LINCOLN, FROM CANWICK.
After the Romans departed, the history of Lincoln for a time is a blank. Doubtless the English invaders plundered, and burnt, and slaughtered, as was their wont, but we hear little more till after the missionaries of Augustine had begun to preach the Gospel to the heathen conquerors of the land. In Lincoln there is a little modern church, a short distance south of the Newport arch, and very near the remnants of the Roman basilica. This marks the site of the first Christian church in Lincoln, the first sign of its second and peaceful conquest by the followers of the Crucified. It was founded by Paulinus, Bishop of York, and his newly-made convert Blæcca, the Governor of Lincoln. Within its walls, as Canon Venables tells us, Honorius, fourth Archbishop of Canterbury after Augustine, was consecrated by Paulinus. Doubtless the church of Paulinus—now St. Paul’s—like that of St. Martin at Canterbury, was constructed of Roman materials—perhaps was a restoration of an earlier building, but of this unhappily no trace remains. The Danish invaders sorely harried Lincoln and all the region round. Indeed, in 876 the invaders parcelled out the county among themselves. “Lindsey became largely a Danish land, and Lincoln became pre-eminently a Danish city.” Then for a time followed more peaceful days, till William the Norman became master of England. His eye was attracted by the natural advantages of Lincoln, so on the highest point of the plateau, at the south-western angle of the Roman castrum, he built a strong castle, remnants of which can still be discerned in the existing walls of that building. To secure space for its outworks he cleared away 166 houses, and in connection with this we have the first distinct notice of the lower town, which at the present day, commercially speaking, is the most important part of Lincoln. It is, however, probable that a suburb had already sprung up at the spot where the Roman road crossed the nearest channel of the Witham—obtaining from its situation the name of Wickerford or Wigford—to which the families dislodged from the upper town no doubt transferred themselves. For them—on land granted by the Conqueror—one Colswegen built some houses, and at the same time founded the churches of St. Mary-le-Wigford and St. Peter-at-Gowts. The towers, and in case of the latter some other portions, of both these churches still remain, and though built somewhere between the years 1068 and 1086 are so completely survivals of the rude style which prevailed in England before the Normans came that they are often quoted as examples of “Saxon” churches.
About the same time Remigius, a Norman monk, was consecrated to the See of Lincoln. At that time Dorchester, in Oxfordshire, was the site of the bishop’s stool, but then, as now, it was a place of little importance, and inconveniently situated for the management of so vast a diocese; so he commenced the building of a cathedral at Lincoln, of which a part of the western front still remains incorporated into the grand façade of the present cathedral. The severe simplicity of this early Norman fabric was relieved by the more ornate work of a later bishop in the middle part of the twelfth century, which may still be seen in the entrance doors of the western façade and the lower parts of the two western towers. Then by degrees the remainder of the fabric was rebuilt. Most of the work from the eastern transept to the western façade dates from between the end of the twelfth and the middle of the thirteenth century, commencing with that of Bishop Hugh, afterwards St. Hugh, and ending with that of the illustrious Englishman Robert Grostête, who may be numbered with the “Reformers before the Reformation.” To receive the relics of the former the famous Angel choir, or Presbytery, was built about the year 1280. The cloisters and upper part of the central tower were added some twenty years later, and certain alterations subsequently made, the most important being the upper stages of the western towers, which are assigned to the middle of the fifteenth century. Thus, while Lincoln Cathedral presents us with examples of English architecture from the very earliest Norman to the close of the so-called Gothic, and even, in its rebuilt northern cloister, of the classic Renaissance, it is in the main a specimen of the First Pointed or Early English style, from its beginning till it merged almost insensibly in the Middle Pointed or Decorated. Over its details and its history, its damage from earthquake and spoiler, the labours of St. Hugh of Avalon, and the tragedy of the little St. Hugh of Lincoln, its sieges and its narrow escape from destruction in the days of Cromwell, it is impossible to linger. Suffice it to say that the building is as beautiful as the site is commanding, and that the minster garth is girdled by ancient houses full of interest, although Lincoln was never, as the popular name would suggest, the centre of a great monastery.
