CHAPTER XXX

SPILSBY AND ITS BYWAYS

Spilsby Market-town—The Churches and Willoughby Chapel—The Franklins—The Talk of the Market—Lincolnshire Stories and Others—Byways—Old Bolingbroke—Harrington Church—The Copledike Tombs—The Hall—Bag-Enderby—Remarkable Font—Somersby—The Churchyard Cross—The Brook—Ashby Puerorum.

[Sidenote: SPILSBY CHURCH]

Spilsby is the head of a petty-sessional division in the parts of Lindsey. The name is thought by some to be a corruption of Spellows-by, to which the name of Spellows hill in the neighbourhood gives some colour. The old gaol, built in 1825, had a really good classic portico with four fluted columns and massive pediment. Most of the buildings behind this imposing entrance were pulled down after fifty years, and all that it leads to now is the Sessions House and police station. The long market-place is interrupted in one place by a block of shops, and in another by a mean-looking Corn Exchange; but at one end of it still stands an elegant, restored market cross, and at the other a bronze statue by Noble of Sir John Franklin, the most famous of Spilsby’s sons, the discoverer of the “North West Passage.” His hand rests on an anchor, and on the pedestal are the words: “They forged the last link with their lives.” Just beyond the town a fine elm-tree avenue leads to Eresby, the seat whence the Willoughby family take their title. In Domesday Book, 1086, Spilsby and Eresby are said to belong to the Bishop of Durham. His tenant Pinco, or one of his sons, the Fitz Pincos, acquired it; and about 1166 a Pinco heiress married Walter Bec, whose grandson has a sepulchral slab in Halton church, _c._ 1243. In 1295 a John, the son of Walter, was created Baron Bec of Eresby, the younger brothers being Antony, Bishop of Durham, and Thomas, who was consecrated Bishop of St. David’s at Lincoln in 1280. Lord Bec died in 1302, in which year Sir William of Willoughby (near Alford), who had married his daughter and heiress Alice, obtained a charter for a market at Spilsby every Monday. Their son Robert was the first Baron Willoughby De Eresby, who died in 1316. His son John fought at Crécy 1346, and in 1348 founded the College of the Holy Trinity at Spilsby, and the chantry which, when he and his successors in the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries with their huge altar tombs filled up the chancel of the old church, even blocking up the entire chancel arch with the stone screen of the Bertie monument, became eventually the chancel of the parish church. For the old church consisted of a nave and chancel into which the west door opened direct; it had probably a narrow north aisle, and certainly a large south aisle was added with the Trinity chapel at the east end of it. This aisle and chapel are now the nave and chancel of the church, which was restored in Ancaster stone in 1879, and a new south aisle added, the tower alone remaining of green-sand with lofty hard-stone pinnacles. In this the bells have just been re-hung, in December, 1913. John, second Baron Willoughby (1348), also the third (1372), who fought at Poictiers, and the fourth, with his second wife, Lady Neville, at his side (1380), have huge altar tombs with effigies in armour; he died 1389. A brass commemorates his third wife (1391), and another fine one, said to be Lincolnshire work, the fifth baron and his first wife (1410). Both these ladies being of the family of Lord Zouch. The gap between the fifth and the tenth Lord Willoughby is accounted for thus:—

[Sidenote: WILLOUGHBY D’ERESBY]

