CHAPTER XXI
LOUTH AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD
Louth Church—“The Weder-Coke”—The Pilgrimage of Grace—Letter read in Lincoln Chapter-House from Henry VIII—“The Lyttel Clause”—The Blue Stone—Turner’s Horse-fair—The Louth Spire—Louth Park Abbey—Kiddington—Roads from Louth—Cawthorpe and Haugham—Dr. Trought’s Jump—Well Vale—Starlings.
[Sidenote: LOUTH]
Louth spire is one of the sights of Lincolnshire; it is a few feet higher than Grantham, which it much resembles, and in beauty of proportions and elegance of design one feels, as one looks at it, that it has really no rival, for Moulton, near Spalding, though on the same lines, is so much smaller.
The way in which it bursts upon the view as the traveller approaches it from Kenwick, which lies to the southward, is a thing impossible to forget. Taking the place of originally a small Norman, and later a thirteenth century building, the present church of St. James dates from the fifteenth century. Louth once had two, if not three, other small churches, dedicated to St. John, St. Mary, and St. Herefrid; but no certain traces of these remain, and only the north and south doorways of the thirteenth century church are now visible. Excavations made at the last restoration in 1867 revealed the pillar bases of this church and some fragments of eleventh century moulding of the earlier one. The present building has nothing of interest inside—it is only the shell from which the living tenant has long been absent. Once its long aisles were filled with rich chapels, and the chancel arch was furnished with a rood-loft and screen, and the church was unusually rich in altars, vessels, vestments, and books, of which only the inventory remains. In the vestry an oak cupboard has medallions carved in the panels of Henry VII. and Elizabeth of York; and that is all. The steeple, with its large belfry windows, was doubtless built for its clock and bells; there were at first but three, which in 1726 were increased to a full peal of eight, but the clock and its chime was there as early as 1500. The spire was not completed till 1815; the weathercock was fixed then, but no lightning-rod until 1844 after the spire had been struck and damaged three times, in the sixteenth, seventeenth and nineteenth centuries; in the eighteenth it escaped.
The first of the Louth churchwardens’ books has an ill-written entry of the year 1515-16, the time of the second (or thirteenth century) church, which tells us that one Thomas Taylor, a draper, bought a copper basin in York and had it made at Lincoln into a “Wedercoke” for the church. This is very interesting, for the basin had been part of the spoil taken from the King of Scots at Flodden.
[Sidenote: THE KING’S LETTER]
Twenty years later the vicar of Louth was hanged with others, at Tyburn, for his part in the Lincolnshire rebellion, when 20,000 men took up arms in defence of the pillaged monasteries. Concerning this rebellion, there is a graphic account of the receipt of Henry VIIIth’s letter in response to the people’s petition, which was read in the chapter-house at Lincoln, on October 10, 1556. Moyne tells how, when they thought to have read the letter secretly among themselves in the chapter-house, a mob burst in and insisted on hearing it: “And therefore,” he goes on to say, “I redd the Kynges letter openly and by cause there was a lyttyl clause therein that we feared wolde styr the Commons I did leave that clause unredd, which was persayved by a Chanon beying the parson of Snelland, and he sayde there openly that the letter was falsely redd be cause whereof I was like to be slayn.” Eventually they got out by the south door to the Chancellor’s house, while the men waited to murder them at the great West door, “And when the Commons persayved that wee were gone from theym another way, they departed to ther lodgings in a gret furye, determynyng to kill us the morowe after onles wee wolde go forwards with theym.”
[Illustration: _Bridge Street, Louth._]
The “lyttyl clause” referred to as likely to “styr the Commons,” was wisely omitted, for it is that in which the king expresses his amazement at the presumption of the “rude commons of one shire, and that one of the most brute and beastly of the whole realm and of least experience, to take upon them to rule their prince whom they were bound to obey and serve.”
This rebellion, which was called the Pilgrimage of Grace, brought disaster on many Lincolnshire families. Over sixty of all conditions were put to death for it in Louth alone, and others at Alford, Spilsby and Boston, and at all the monasteries, and the vicars of Cockerington, Louth, Croft, Biscathorpe, Donington and Snelland and some others, as well as John Lord Hussey at Sleaford, suffered for their religion and were canonized as martyrs by the Pope. A list of more than one hundred victims is given in “Notes and Queries,” III., 84.
The town has a museum of some interest, and outside of it may be seen a large boulder of some foreign stone, probably brought by an icefloe from Denmark or Norway. This used to stand at a street corner in the town, but was afterwards removed to the inn-yard at the back, and painted blue, and was known for many years as the blue stone. Speaking of stone, we have a record that a good deal of the stone for building the church spire in the sixteenth century was landed at Dogdyke, and drawn thence on wheels or carried on pack horses on flag pavements across the fen. The stone is of good quality and adapted for carving.
