CHAPTER XXXIII

SCRIVELSBY, DRIBY, TUMBY AND TATTERSHALL

The Hereditary Grand Champion of England—History of the Dymokes—Siward the Saxon—Simon de Dryby—The Abbot of Kirkstead—Robert de Tateshalle—John and William de Bernac—Ralph, Baron Cromwell builds the brick Castle and founds the College and Almshouses at Tattershall—The Carved Mantelpieces—Bishop Waynflete’s brick buildings—Esher Place—Tattershall Church—Stained Glass Windows—The Brasses—The Castle safe at last.

SCRIVELSBY.

The manor which carried with it the title for its possessor of “Hereditary Grand Champion of England,” was a very interesting old house till the year of the Coronation of George III., when it was destroyed by fire. An arched gateway remains near the house, where once a moat, drawbridge, and portcullis protected the courtyard. The picturesque Lion Gateway at the entrance to the park from the Horncastle road, opposite to which under some trees are seen the village stocks, was set up by Robert Dimoke about 1530. It is built of rough stones but has a fine stone lion, passant and crowned, above it, and a rebus of an oak tree (Dim oak) carved at the side of the archway. The manor with this peculiar privilege attached was given by the Conqueror to his steward “Robert the Dispenser,” Lord of Fontenaye and ancestor of the De Spencers and the Marmions.

Sir Walter Scott speaks of the Marmion of his poem, though he was an imaginary character and of much later date, as—

“Lord of Fontenaye Of Lutterward and Scrivelbaye Of Tamworth tower and town.”

[Sidenote: MARMIONS OF SCRIVELSBY]

[Sidenote: DYMOKES OF SCRIVELSBY]

In the Scrivelsby parish church of St. Benedict is a mutilated recumbent stone figure clad in chain-mail with sword and shield, and by his side a lady in the severe costume of the time, with muffled chin and plain head-dress. The warrior is Philip Marmion, the last of the Marmions of Scrivelsby, who died 1292, the family having acted as champions from the time of William the Conqueror to Henry III. Together with the championship, Philip Marmion had the right of free-warren and gallows at his manor at Scrivelsby.

[Illustration: _The Lion Gate at Scrivelsby._]

Philip having no son, his estates were divided among his four daughters. His second daughter, Mazera, married a Ralph Cromwell, ancestor of the Lord Cromwell who built Tattershall Castle, and the Scrivelsby estate fell to Joan, the youngest, who married Sir Thomas Ludlow. His son, Thomas, left one daughter, Margaret, who married Sir John Dymoke and brought the Championship in 1350 into the family, which has held it now for upwards of 560 years. It was probably their son John who married the daughter of Sir Thomas Friskney, whence descended the Dymokes of Friskney and Fulletby.

At the coronation of Edward II., 1307, and Edward III., 1327, the Championship appears to have been in commission, but at that of Richard II., 1377, Sir John Dymoke claimed it in right of his wife. Baldwin Freville counter-claimed as Lord of Tamworth, but the office was awarded to Sir John.

There are many Dymokes buried both in the church and churchyard, the most notable monument being an altar tomb in the chancel with a brass on it of Sir Robert Demoke. Edward IV. had beheaded his father along with Lord Welles after he had taken them under pledge of safety out of sanctuary at Westminster, and he tried to make amends by heaping favours on the son, who lived in five reigns—Edward IV., Edward V., Richard III., Henry VII., and Henry VIII.; and acted as Champion at the coronation of the last three, in 1483, 1485, and 1509. The brass presents him in armour and spurred, but bareheaded and with short neck, long flowing hair, and a huge beard; he stands on a lion, and the inscription runs thus:—

“Here liethe the body of Sir Robert Demoke of Scrivelsby Knight and Baronet who departed out of this present lyfe the XV day of April in ye yere of our Lord God MDXLV upon whose sowle almighte god have m’ci Amen.”

