Darlow’s Yard, Sleaford.
THE DANES
THE NORMANS
The Saxons dominated the country for about the same time as the Romans, and were then themselves ousted with much cruelty and bloodshed by the Danes or Norsemen. But during their time Christianity had been introduced at the instance of Pope Gregory I., who sent Augustine and forty monks to Britain at the end of the sixth century to convert the Anglo-Saxons, and as Bertha, wife of Æthelbert, King of Kent, was a Christian, he met with considerable success, and became the first Archbishop of Canterbury. He was followed early in the seventh century by Paulinus, who came from York and built the first stone church at Lincoln. When, a hundred and fifty years later, the Danes made their appearance they found in several places monasteries and cathedrals or churches which they ruthlessly pillaged and destroyed; and they too, having come for plunder, remained as indwellers, settling in the eastern counties, not only near the coast but far inland, just as the Norsemen settled and introduced industrial arts on the west coast in Cumberland. Dane and Saxon struggled long and fiercely, the Danes being beaten in Alfred’s great battle at Ethandune in Wilts, 878, but only to return in Edmund’s reign and defeat the Saxons at Assandun in Essex under King Canute, 1016, after which, by agreement, they divided the country with Edmund Ironsides, and withdrew from Wessex, the region south-west of Watling Street, but the whole country north-eastwards from the Tees to the Thames was given over to them and called the Danelagh, or country under Dane law. Thus Lincoln became a Danish burgh, and in the next year, on Edmund’s death, Canute became sole King of England. None of the Fenmen of Lincolnshire had been subdued till in 1013 Swegen, King of Denmark, invaded the county in force and pillaged and burnt St. Botolph’s town (Boston), and they appear to have maintained their independence all through the Norman times. For the dynasty of Danish kings did not last long, and both they and the kings of the restored Saxon line were effaced by the Norman invaders who, like all their predecessors, found the Fenmen a hard nut to crack. Hereward, who was not son of Leofric, but a Lincolnshire man, had many a fight for liberty, and held the Isle of Ely against the repeated attacks of the Normans, and, when at last the Fenmen were beaten, they still maintained a sort of independence, and instead of becoming Normans in manners and language they are said to have kept their own methods and their own speech, so that there may well be some truth in the boast that the ordinary speech of the East Lincolnshire men of “the Fens” and “the Marsh” is the purest English in the land.
Holland Fen and Fen Skating.
In the Fens there were always some tracts of ground raised above the waters which at times inundated the lower levels there. These are indicated by such names as Mount Pleasant, or by the termination ‘toft,’ as in Langtoft, Fishtoft, Brothertoft, and Wigtoft in the Fens; and similarly in the Isle of Axholme, Eastoft, Sandtoft, and Beltoft. Toft is a Scandinavian word connected with top, and means a knoll of rising ground. When the staple commodities of the Fens were “feathers, wool, and wildfowl,” these knolls were centres of industry. Sheep might roam at large, but in hard weather always liked to have some higher ground to make for, and human beings have a preference for a dry site, hence a cottage or two and, if there was room, a collection of houses and possibly a church would come into existence, and the grassy knoll would be often white with the flocks of geese which were kept, not so much for eating as for plucking; and we know that the monasteries always had ‘vacheries’ or cow-pastures either on these isolated knolls or on rising ground at the edge of the fen. One of the most notable of these island villages was called at one time Goosetoft, now Brothertoft, in the Holland Fen about four miles west of Boston. Here on the 8th of July, O.S., all sheep “found in their wool,” i.e., who had not been clipped and marked, were driven up to be claimed by their owners, fourpence a head being exacted from all who had no common rights.
The custom survives in Westmorland, where in November of every year all stray Herdwick sheep are brought in to the shepherds’ meeting at the ‘Dun Bull’ at Mardale, near Hawes-Water, and after they are claimed, the men settle down to a strenuous day, or rather two nights and a day, of enjoyment; a fox hunt on foot, and a hound trail whatever the weather may be, followed by feasting and songs at night, keep them all “as merry as grigs.” But where there are ten people at the Dun Bull there were one hundred or more at Brothertoft, people coming out from Boston for the day or even for the week, and all being lodged and fed in some thirty large tents.
GOOSETOFT
John Taylor, ‘the water poet,’ wrote in 1640 an account of Goosetoft which is worth preserving:—
In Lincolnshire an ancient town doth stand