There is notably good openwork on the east gable of the church, much resembling that at Grimoldby and Theddlethorpe-in-the-Marsh, a few miles to the east of Louth. Turner’s picture of the horse fair at Louth shows the spire, which was no doubt the motive of the picture, and until one has seen it, both from a distance and from the street of Louth itself, one can have no notion how beautiful a thing a well-proportioned spire can be, one is never tired of looking at it.
An old statue of Edward VI. over a doorway in the Westgate indicates the grammar school where Alfred and Charles Tennyson spent a few uncomfortable years. The school seal shows a boy being birched, with the motto “Qui parcit virgam odit filium,” and date 1552. Among other pupils were Governor Eyre, one of the victims of British sentimentality, and Hobart Pasha. Thomas of Louth gave a clock to Lincoln Minster in 1324, and William de Lindsey, Bishop of Ely, 1290, who has there a beautiful monument, was also a Louth native.
[Illustration: _Hubbards Mill, Louth._]
[Sidenote: LOUTH PARK ABBEY]
Louth Park Abbey, about a mile and a half to the east of the town, was built on a site belonging to the Bishops of Lincoln, and was given to the Cistercian colony from Fountains Abbey, who found Haverholme too damp for comfort, by Bishop Alexander in 1139. The Cistercians built themselves a large church, 256 feet long and sixty-one feet in width, with transepts which more than doubled this; parts of these and the chancel, also a portion of the west front and one nave pillar, are all that is left of it, but the ground plan has been excavated, which shows that there were no fewer than ten bays to the nave, and massive circular piers. There was a cloister on the south, surrounded by monastic buildings, and east of these a chapter-house with groined roof springing from six pillars. A very large gateway stood at the south-west, and outside was a double moat to which the water from St. Helen’s Spring was conducted by what is still known as “the Monk’s Dyke.” It flourished greatly at the beginning of the fourteenth century, having then sixty-six monks and 150 lay brethren. The Louth Park Abbey Chronicle, though very valuable, is not exactly contemporaneous with the things it mentions, for it was all written by a scribe in the fifteenth century. It covers the years from 1066 to the death of Henry IV. in 1413.
Near the abbey, but on the other side of the canal, is _Keddington_, where the arch of the organ chamber is made of carved stones, no doubt brought from the abbey. The church, which is built of chalk and greensand, is older than any in the immediate neighbourhood, and has a Norman south door. It has a remarkable lancet window on the south side, in the upper part of which is a carved dragon, and has also what is very rare, a wooden mediæval eagle lectern.
[Sidenote: ROADS FROM LOUTH]
Half-a-dozen main roads radiate from Louth, one might call it eight, for two of the half-dozen divide, one within a mile, and one at a distance of two miles from the town. They go, one north to Grimsby, twenty miles of level road along the marsh, and one west to Market Rasen, by the Ludfords and North Willingham, fifteen and a half miles. One mile out, this road divides and goes west and then south to Wragby by South Willingham, sixteen and a half miles. Both of these roads, as well as that which runs south-west to Horncastle, fourteen and a half miles, cross the Wolds and are distinctly hilly, rising and falling nearly four hundred feet. The fifth road, which goes due south to Spilsby, sixteen miles, though seldom as much as 250 feet higher than Louth, which stands about seventy-five feet above sea level, affords fine views, and is a very pleasant road to travel. But all these highways must be dealt with in detail later. The sixth road from Louth runs south-east to Alford, and keeps on the level of the marsh, and the seventh and eighth roads run eastwards across the marsh to the sea, one branching off the Alford road at Kenwick and avoiding all villages, comes to the coast at Saltfleet; the other, starting out from Louth by Keddington and Alvingham, loses itself in many small and endlessly twisting roads which connect the various villages and reaches the sea eventually at Donna Nook and Saltfleet, places five miles apart, with no passage to the sea between them—nothing but mud flats, samphire beds and sea birds. There is a charm about “the waste enormous marsh,” and also about the high and windy Wolds, which never palls, but before we journey along either of the highways from Louth I should like to introduce one of those byways which form the chief delight of people who love the country.
[Sidenote: SOME BYWAYS]
We will leave Louth, then, by the Spilsby road, and when we reach the second milestone, 147 miles from London, turn and look at the beautiful spire of Louth Church rising from a group of elms in the middle distance of a wide panorama. From our height of 300 feet we look across the whole marsh to the sea, ten miles to the east, and far on beyond Louth we look northwards towards Grimsby and the Humber, the perpetually shifting lights and shades caused by the great cumulus clouds in these fine level views, the many farmsteads and occasional church towers—
“The crowded farms and lessening towers”
of our own Lincolnshire poet—all combine to make a very satisfactory picture to which the wonderfully wide extent which lies unrolled before us, lends enchantment; and always the eye reverts to rest with delight on that perfect spire standing so high above the trees by the banks of the river Lud.