The sixth Lord was created Earl of Vendome and Beaumont and died 1451. His second wife was Maud Stanhope, co-heiress of Lord Cromwell of Tattershall. The seventh and eighth, best known by their other title of Lord Welles, were both put to death for heading the Lincolnshire rebellion against Edward IV., the father by an act of bad faith on the king’s part, who had taken him, together with Dymoke the Champion, out of the Sanctuary in Westminster; and the son because, in revenge, joining Sir Thomas de la Launde, he had fought the Yorkists and been defeated at the battle of Loose-coatfield near Stamford, 1470. The ninth lord was William, who was descended from a younger son of the fifth Baron Willoughby, since Richard Hastings, whom Joan, the sister and heiress of the eighth Lord Welles, had married, left no issue. There is a monument in Ashby church near Spilsby, though in a very fragmentary condition, to William and also to Joan and Richard Hastings. William married Katherine of Aragon’s maid-of-honour, Lady Mary Salines, for his second wife, and by a will, dated Eresby 1526, desired to be buried and have a monument erected to himself and his wife at Spilsby, but this was never done. The stone screen with its supporting figures of a hermit, a crowned Saracen, and a wild man, erect, set up in 1580, is in memory of his daughter and heiress, Katherine Duchess of Suffolk, and her second husband, Richard Bertie, her first husband being that Charles Brandon who obtained so huge a share of the estates confiscated by Henry VIII. in Lincolnshire. They lived at Grimsthorpe, on the west side of the county, which the king had given to Katherine’s parents; and thenceforth that became the chief seat of the Willoughby family, and the series of monuments is continued in Edenham church. But there is one more monument, in what is now called the Willoughby chapel at Spilsby. This is to a son of the duchess, Peregrine Bertie, tenth Baron Willoughby; he died at Berwick in 1601, and was buried at Spilsby as directed in his will; his daughter, Lady Watson, died in 1610, and, as she wished to be buried near her father, Sir Lewis Watson of Rockingham erected a monument to both father and daughter, the latter reclining on her elbow, with the baby, which caused her death, in a little square cot at her feet. Peregrine was so named because he was born abroad, his parents having fled from the Marian persecutions. His wife was the Lady Mary Vere who brought the office of chamberlain into the Willoughby family. It was claimed by her son Robert, the eleventh baron, who in 1630 was made Earl of Lindsey, and thus the barony became merged in the earldom, the fourth earl being subsequently created Duke of Ancaster.

Eresby Manor was burnt down in 1769, and only the moat and garden wall and, at the end of the avenue, one tall brick-and-stone gate-pillar surmounted by a stone vase remain. At the suppression of the college and chantries the Grammar School was founded on the site of the college, just to the north of the church, Robert Latham being the first master, in 1550.

At the south-west end of the church are three tablets to three remarkable brothers born in Spilsby towards the end of the eighteenth century.

[Sidenote: THE FRANKLINS]

Major James Franklin, who made the first military survey of India, and contributed a paper to the Geological Society in 1828, died in 1834. Sir Willingham Franklin who, after a distinguished career at Westminster and Oxford, died, with wife and daughter, of cholera, 1824, at Madras, where he was judge of the Supreme Court. And Sir John Franklin, the famous Arctic navigator, who fought at Trafalgar and Copenhagen, and died in the Arctic regions on June 11, 1847, before the historic disaster had overtaken the crews of the _Erebus_ and _Terror_. His statue stands in his native town, and also in Hobart Town, where he lived for a time as Governor of Tasmania, and is one of the two statues in London which were set up by the nation. On his monument in Westminster Abbey are the beautiful lines by his friend and neighbour, and relative by marriage, Alfred Tennyson.

Not here! the white North has thy bones; and thou, Heroic sailor-soul, Art passing on thy happier Voyage now Towards no earthly pole.

The other brother, Thomas Adams Franklin, raised the Spilsby and Burgh battalion of volunteer infantry in 1801. Major Booth followed his good example and raised a company at Wainfleet to resist the invasion by Napoleon, and the men of the companies presented each of them with a handsome silver cup. Five Franklin sisters married and settled in the neighbourhood; and Catharine, the daughter of Sir Willingham, married Drummond, the son of the Rev. T. H. Rawnsley, vicar of Spilsby. Thus quite a clan was created, insomuch that forty cousins have been counted at one Spilsby ball. Drummond succeeded his father as rector of Halton, and very appropriately preached the last sermon in the old church at Spilsby at the closing service previous to its restoration, speaking from the pulpit which his father had occupied from 1813 to 1825. His sermon, a very fine one, called “The Last Time,” was from 1 St. John ii. 18, and was delivered on Trinity Sunday, 1878.