The words “Knight and Baronet” have puzzled many, but in spite of the fact that Sir Brien Stapilton at Burton Joice, Notts., and Sir Thomas Vyner at Gautby, Lincolnshire, 1672, are described as Knight and Baronet, and though they may have been first Knights and then Baronets, in this case of Sir Robert Dymoke, of 1545, it can hardly have been so, for the title baronet was not in use until after 1603, and we must suppose that the words were originally “Knight Banneret,” a distinction which was conferred on Sir Robert by Henry VIII., and that the present wording was probably a correction by an ignorant restorer in the seventeenth century, after damage done in the civil wars. The eldest son of the Champion who had been so unjustifiably put to death by Edward IV., was Lionel, who died before his father, and whose brass in Horncastle church represents him kneeling on a cushion in full armour, holding a scroll in his hand, date 1519. The figure is kneeling in a stiff attitude, armed and spurred, and bareheaded, a scroll from his mouth says:—

“_S’cta Trinitas Unus Deus Miserere nob_:”

The inscription on the brass is:—

“_In honore S’cte et individue Trinita̅s orate p’ ’aia Leonis Dymoke milit’ q’ obijit xvij die Me’se Augusti ao D’ni M’cccccxlx: cui ai’e p’ piciet’ DE’ Amen._”

Below on either side were figures of two sons and three daughters. The sons are now missing.

[Sidenote: THE CHAMPION]

Lionel’s brother Robert was only ten when he obtained the title. He was succeeded by his son Edward, who performed the office of Champion for the three children of Henry VIII. His son Robert, though never acting at any coronation, deserves mention as a martyr, in Elizabeth’s reign, to his religious convictions. This queen, always dreading a Romish reaction in favour of her rival, Mary Queen of Scots, allowed a Puritanical bishop to persecute any Catholic in his diocese, and Robert, though in feeble health, was stout of heart and kept firm to his faith and died a prisoner at Lincoln, 1580.

The mother of Edward Dymoke who was Champion to Charles II. was buried at Leverton in 1640. Sir Edward was summoned in 1660 before the Parliamentarians at Westminster and accused of “delinquency” because he bore the Royalist title of King’s Champion. He was fined £7,000, an enormous sum for the time, and he had to pay between four and five thousand. Hence the impoverishment of the Dymoke family. He lived to see the Restoration, and officiated for Charles II. in 1660, dying in 1663. He was knighted in 1661 “for his loyalty and great sufferings both in person and estate.”

A brass plate commemorates his son, Sir Charles Dymoke, who died in 1686. He officiated at the coronation of James II. in 1685, and getting off his horse in order to walk up to kiss the king’s hand he fell full length. Whereupon the queen said, “See, love, what a weak Champion you have!” He was buried at Scrivelsby, November, 1686.

[Sidenote: WESTMINSTER HALL]

Of other memorials there is a marble bust to Lewis, the Champion to George I. and II., in 1714 and 1727, who died in 1760, Ætat. 90. His widow Jane endowed a school at Hemingby “to teach the children of the poor of the parish to read, write, spin and card wool.” Finally, there is a memorial to John, Champion in 1761 to George III. Henry Dymoke who acted for his father, a clergyman, on the accession of George IV., 1821, was the last who rode into Westminster Hall in bright armour and flung down his glove and dared to mortal combat any who disputed the right and title of the king. Then, having backed a little, he turned his horse and rode out, holding in his hand the gold cup in which the king had pledged him and he had in turn drunk to the health of his majesty. Since then the quaint historic ceremony has fallen into abeyance, but the title of “the Hon. the King’s Champion” remains, and at the coronation of Edward VII. he was appointed to carry the royal banners. _Sic transit gloria mundi._

[Sidenote: THE CEREMONY]

The following is a description of the championship ceremony at the banquet in Westminster Hall written at the time of the coronation of George IV., 1821, and taken from Allen’s History of the County:—

“Before the second course was brought in the deputy appointed to officiate as King’s Champion (this was the son of the champion, who was himself disqualified, being a clerk in holy orders), in his full suit of bright armour, mounted on a horse richly caparisoned, appeared under the porch of the triumphal arch, at the bottom of Westminster Hall. Everything being in readiness, the procession moved in the following order:—

“Two trumpeters with the Champion’s arms on their banners,

“The Sergeant Trumpeter with his mace on his shoulder,

“Two Sergeants-at-Arms with their maces on their shoulders,

“The Champion’s two Esquires, in half armour, one on the right hand bearing the Champion’s lance, the other on the left hand with the Champion’s target and the arms of Dymoke depicted thereon.

