[VI.]
Grunsel.
This old word for threshold is still common in Lincolnshire; and with Milton's meaning so plainly before his understanding (Paradise Lost, book i. line 460.), it is strange that Dr. Johnson should have given "the lower part of the building" as an explanation for grunsel. Lemon, in his "Etymology," spells the word "ground-sill," and then derives the last syllable from "soil." Nothing can be more stupid. Door-sill is as common as grunsel, for threshold, in Staffordshire, as well as Lincolnshire; and, in both counties, "window-sill" is frequent. I remember, too, in my boyhood, having heard the part of the plough to which the share is fitted—the frame of the harrows—and the frame of a grindstone, each called "sill" by the farmers of Lindsey.
[VII.]
Romara.
In this instance I have also used a name associated with the ancient history of Lincolnshire as an imaginary Norman lord of Torksey. "William de Romara, lord of Bolingbroke, in Lincolnshire, was the first earl of that county after the Conquest. He was the son of Roger, son of Gerold de Romara; which Roger married Lucia, daughter of Algar, earl of Chester, and sister and heir to Morcar, the Saxon earl of Northumberland and Lincoln. In 1142 he founded the Abbey of Revesby, in com. Linc., bearing then the title of Earl of Lincoln."—Bankes' Extinct and Dormant Peerage.
[VIII.]
The Trent.
"Or Trent, who like some earth-born giant spreads
His thirty arms along the indented meads."
Milton.