[Sidenote: LINCOLNSHIRE STORIES]

The time to visit Spilsby is on market day, when, round the butter cross, besides eggs, butter and poultry, pottery is displayed “on the stones,” stalls are set up where one may buy plants and clothes, and things hard to digest like “bull’s eyes,” as well as boots and braces, and near “the Statue” at the other end, are farm requisites, sacks, tools, and the delightful-smelling tarred twine, as well as all sorts of old iron, chains, bolts, hinges, etc., which it seems to be worth someone’s while to carry from market to market. It is here that the humours of the petty auctioneer are to be heard, and the broad Doric of the Lincolnshire peasant. In the pig market below the church hill you may hear a man trying to sell some pigs, and to the objection that they are “Stränge an’ small,” he replies, “Mebbe just now; but I tell ye them pigs ’ull be greät ’uns,” then, in a pause, comes the voice from a little old woman who is looking on without the least idea of buying, “It ’ull be a straänge long while fust,” and in a burst of laughter the chance of selling that lot is snuffed out, or, as they say at the Westmorland dog trials, “blown off.”

[Sidenote: MORE STORIES]

There is an unconscious humour about the older Lincolnshire peasants which makes it very amusing to be about among them, whether in market, field or home. My father never returned from visiting his parish without some rich instance of dialect or some humorous speech that he had heard. Finding a woman flushed with anger outside her cottage once, and asking her what was amiss, he was told “It’s them Hell-cats.” “Who do you call by such a name?” “Them Johnsons yonder.” “Why? What have they been doing?” “They’ve been calling me.” “That’s very wrong; what have they been calling you?” “They’ve bin calling me Skinny.” At another time a woman, in the most cutting tones, alluding to her next-door neighbours who had an afflicted child, said, “We may-be poor, and Wanty [her husband] says we _are_ poor, destitutely poor, and there’s no disgraäce in being poor, but _our_ Mary-Ann doant hev fits.” Another time, when my sister was recommending a book from the lending library describing a voyage round the world, and called “Chasing the Sun,” a little old woman looked at the title and said, “Naäy, I weänt ha’ that: I doänt howd wi sich doings. Chaäsing the Sun indeed; the A’mighty will soon let ’em know if they gets a chevying him.” In the same village I got into conversation one autumn day with a small freeholder whose cow had been ill, and asked him how he had cured her, he said, “I got haafe a pound o’ sulphur and mixed it wi’ warm watter and bottled it into her. Eh! it’s a fine thing I reckon is sulphur for owt that’s badly, cow or pig or the missis or anythink.” Then, with a serious look he went on, “There’s a straänge thing happened wi’ beans, Mr. Rownsley.” “What’s that?” “Why, the beans is turned i’ the swad” (= pod). “No!” “Yees they hev.” “How do you mean?” “Why they used to be black ends uppermost and now they’r ’tother waay on.” “Well, that’s just how they always have been.” “Naay they warn’t. It was ’81 they turned.” They _do_ lie with the attachment of each bean to the pod, just the way you would not expect, and having noticed this he was convinced that up to then they had really lain the way he had always supposed they did, so difficult is it to separate fact from imagination. The similes used by a Lincolnshire native are often quite Homeric, as when an old fellow, who was cutting his crop of beans, the haulm of which is notoriously tough, resting on his scythe said, “I’d rayther plow wi two dogs nor haulm beans.” Then they have often a quiet, slow way of saying things, which is in itself humorous. I remember a labourer who was very deaf, but he had been much annoyed by the mother of a man whose place he had succeeded to. He was working alongside of his master and _apropos_ of nothing but his own thoughts, he said, “Scriptur saäys we should forgive one another; but I doänt knoä. If yon owd ’ooman fell i’ the dyke I doänt think _I_ should pull her out. I mowt tell some ’un on her, but I doänt think I should pull her out howiver.” There is some kindliness in that, though in quantity it is rather like the Irishman’s news: “I’ve come to tell you that I have nothing to tell you, and there’s some news in that.” But the Lincolnshire native is a trifle stern; even the mother’s hand is more apt to be punitive than caressing. “I’ll leather you well when I gets you home, my lad,” I have heard a mother say to a very small boy, and I have heard tell of a mother who, when informed that her little girl had fallen down the well, angrily exclaimed, “Drat the children, they’re allus i’ mischief; and now she’s bin and drownded hersen I suppose.”