At length we turn and pursue our way, but soon quit the Spilsby road and go down the hill to the left, past the entrance to Kenwick Hall, till we reach the Alford road, and, turning to the right, come to the pretty little village of _Cawthorpe_.
[Sidenote: DR. TROUGHT’S JUMP]
This is not a bad centre for country walks. You can walk on a raised footpath all along the side of the curious water-lane, and if you go out in the opposite direction the road to _Haugham_ takes you through two miles of as pretty a road as you could desire; it is called “Haugham Pastures,” but it is really a road through a wood, without hedges, reminding one of the New Forest or the “Dukeries.” On the right, going from Cawthorpe, the trees extend some distance with oak and fern and all that makes the beauty of an English wood; on the other side it is only a belt of trees through which at intervals a grassy tract curves off from the road and leads to the fields; and as we passed in September we could see the corn-laden waggons moving up towards us or the teams going afield among the sheaves. No county could supply a prettier series of pictures of simple pastoral beauty than this byway through “Haugham Pastures.” A deep lane near the little brick-built manor-house is noticeable as the site of a famous jump. The roadway is about fifteen feet wide, with steep sides and a low hedge, the top of which is nine or ten feet above the roadway. Over these Dr. Trought of Louth, on a famed hunter, once jumped for a wager, flying from field to field, a distance of some twenty feet.
[Illustration: _The Lud at Louth._]
One of the charming peculiarities of Cawthorpe is that here the “Long Eau” stream runs between hedge-banks over a level sand and gravel bed and forms a water street, which extends for about a furlong. There is a similar thing at Swaby, six miles to the south, where the “Great Eau” runs along a street or road through the village. At Cawthorpe the water is always running and usually about six inches deep. The village lies in a hollow with curiously twisting little roads in it, and is very picturesque with its farms and trees and quaint little brick manor-house standing near the church at the three cross ways.
[Sidenote: A BEAUTIFUL ROAD]
Rising from the hollow, the small byway runs with here and there beautiful trees and often on the right a tall hedge or narrow strip of plantation, reminding one of the roadside “shaws” in Hampshire, while on the left there is always a view down over cornfields and beyond the tops of the Tothill oak woods right across the fertile belt of the marsh to the shining line of the distant sea. With many a twist the byway runs on through _Muckton_ village to _Belleau_, where it crosses the above-mentioned Swaby or Calceby beck and looks down on the picturesque church, standing in the grassy meadows, and on the brick turret and groined archways of the old Manor-house, and so on to _South Thoresby_, where the broken ground and the fine trees tell of an old mansion which stood there till last century; and past _Rigsby_, till it meets the Spilsby and Alford highway just below Miles-cross-Hill, whence it runs on through the avenue of elms to _Well_. And all the way, as it has run along the top of the eastern escarpment of the Wold, it has afforded us an outlook over a wide expanse of the marsh such as none of the other roads on the high wolds can equal. True, the Lincoln cliff road gives a finer view and runs further, but I don’t think there is any prettier ten-mile stretch in the county than this ‘Middle road’ from Well to Louth.
At the entrance gate of Well Vale Hall the road divides, either route ending at Alford. _Well Vale_, a fine sporting estate and also a famous stronghold for foxes, the residence of Mr. Walter H. Rawnsley, is, I venture to think, the prettiest spot in the county. For a mile or more a grassy track descends from the top of Miles-Cross-Hill through a wooded valley where fine beeches stretch out their long arms, and pines and larch crown the chalky turf-clad sides, till the mouth of the Vale opens out into a park, whose rolling slopes are studded with handsome trees, and as you near the mansion, the front of which looks out across its brilliant flower-beds and quaint pinnacled gateway upon the little church flanked by branching elms on the summit of a grassy hill, you see a fine sheet of water fed by a copious chalk stream which passes the house and is then conducted to a still larger lake on the garden side, stretching with a double curve from the giant cedars on the lawn to a vanishing point, of which glimpses only are caught through the stems of the Scotch firs and oaks in the distance. The history of Well goes back to Roman times, and has been told fully by the Rev. E. H. R. Tatham, Rector of the neighbouring parish of _Claxby_, where the site of a Roman camp is still visible, another being at _Willoughby_, two miles off eastwards in the levels, where the marsh begins.