“A Herald, with a paper in his hand, containing the Challenge.

“The Deputy Earl Marshall (Lord Howard of Effingham) on horseback, in his Robes and Coronet, with the Earl Marshall’s staff in his hand, attended by a page.

“The Champion (Henry Dymoke, Esq.) on Horseback, in a complete suit of Bright Armour, with a Gauntlet in his hand, his Helmet on his head, adorned with a plume of feathers.

“The Lord High Constable (The Duke of Wellington), in his Robes and Coronet and Collar of his Order, on Horseback, with the Constable’s Staff, attended by two pages.

“Four Pages richly apparelled, attendants on the Champion. At the entrance into the Hall, the Trumpets sounded thrice, and the passage to the King’s table being cleared by the Knight Marshall, the Herald, with a loud voice proclaimed the Champion’s Challenge, in the words following:—

“‘If any person of what degree soever, high or low, shall deny or gainsay our sovereign Lord King George the fourth, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, son and next heir to our Sovereign Lord King George the third, the last King, deceased, to be the right heir to the Imperial Crown of this United Kingdom, or that he ought not to enjoy the same, here is his Champion, who saith that he lieth, and is a false traitor, being ready in person to combat with him, and in the quarrel will adventure his life against him on what day soever he shall be appointed.’

“Whereupon the Champion threw down his gauntlet: which having lain a short time upon the ground, the Herald took it up, and delivered it again to the Champion. They then advanced to the middle of the Hall, where the ceremony was again performed in the same manner.

“Lastly they advanced to the steps of the throne, where the Herald with those who preceded him ascended to the middle of the steps, and proclaimed the challenge in the like manner; when the Champion having thrown down his gauntlet and received it again from the Herald, made a low obeisance to the King: Whereupon the Cupbearer, having received from the officer of the Jewel-house a Gold Cup and Cover filled with Wine, presented the same to the King, and his Majesty drank to the Champion, and sent to him by the Cupbearer the said Cup, which the Champion (having put on his gauntlet) received, and having made a low obeisance to the King drank the Wine; after which, making another low obeisance to his Majesty and being accompanied as before, he departed out of the Hall, taking with him the said Cup and Cover as his fee.”

DRIBY, TUMBY, AND TATTERSHALL.

[Sidenote: NORMAN ACTIVITY]

The amount of work done by the Normans in England has always astonished me. Not only did they build castles and strongholds, but in every county they set up churches built of stone, and not here and there but literally everywhere. They apportioned and registered the land, measured it and settled the rent, and, though hard task masters, they showed themselves efficient guardians, nor was any title or property too small for the king and his officers to inquire into. Hence, in quite small out-of-the-way places in the county we find monuments in little and almost unknown churches which attest the activity of our Norman forefathers and which, when examined by the aid of documents from the Public Record Office or the abbey or manor rolls, old wills and all the early parchments in which the industrious bookworm revels, often unfold chapters of early history of extraordinary interest, if not for the general public, at least for students and for the local gentry who still haunt the places where once the armed heel of the knight rang and the monastery dispensed the unstinted doles of a period which would have held up both hands in astonishment at the luxury of our poor laws, the excellence of our roads and the enormity of our rates and taxes. Take, for instance, the little village of _Driby_ in the Lincolnshire wolds, a village the early denizens of which my old friend, the late W. C. Massingberd, has taken the trouble to make acquaintance with, and to whose labours I am indebted for what little I know about it. He tells us how even in Saxon times a notable man lived at Driby, one Siward, not perhaps the great Northumbrian Thegn mentioned in _Macbeth_, but a later Siward who helped Hereward and his fenmen to oppose the Normans at Ely. Whoever he was, he held Scrivelsby and a large acreage in the Wolds. Next we find the great Lincolnshire Baron, Gilbert de Gaunt, succeeding Siward at Driby, holding, as Domesday Book (1086) shows, direct from the king.

