Having given an account of the preparation made by the Romans towards gaining this vast tract of fen-land, the Lincolnshire levels, by securing it from the fresh water of the high countries in that noble cut called Cardike; we must imagine their next care was to render it safe from the flux of the Ocean, by making a great bank all along upon the sea coasts: this was done as to the wapentake of Elho by what we call the Old Sea-dike, which by the people at this day is said to be made by Julius Cæsar and his soldiers; as if they had knowledge of its being a Roman work: at the mouths of all the rivers no doubt they made gotes and sluices as at present, which was an invention of Osiris, the great king of Egypt, as Diodorus Siculus tells us, I. 19. We may well suppose it was performed after the time of Lollius Urbicus, scarce fully accomplished before: possibly in Severus his time, which seems not obscurely hinted at by Herodian, III. Sed in primis curæ habuit pontibus occupare paludes, ut stare in tuto milites possint atque in solido præliari. Siquidem Britanniæ pleraque loca frequentibus oceani alluvionibus paludescunt. Per eas igitur paludes barbari ipsi natant excursantque ad ilia usque demersi. But he had it in his particular care to make passes over the fens, that the soldiers might stand firm and fight upon hard ground; for many places in Britain are marshy through the frequent overflowings of the ocean, over which the inhabitants will swim, and walk though up to the middle in water. To which description no place so well corresponds.
That the Romans thoroughly inhabited this fertile plain, the following instances will sufficiently evince. About 1713, at Elm near Wisbech, an urn full of Roman brass money was taken up, not far from a tumulus of which the common people have strange notions, affirming that they frequently see a light upon it in dark winter nights. Dr. Massey has many of the coins; they are of the later empire. There is another piece of high ground near it, where have been buildings. Dr. Massey says there is a Roman altar in a wall there. At Gedney hill several Roman coins have been found; some of Antoninus are in your collection. In the same hamlet, about two mile north of Southea bank, is a pasture called the High Doles, being a square doubly moted, where ancient foundations have been dug up, and some Roman coins. Another like square so moted is in the parish of St. Edmund’s, about the same distance from the said bank, where the like matters have been discovered. Aswic grange in Whaplodedrove parish is a high piece of ground, square and moted about: in this and near it many Roman coins have been dug up, and urns, which I have seen; some coins in your collection. This is near Catscove corner; and it was Mr. Britain’s notion that Catus made this work among many others as castella to secure the possession of the country: these lie as it were in a line, on the most southerly part of Elho. In the parish of Fleet near Ravensclow, about 1698,[14] upon a piece of high ground where buildings have been, Mr. Edward Lenton dug up a large urn with letters round it, full of Roman coins,[15] about the quantity of three pecks, covered with an oak board: the urn he broke in pieces: they were of brass piled edgeways, mostly about the time of Gallienus and the thirty tyrants as called, Tetricus, Claudius Gothicus, Victorinus, Carausius, Alectus, &c. I have seen vast numbers of them, and have some by me: many are in your collection. Near this place runs a low channel, quite to Fleet haven, which probably then was the chief outlet of the waters into the sea. Mr. Lenton found some ship-timber upon it with rusty nails, probably of some Roman barge. None of these coins were lower than the Tetrici, which proves the imbankation was made before their time. In the same latitude, and in the next parish, Holbech,[16] in a pasture called Anytofts, in my tenure, is a like square of high ground, where rubbish of buildings and coins have been found; it is moted likewise: not long since a labourer, scouring up a pit in the mote, took up an urn now in my possession. At Giggleshurn, in casting up a ditch, were many Roman coins found: we may reasonably conjecture Moulton hall was such another place originally: and in a Held not far from thence, called Woods, near Ravens-bank, three mile south of Moulton church, upon plowing, several Roman urns and vessels were found, of fine white and red earth; some of them were brought to Mr. Hardy. At Spalding, Roman antiquities have been found, particularly cisterns; of which some accounts in the Acts of the Royal Soc. No 279. and there was a Roman castle there, as I conjecture, on the north side of the town, not far from the river on the right hand of the great road to Bolton, the square form of the ditch yet remaining. These places, with some other of like nature, make another line of fortresses through the middle of the country, parallel to the present towns. I have been told that at Theophilus Grant’s house in Whaplode, near Gorham’s holt, aqueducts of clay, one let into another, have been dug up;[17] and that in the seadike bank, between Fleet and Gedney, a brass sword was lately found, which seem to be Roman. Thus far in South Holland. At Boston, about 1716, they dug up an old Roman foundation beyond the school-house: near it some hewn stones formed a cavity, in which was an urn with ashes, another little pot with an ear, and an iron key of an odd figure, in my possession. Some time before then, in Mr. Brown’s garden at the Green poles, they dug up an urn lined with thin lead full of red earth and bones. A like one I have seen now in Sir Hans Sloan’s museum, unquestionably Roman.