[Sidenote: HISTORY OF WELL]
The name was derived in Saxon times from the strong spring which wells out from the chalk and feeds the lakes on either side the house. The names Burwell and Belleau in the immediate neighbourhood are of similar origin, though the latter is a Norman name. At the time of the Conquest _Well_ and _Belleau_ were both bestowed on Gilbert de Gaunt, the Conqueror’s nephew, and were let by him to one Ragener, whose family took the addition “de Welle” and lived here for four centuries. In the thirteenth century we hear of a church at Well, and William de Welle (the third of the name) in 1283 obtained a licence for a market and fair at Alford. His son Adam was summoned to Parliament as a baron in 1299. In the fifteenth century the name was changed from Welle to Welles, and Leo Lord Welles fell at Towton in 1461. The title was now combined with that of Willoughby d’Eresby, and Leo’s son, Richard, who took it _jure uxoris_, he having married the Willoughby heiress, was the Lord Welles who was so basely put to death in 1470 by Edward IV. for complicity in the Lincolnshire rebellion, together with his son-in-law, T. Dymoke, and his son Robert. _See_ Chap. XXXIII.
Leo, who fell at Towton, had married for his second wife, Margaret Duchess of Somerset, and her son John joined Henry VII., and after the battle of Bosworth the king restored to him the Welles estate which had been forfeited after Robert’s execution, made him a viscount, and gave him the hand of Cicely, daughter of Edward IV. and sister to his own queen, in marriage. It is interesting to read in Mr. Tatham’s paper that “This lady carried the heir-apparent, Prince Arthur, at his baptism at Winchester in 1486.” She subsequently married one of the Kyme family of Kyme Tower near Boston. John Viscount Welles died in 1499, and the male line of the Welles became extinct, but the Willoughby line went on, for Cicely, the sister of the unfortunate Richard Welles, had married Sir R. Willoughby, and her grandson William succeeded to that title as the ninth Lord Willoughby. He was the father of Catharine Duchess of Suffolk and subsequently wife of Richard Bertie, whose monument occupies so large a space in the Willoughby chapel at Spilsby. The Welles estate remained with the Willoughbys (who in 1626 were created Earls of Lindsey) till 1650, when the extortionate fines levied on Royalist families by the Parliament made it necessary for Belleau and Welle to be sold. Belleau went to Sir H. Vane, and Well to W. Wolley, who sold it about 1700 to Anthony Weltden, a man who had a romantic career in the early days of the Hon. East India Company. From him Well passed to James Bateman, one of whose sons became Lord Bateman. Another, James, succeeded to the estate and built the present house about 1725, a wing of which was pulled down about 1845. This James married Anne, daughter of Sir Robert Chaplin of Tathwell, who also came to live and die at Well. Bateman’s daughter and heiress married a Dashwood in 1744—probably it was he who planted the Vale (he died in 1825)—and in 1838 the estate was purchased by Mr. Christopher Nisbet Hamilton, whose daughter, Mrs. Hamilton Ogilvy, has just sold it to Mr. Walter H. Rawnsley.
[Sidenote: WELL VALE]
The following lines were written on the gate at the top of Well Vale by a traveller taking his yearly tramp from Horncastle for a dip in the sea at Mablethorpe, a good twenty miles.
Some say “All’s well that ends well,” But here Well begins well. They say too “Truth is in a well,” But here there is in truth a Well. Welcome then Well! since I well come along to her, For well I’ve known Well and the charms that belong to her Passing well to the view looks the Vale of fair Well, And I, passing Well too, must bid her farewell ’Till again I’m this way; or perhaps for aye. Farewell then (or ‘vale’) to fair Well Vale. Farewell! Fair Well!
This is more than a mere assemblage of puns—there is some poetry in the old fellow, and the penultimate line has an added pathos from the fact that only a few months later the poet bid his final farewell to life, on November 10, in the same year, at the age of seventy-six.
[Sidenote: THE STARLINGS]
Speaking of Well Vale, I think I have seen and heard more starlings collected together in a young larch plantation there than I ever came across at once elsewhere. The only multitude of birds at all comparable to it was the army of cranes I have seen covering half a mile or more of sandbank in the Nile, near Komombos, while clouds of them kept dropping from the sky. They have black wings and white bodies, so that aloft they looked black, but standing on the sandbank as close as they could pack they looked all white.
But to return to our starlings. It is a very curious thing this massing of countless thousands of these birds amongst the osiers[11] in the fenny parts of the county, or in some of the plantations in the Wolds. If you take your stand about sunset near one of these, when the wood pigeons, after much noisy flapping of their wings, have settled down to rest, a loud whirring noise will make you look up to see the sky darkened by a cloud of these birds, which will be only the advance portion of the multitudes that will quickly be converging from all sides to their roosting quarters. They have been feeding in many places, often at a considerable distance; but each night they assemble, and for a quarter of an hour or more the noise of their chattering and fluttering as each successive flight comes in will be indescribable. If a disturbing noise is made, myriads will rise with one loud rush, but nothing will prevent their return and, when the noise and movement has at length subsided, the trees will be black with their living load, which will sleep till sunrise, and then again disperse for the day in quest of food, returning every night for several weeks, till the call of spring scatters them for good.
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