In Westmorland it is the husband who _will_ take too much at market on whom the vials of the wrath of the missis are outpoured, and they generally know how to “sarve” him. One good lady, on being asked “How_ever_ did you get him ower t’wall, Betty?” replied “I didna get him ower at a’—I just threshed him through th’ hog-hole” (the hole in the wall for the sheep, or hoggetts, to pass through).

Speaking of tippling, there is no more delightful story than this from Westmorland, of a mouse which had fallen into a beer vat and was swimming round in despair, when a cat looked over, and the mouse cried out, “If ye’ll git me oot o’ this ye may hev me.” The cat let down her tail and the mouse climbed up, and shaking herself on the edge of the vat, jumped off and went down her hole, and on being reproached by the cat as not being a mouse of her word, answered, “Eh! but ivry body knaws folks will say owt when they’re i’ drink.”

[Sidenote: OLD BOLINGBROKE]

There are several pretty little bits of country near Spilsby, but the most interesting of the by-ways leads off from the Horncastle road at Mavis Enderby, and, going down a steep hill, brings us to _Old Bolingbroke_, a picturesque village with a labyrinth of lanes circling about the mounded ruins of the castle, where, in 1366, Henry IV. “of Bolingbroke” was born. It was built in 1140 by William de Romara, first Earl of Lincoln, and was, till 1643, when Winceby battle took place, a moated square of embattled walls, with a round tower at each corner. Here Chaucer used to visit John of Gaunt and the Duchess Blanche of Lancaster, on whose death, in 1369, he wrote his “Book of the Duchess.” The castle, after the Civil Wars, sank into decay, and the gate-house, the last of the masonry, fell in 1815. The road onwards comes out opposite Hagnaby Priory. William de Romara, who three years later founded Revesby Abbey, had for his wife the second Lady Lucia, the heiress of the Saxon Thorolds, an honoured name among Lincolnshire families. She brought him, among other possessions, the manor of Bolingbroke. Her second husband was the Norman noble, Ranulph, afterwards earl of Chester. The Thorolds were descended from Turold, brother of the Lady Godiva. There apparently were two _Lady Lucias_, whose histories are rather mixed up by the ancient chroniclers. The earlier of the two was, it seems, the sister of the Saxon nobles, Edwin and Morcar, and of King Harold’s queen Ealdgyth. Her hand was bestowed by the conqueror upon his nephew, Ivo de Taillebois (= Underwood), who became, according to Ingulphus and others, a monster of cruelty, and died in 1114.

[Sidenote: HARRINGTON]

There are several by-ways to the north-west of Spilsby, which all converge on _Harrington_. Here the church contains several monuments of interest. At the east end of the nave, a knight in chain armour with crossed legs and shield is said to be Sir John Harrington (_circa_ 1300); and against the chancel wall, but formerly on the pavement, is the brass of Margaret Copledike (1480). Her husband’s effigy is missing. Under the tower window is the monument to Sir John Copledike (1557), and in the chancel south wall a canopied tomb with a brass of Sir John Copledike (1585). Opposite is a Jacobean monument, which testifies to the illiteracy of the age with regard to spelling, to Francis Kopaldyk, his wife and two children (1599). In the time of Henry III. it was spelt Cuppeldick. A Perpendicular font with the Copledike arms stands against the tower arch.