LINCOLN CATHEDRAL, FROM THE SOUTH-WEST.
BOSTON CHURCH: THE TOWER.
We must endeavour to summarise the chief attractions of the town and the leading features of the scenery. Of the former it may be said that few towns in England are more full of relics of olden time or more fruitful in pleasant impressions. We never know what the next turn in the most unpromising street may disclose. The Roman relics have been already mentioned, but these and the cathedral do not nearly exhaust the list of its antiquities. Would you look at a wealthy burgess’ residence in the earlier part of the twelfth century? You may find it in the Jews’ House of the upper town, or “John of Gaunt’s” stables in the lower. Would you seek for domestic architecture belonging to the later periods of Pointed work? The gate-houses of the close belong to the earlier part of the fourteenth century; “the chequer or exchequer gate with its shops in the side passage, and the Pottergate remain; several residentiary houses were erected at the same period, and are partly remaining, though much altered and disfigured.” At every turn in the older parts of the town the eye falls upon some remnant of ancient days, doorway or gatehouse, window or corner of a wall; it may be merely a fragment, a little block, of mouldering masonry, or it may be an almost perfect example of mediæval architecture. But Lincoln is not only interesting in detail; the town, as a whole, when seen from the flat land by the Witham, is exceptionally attractive. True, it has lost much in recent days. It has become a manufacturing town of some importance; large foundries and other works have sprung up on the meadows by the Witham. The lowland begins to bristle up with tall chimneys, which discharge their clouds of dusky smoke. New and old are in sharp contrast. The tower of St. Mary-le-Wigford looks down on a railway, the quaint little conduit on its churchyard wall is close to a signal-box. Still, ugly as the foreground in many places has become, it cannot spoil the beauty of the town itself, as its houses and gardens climb the steep hillside to the summit of the plateau, where above all peer up the grey remnants of the ancient castle, and the vast mass of the cathedral with its lofty towers rises high above the picturesque buildings of the close and the green trees upon the slope beneath.
From the walls of Lincoln the Witham can be watched as it passes onwards to enter the fenland, into which the level valley opens out as the plateau shelves down towards the east. This part of its course is naturally monotonous, so we shall not attempt to describe it in detail, and shall pause only at the old town which forms its port. Boston, anciently Botolph’s Town, is a thriving market town, which, as every lover of architecture knows, possesses one of the finest churches in the county, or indeed in the whole country. It stands in an ample churchyard close to the left bank of the Witham; the magnificent tower, crowned by an octagonal lantern, which is supported by flying buttresses, is about 300 feet high, a beacon for many a league of fen and sea. The church itself is not unworthy of the tower, and is one of the largest in England, perhaps the largest of those built on a similar plan. The style is Late Decorated and Perpendicular, though doubtless there was an earlier structure on the same site. The tradition runs that “the first stone was laid in the year 1309 by Dame Margery Tilney, and that she put five pounds upon it, as did Sir John Twesdale the vicar, and Richard Stevenson, a like sum; and that these were the greatest sums at that time given.” Progress, however, must at first have been slow, for most of the building is of rather later date. The interior, though rather plain, is very fine, producing an impression which may be summed up in the word “spaciousness.” Lofty aisles are connected with the nave by corresponding arches; the clerestory is comparatively small. The chancel is large, and open to the body of the church, so that there is little interruption in any direction to the view. Formerly Boston Church was exceptionally rich in brasses, but most of these have perished; two, however, one of a merchant named Peascod, whose dress is appropriately ornamented with pea-pods, and another of a priest vested in a richly-ornamented cope, still remain at the east end. Among the many minor objects of interest to be found in this grand church, which was carefully restored about thirty years since, may be mentioned the stone roof of the tower, the lower storey of which is open to the church, the chancel-stalls, and the curious Elizabethan pulpit.