[Sidenote: THE ABBOT OF KIRKSTEAD]

Early in the next century Simon de Driby comes before us; and his son Robert—the eldest son was nearly always alternately Simon or Robert—grants some lands in _Tumby_ to the abbey of Kirkstead. Robert’s father is called sometimes Symon de Tumbi and sometimes Simon de Driby, and it seems that he had obtained disposal of this land in Tumby by a grant from Robert, son of Hugh de Tattershall, just as his forefather had held land in Driby by the grant of Gilbert de Gaunt. On February 25, 1216, a Simon de Driby made his submission to King John at Lincoln, and Ralph de Cromwell, whose descendant of the same name eventually married the heiress of the Simon de Dribys and held the castle of Tattershall, also submitted at Stamford on the 28th and gave his own eldest daughter as a hostage for his good behaviour. The submissive Simon died in 1213, and his son, the inevitable Robert, made an agreement with Hugh, the Abbot of Kirkstead, by which the abbot was allowed to have his big cattle and sheep dogs, mastiffs they were termed, in the warren of Tumby at all times of the year, but no greyhounds or lurchers (_leporarios vel alios canes preter mastivos_), and if the latter turned riotous and chased game they were to be removed and others put in their place.

Robert’s son Simon obtained by marriage additional lands near Driby, at _Tetford_, _Bag Enderby_, _Stainsby_, and _Ashby Puerorum_ on the wolds, as well as some of the rich marsh land at _Wainfleet_. Henry III. granted to Robert Tateshalle license to crenelate his house at Tateshall, “quod possit kernelare mansum suum” in 1239; and we may here note that Tattershall Castle in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and half of the fifteenth was a stone building. Just at the close of the reign of Edward I. a Robert de Driby married Joan, one of the three co-heiresses of Robert de Tateshale or Tattershall, the last male representative of the family, and Joan tried to settle the castle and manor of Tattershall on her youngest son, Robert, instead of on the rightful heir. Until the heir was of age Edward had granted them to his wife, Queen Margaret, a sign that the property was valuable. She, moreover, when a widow, had the manor of Tumby for her dower house.

When the third Edward was on the throne one of the parsons who served Driby was a fellow of Merton College, Oxford, William Merle by name, who is worthy to be remembered because he was the first Englishman to keep a diary of the weather. He was appointed in 1330, and at that time one Gilbert de Bernak was the parson at Tattershall, whose relative William de Bernak, Kt., married Alice, the daughter of Robert de Driby and Joan Tattershall, and, her three brothers dying without issue, Alice came into possession of the manor of Driby. Their son, Robert de Bernak, presented a man of the same name to Driby in 1347, who died probably of the Black Death, for he presented again two years later. Robert in some way made himself unpopular, and in 1369 we hear of his being spoiled and beaten at Driby, with many of his men grievously wounded, and his reeve and his butler both killed.

In 1374 he founded a chantry in Driby church endowed _inter alia_ with rents from land in Driby and Friskney. His wife is called in his will Katherine de Friskney. This Robert de Bernak was the only one of the name who held the manor of Driby, for his elder brother John appears not to have done so, and to have died in 1346.

[Sidenote: MATILDA DE BERNAK]

The uncle of these de Bernaks, John de Driby, shortly before his death had granted the castle of Tattershall and the manors of Tattershall and Tumby away from his sister Alice to John de Kirton, who was knighted by Edward II., and summoned to Parliament in the sixteenth year of Edward III., 1343; so none of the de Bernaks ever held Tattershall, and it was through the direct interposition of the king that the descendants in the female line of the Driby and Bernak families got the property back. The way it came into the female line was this: The John de Bernak, eldest son of William de Bernak and Alice de Driby, had married Joan, the daughter of John Marmion of Wintringham, and had two sons and a daughter Matilda, who eventually was his sole heiress. She married Ralph second Baron Cromwell, and the presentation to her uncle, Robert de Bernak’s, chantry at Driby was left to her and to her son Robert Cromwell after her.

Then, at her mother’s death in 1360, she succeeded to her mother’s property in Norfolk, Tumby Manor and Tattershall Manor and Castle reverted to her on the death of John de Kirton in 1367 and Driby Manor with Brynkyl on her uncle, Robert De Bernak’s, death in 1387; so she held Driby, Tumby, and Tattershall, as well as property in Norfolk.