Roman roads there.
As the Romans had thus intirely taken in and inhabited the country, no doubt but according to their custom they drew several roads across it: but I fear it will be very difficult to give an exact account of them: such is the nature of the ground, having no solid materials, that they would be presently wore away without more constant reparations than the inhabitants practise: yet I have little doubt in supposing one of their ways was drawn from the northern high country about Bolingbroke by Stickford, Stickney, Sibsey, and so to Boston river about Redstonegote, where it passed it by a ferry. I have fancied to myself that several parcels of it are plainly Roman, by the straitness and by the gravelly bottom: from thence to Kirkton it is indubitably so, being laid with a very large bed of gravel: and just a mile from the river is a stone, now called the Mile-stone, standing in a quadrivium; it is a large round stone like the frustum of a pillar, and very properly a lapis milliaris. From Kirkton I imagine the road went to Donington, where it met the great and principal road of the country, which is drawn from Ely to Sleaford in a line not much different from a strait one. It is certain that there is such a road from Grantchester, which was a Roman town a mile above Cambridge, to Ely by Stretham: thence another goes across the depth of the fens by Upwell and Elme towards Wisbech; and it was near this road that the urn with coins first mentioned was found: and anno 1730 a Roman urn full of coins was found at the same place; they were of silver, and very fair. Mr. Beaupre Bell, a curious gentleman, has many Roman coins found near this Roman road by Emney; several of Carausius undescribed. Wisbech probably was a Roman station, and their castle founded upon an older foundation. I suppose this road passed over Wisbech river above the town towards Guyhurn chapel, then went to Trokenholt and Clowscross, there entering our country: from thence that it went in a strait line to Spalding, by which means most of those square forts we have mentioned in Elho, where Roman antiquities were discovered, together with most of the southern hamlets, will be found to be situate near or upon it; such as St. Edmund’s chapel, the moted place there, Gedneyhill chapel, Highdoles there, Holbech chapel, Whaplodedrove chapel, Aswic grange, St. Katherine’s, and Moulton chapel: whether any traces of it can now be found or no, I cannot say; but the villages thereabouts seem strongly to favour the conjecture. Supposing it fact, I should not be surprised if it now be laid perfectly level with the surface of this fenny soil, seeing I have observed the like appearance of a Roman road when carried across a meadow in the high countries, and which was composed of a bed of gravel 100 foot broad, particularly at the Roman city of Alauna by Bicester, of which I shall in a following page give an account: and this of ours I suppose only made of the earth of the country thrown into a bank, because it was impossible to get more durable materials.
From Spalding, according to my sentiments, this road went towards Herring bridge (the word retaining some semblance of antiquity) upon Surflet river, so along the division between the wapentakes of Kirton and Aveland, near Wrigbolt and Cressy-hall, to the end of Brig-end causeway at Donington. Here, Holland brig or Brig-end causeway has all the requisites that can ascertain it to be a Roman work, being strait and laid with a solid bed of stone: the present indeed is repaired every year, but we have much reason to think the first projection of it through this broad morass was no less than Roman. From thence it went to Sleford; then it seems to have gone across the heath, and to have fallen in with the great Hermen street at a remarkable place called Biard’s leap: from thence possibly it was carried, or was designed to be, by Stretleythorp and Brentbroughton over the Witham to Crocolana upon the foss-way; then over the Trent into Nottinghamshire, where it answers in a line with the road to Tuxford and Worksop; and so on perhaps to the Irish sea, whereby it would become a great parallel to the Watling street running across the kingdom, as it does, from south-east to north-west. At Sleaford I am inclinable to think another road came from Banovallum, or Horn castle, to the east of the river Bane southward by les Yates, and so crossed the Witham by Chapelhill and the Cardike somewhere about Kyme: or else crossed the Witham at the Hermitage, so went by Swinshed north end to Donington: this principal road we speak of on the other end seems to go from Ely by Soham and Bury to the German ocean. I am not ashamed to offer my conjecture to the curious, however slender its foundation may be, if only as a hint for a future search: but it seems to me very probable, that if it was not fully executed by the Romans, they intended it, and have in part manifestly done it. I conceit it crosses the Icening street at Ikesworth near Bury, then goes to Bretenham, the Combretonium; but with that country of Suffolk I am at present perfectly unacquainted. Return we to Holland.