Close to the church is Harrington Hall, with its fine old brick front and projecting porch. Hanging over the doorway is a large dial with the Amcotts arms, a curiously shaped indicator, and the date 1681. On either side of the porch which runs up the whole height of the house, are twelve windows, under deep, projecting, corbelled eaves. Inside is an old oak-panelled room, most richly carved. The house is the property of the Ingilby family, and at present the residence of E. P. Rawnsley, Esq., who has been for many years Master of the Southwold Hunt.

Somersby is but two miles off, and we may without hesitation turn our thoughts to the terraced garden of this delightful old hall when we read in Tennyson’s “Maud”:—

“Birds in the high Hall-garden When twilight was falling, Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud, They were crying and calling.”

The poet loved to tell how, when he was reading this and paused to ask, “Do you know what birds those were?” a lady, clasping her hands, said, “Oh, Mr. Tennyson, was it the nightingale?” though in reading it he had carefully given the harsh caw of the rooks.

[Sidenote: BAG ENDERBY]

To get from here to _Somersby_ you pass through _Bag Enderby_, where there is a fine church, now in a very ruinous state. The very interesting old font, which stands on two broken Enderby tombstones, has some unusual devices carved on it, such as David with a viol, and the Virgin with the dead Christ. One, the most remarkable of all, is a running hart turning back its head to lick off with its long tongue some leaves from the tree of life growing from its back. This symbolism is purely Scandinavian; and that it could be used on a Christian font shows how thoroughly the two peoples and their two religions were commingling.[25] The large number of villages about here ending in “by”—Danish for hamlet—is sufficient evidence of the number of settlers from over the North Sea who had taken up their abode in this part of the county.

[Illustration: _Somersby Church._]

The green-sand, which underlies the chalk, and of which almost all the churches are built, crops out by the roadside in fine masses both here and at Somersby and Salmonby, as it does too at Raithby, Halton, Keal, all in the immediate neighbourhood of the chalk wolds. Inside the church, slabs on the floor of the chancel retain their brass inscriptions to Thomas and Agnes Enderby (1390), and Albinus de Enderby, builder of the tower (1407); and on the wall is a monument to John and Andrew Gedney (1533 and 1591). The latter represented in armour and with his wife and family of two sons and two daughters. The wife, whose name is spelt first Dorithe, then Dorathe, “died the 7th of June 1591 and Andrew ____” the blank being left unfilled.

The knives and scourges of Crowland Abbey (_see_ Chap. XLI.) are seen in the old glass. The custom of giving little knives to all comers at Crowland on St. Bartholomew’s Day was abolished by Abbot John de Wisbeche in the reign of Edward IV. In the tower is a fine peal of disused bells.

[Sidenote: SOMERSBY CROSS]

Dr. Tennyson held this living with _Somersby_. This is a smaller building, but it retains in the churchyard a remarkable and perfect cross, a tall, slender shaft with pedimented tabernacle, under which are figures, as on the gable cross at Addlethorpe and on the head of the broken churchyard cross at Winthorpe—the Crucifixion is on one side and the Virgin and Child on the other.

From Somersby there are two roads to Horncastle—each passes over the brook immortalised in “In Memoriam” and in the lovely little lyric, “Flow down cold rivulet to the sea,” and branching to the left, one passes through Salmonby, where Bishop William of Waynflete is said to have been rector. This is doubtful, but probably he was presented to the vicarage of Skendleby by the Prior of Bardney in 1430. The other and prettier road goes by _Ashby Puerorum_ and _Greetham_, and both run out into the Spilsby and Horncastle road near _High Toynton_. Ashby Puerorum (or Boys’ Ashby) gets its name from an estate here bequeathed to support the Lincoln Minster choir boys. At this place, and again close by Somersby, the hollows in the Wold which this road passes through are among the prettiest bits of Lincolnshire.

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