,"—but too long to quote entire,)—relates, that in a dreadful famine, which occurred in the reign of Edward the Confessor, Thorold, sheriff of Lincolnshire, gave his manor of Bokenhale to the abbey of Croyland, and afterwards bestowed upon it his manor of Spalding, with all its rents and profits. (Gale's Rer. Ang. Script. Vet. Tom. i. page 65. Oxon, 1684.)
Tanner thus briefly notices the latter circumstance: "Spalding. Thorold de Bukenale, brother to the charitable countess Godiva, gave a place here, A.D. 1052, for the habitation, and lands for the maintenance of a prior and five monks from Croiland." (Notitia, page 251. fol. 1744.) The generosity of the female Thorold, Godiva, is matter of notoriety in the traditionary history of Coventry; and her name, and that of her husband, are found in connection with the history of the very ancient town of Stow, in Lincolnshire, as benefactors to its church. "Leofricus, comes Merciæ, et Godiva ejus uxor ecclesiam de S. Marie Stow, quam Eadnotus, episcopus Lincolniæ, construxit, pluribus ornamentis ditavit"—Leofric, earl of Mercia, and Godiva his wife, enriched with many adornments the church of St. Mary at Stow, which Eadnoth, bishop of Lincoln, built. (Leland's Collectanea, vol. i. page 158. London, 1770.)
In Kimber and Johnson's Baronetage (vol. i. page 470.) the Thorold of the reign of Edward the Confessor is said to be descended from Thorold, sheriff of Lincolnshire in the reign of Kenelph, king of Mercia. Betham, in his "Baronetage of England" (Ipswich, 1801, vol. i. page 476) says the pedigree of the Thorolds is a "very fine" one, and enumerates its several branches of Marston, Blankney, Harmston, Morton, and Claythorp, and of the "High Hall and Low Hall, in Hough, all within the said county of Lincoln." Betham, and other writers of his class, enumerate Thorolds, sheriffs of Lincolnshire, in the reigns of Philip and Mary, Elizabeth, James I. and Charles I.; and Sir George Thorold of Harmston was sheriff of London and Middlesex, in 1710,—and afterwards Lord Mayor.