Besides this great road, I think we need not scruple to assert that now called Ravensbank to be another, going east and west, through the heart of the country, from Tid St. Mary’s to Cowbit. I have rode some miles upon it, where it is now extremely strait and broad. We have been informed that it is actually in some old writings called Romans Bank: it is well known the Welsh pronounced Roman Rhuffain, and our English word ruffian is from this fountain. Among the Welsh the letters m and v are equivalent, to which f is perfectly alike: maur and vaur is great, and many more: so that Roman, raven, and ruffen, is the same word; and hence no doubt came rambling, roving, and roming, as an ignominious appellative of such as thought every country better than their own; for such to our ancestors seemed the Romans, that scarce left any corner of the known world impervious to their all-conquering eagles, carrying arts and arms along with them as an impetuous torrent, with a most glorious and invincible perseverance. Further, it is not unlikely that the upper road running east and west nearer the sea bank, now called Old Spalding gate, is originally Roman: in some places, as about Fleet, it retains the name of Haregate, which is equivalent to via militaris when spoken by our Saxon progenitors. Thus the main road and these two lesser ones seem sufficiently to answer this purpose as to Elho: it seems to me, that when the Romans made the many forts all along the eastern shore, to guard against the Saxons, that this bay was provided for by five, two upon the edges of the high country, and three upon the rivers; Brancaster in Norfolk, Burgh on Lincolnshire side; Wisbech,[18] Spalding, and Boston, upon each river of the fenny tract.
Having given you then all the authentic or conjectural memoirs that have in general occurred to my reflection upon the most ancient state of this country, I shall proceed to other particularities, nearer our own times, through every parish; only first take notice in short of a wonderful appearance in nature all over this country, and which is common to all such like upon the globe, as far as my informations reach: that is, Antediluvian trees.the infinite quantities of subterraneous trees, lying three or four foot deep, of vast bulk and different species, chiefly fir and oak, exceeding hard, heavy and black: many times the branches reach so near day as to break their ploughs, for so I have heard them complain about Crowland: about Kyme and Billingay they have dug up some boats or canoos made of hollowed trunks of trees.[19] Many people will think that this is nothing but the effect of particular floods, and that this country was once a forest, and not long since disafforested. This country was once taken into the forest of Kesteven by the Norman kings, (as you have told me) only with a political view of extending their power, and disafforested soon after at the instance of the prior of Spalding: yet it is true of Nassaburg hundred only, in Northamptonshire. But in my apprehension, as to the matter before us, such confine their notions to very scanty bounds: an universal phænomenon requires a more dilated solution, and no less than that of the Noachian deluge. But upon this I hope for an occasion to be more copious another time: at present I remember a passage in Pausanias’s Attics toward the end; speaking of an ebeny statue of Archigetes, “I have heard, (says he) from a man of Cyprus very skilful in medicinal herbs, that ebeny bears no leaves, no fruit, nor has it any stock exposed to the sun, only roots in the earth, which the Ethiopians dig up. Some of them are particularly skilful in finding them out.� I doubt not but our author speaks of subterranean trees, and that our people might use this timber to better use than burning it.
Most writers, and particularly Mr. Camden, and most strangers, have an injurious opinion of this country, and apply that to the whole which is true but of part of it: for in the main the land is admirably good, hard, and dry; produces excellent corn and grass; feeds innumerable sheep and oxen of a very large size, and good flesh and wool; bears wood extremely well, has several large woods in it, some intirely of oak of considerable size; is full of hedge-rows and quicksets, and in summer time looks like the garden of Eden: it is level, and most delightful to travellers, whether on horseback, or in a coach. The air indeed is moist, as being near the sea, and bordering upon the fens of the isle of Ely: as to the first, it is the same upon every sea coast; as to the latter, they are chiefly on the south side, whence the sun for the most part draws off the vapours from this country. Indeed this inconvenience accrues from such vicinity, the production of gnats; to which Angelus Politianus has done so much honour in that beautiful Greek epigram you showed me; and is well guarded against by the gentry in the use of netted canopies hung round their beds, which was an invention of the Ægyptians living in a like country. Vide Brown’s Garden of Cyrus, p. 30. But all things necessary for the comfort of life are here in great plenty; and visitants ever go away with a better opinion of it than they bring. That great soul king Charles I. himself undertaking the glorious talk, and others under him, had projected and made such stately works of sewers, as would have rendered this country before now, for trade and beauty, the rival of its name-sake beyond sea; but the licentious times that succeeded, gave the unthinking mob (incited by his avowed adversary in all things, Cromwell) an opportunity to destroy them. I have often considered and admired the length, breadth, and depth of their canals, the vastness of their gotes and sluices: indeed I think they made many more than were useful, and might have laid out the whole in a better manner. I would not, like the Trojan Prophetess, prognosticate ill to my own country; but it is not difficult to foresee, that unless some project be taken in hand, like that which my friend Mr. Kinderley published some time ago, this vast and rich tract must be abandoned to eels and wild ducks. A thing of this nature is not to be done but by the senate of the kingdom taking the matter intirely into their own hands; and if I have any judgement, whatever new works are made, ought always to be carried eastward only, for reasons I inculcated before: therefore, instead of deriving the Welland into the Witham, as was his notion, I would have it brought to the Nen, and both into the Ouse at Lynn, as it was in its original and natural state.
Since the time of the Romans, beyond their first bank have been many intakes, by successive banks, of the best ground in the world left by the sea, which contracts its own limits by throwing up banks of sand out of the estuary: so that, from time to time, the land-owners upon these frontiers gain several thousands of acres. It is observed, the land so imbanked is ever higher in level than that left behind it; and I doubt not but some time the whole bay between Lincolnshire and Norfolk (being one of our great sovereign’s noblest chambers in his British dominions over the sea, vide Seld. Mar. claus.) will become dry land. By this means the parishes hereabouts increase to a huge bulk. Holbech from Dovesdale bar, where it joins to Cambridgeshire, to the limits of the salt marshes, is near twenty miles long. The cattle bred on this ground are very large; the sheep never have horns. Smithfield market, as now much supported, was chiefly set up by the inhabitants here, as I have been told, particularly by Mr. William Hobson, brother to the famous Cambridge carrier, and Mr. Cust; the London butchers, before then, commonly going into the country to buy cattle.
In every parish formerly were many chapels, it being impracticable for people to come so far to one church, though now most of them are demolished, at what time I cannot imagine. No part of England boasts of so many beautiful churches, having generally lofty spires of fine squared stone, fetched from Barneck pits, which are a coarse rag full of petrified shells of all kinds of small fish, and not, as some think, from Norway. And in no very distant times, not a parish without great numbers of gentry, lords, knights, and great families, who made a figure in the world: now scarce any remains of them, but the site of their houses moted round, their tombs in the churches, their arms in the painted windows, where they have by chance escaped the fury of fanatic zeal. Many religious houses formerly there; and nearly the whole country was got into their hands, as appears by the old terriers, or town-books. The only houses of note are at present Dunton hall, in Tyd St. Mary’s parish, lately rebuilt magnificently by Sigismund Trafford, esq. who has likewise inclosed a considerable park with a brick wall; and Cressy hall in Surflet parish, the seat of Henry Heron, esq. in which the lady Margaret, mother to Hen. VII. was once entertained. The house was handsomely rebuilt by the present possessor’s father, Sir Henry Heron, knight of the Bath; but the chapel is old, built, or licensed at least, anno 1309, as an inscription over the door tells us. In it is an old brass eagle with an inscription round it.[20]