[Sidenote: MARRIES RALPH CROMWELL]

In 1395 and 1399 we find her husband, Ralph Cromwell, presenting to the chantry of the Holy Trinity in the church at Driby. They were large landholders, for, in addition to the manor of Cromwell and his other lands in Notts., he and his wife held the manor of ‘Kirkeby in Bayne’ with what are called the appurtenances to those various manors, _i.e._, lands in many parts of the wolds and marsh.

[Illustration: _Tattershall Church and the Bain._]

Matilda died in 1419. Her son, Ralph Cromwell, was baptised on July 15, 1414, a day memorable for a very high tide on the Lincolnshire coast which inundated all the land about Huttoft. He only lived to be twenty-eight, and was succeeded by his cousin, Ralph third Baron Cromwell, the grandson of Matilda.

[Sidenote: HER GRANDSON LORD HIGH TREASURER]

This Ralph Lord Cromwell had been appointed Lord High Treasurer of England under Henry VI. in 1433. He married Margaret, daughter of John fifth and last Baron d’Eyncourt, but had no issue. He it was who replaced the old castle by the splendid brick building which was, and is, the finest in England. He presented to Driby in 1449, and was the founder of the college and the almshouse at Tattershall, for which he obtained leave from the Crown to turn the parish church into a collegiate church in 1439, when he rebuilt it from the ground and endowed it with[26] several manors, Driby being one, so in 1461 and until 1543 the warden of the college of Tattershall was the patron of Driby. The almshouse has still an endowment of £30. He died in 1455, as the brass in Tattershall church records, and his nieces, the daughters of Sir Richard Stanhope, succeeded to his estates, but Driby remained with the warden of Tattershall. The nieces were Joan Lady Cromwell (for her husband Humphrey Bourchier, son of the first Earl of Essex, was summoned to Parliament as Baron Cromwell _jure uxoris_) and Matilda Lady Willoughby d’Eresby. One of his executors, William of Waynflete, the famous Bishop of Winchester, held the manor of Candlesby in 1477 for the use of this Lady Matilda, and soon afterwards obtained a grant of it to his newly founded college of Magdalen, Oxford, with whom it remains. Matilda Lady de Willoughby presented to Candlesby in 1494, eight years after the bishop’s death. Since then the living has been in the gift of the college.

At the dissolution of the monasteries, in 1545, Driby was granted to the Duke of Suffolk, then it passed to Sir Henry Sidney of Penshurst, who sold it to the Prescotts, a Lancashire family, about 1580, with appurtenances of lands and rents in “Brynkhill, Belchford, Orebye, Grenwyke, Ingolmells, Bagenderbie, Asbie Puerorum, ffulletsbye, West Saltfletby alias Sallaby, Sallaby Allsaints, Golderbye, Tathwell, Thorpe next Waynflet, Sutterbye and Scamlesbye.” There are two small brasses in the church to James Prescott and his wife, who was a Molineux of Lancashire. They died in 1581 and 1583. In 1636 Sir W. Prescott sold the manor of Driby to Sir John Bolles, and in 1715 it was bought by Burrell Massingberd and still goes with the Ormsby estate of that family.

[Sidenote: BUILDS TATTERSHALL]

[Sidenote: THE CASTLE]

A few words must be added about _Tattershall_. The great brick building which rises so magnificently out of the flat is one of the most impressive things in this or any country. I have walked all day partridge shooting on the estate, and however far you went you never seemed able to get away from the immediate presence of the magnificent pile; you only had to look round and it was apparently just at your shoulder all day long. Then if you enter it and go up, for even the first floor is several feet above the level of the quadrangle, you are astonished at the size of the great chambers one above the other, thirty-eight feet by twenty-two, and seventeen feet high; and finally you come on the second, third, and fourth story to the most beautiful brick vaulting and mouldings in the small rooms and galleries running round the big central rooms in the thickness of the walls. The whole is of exquisite workmanship, and finished by very deep and handsome machicolations and battlements. The bricks are apparently Flemish, thinner and of finer quality than the English bricks; similar ones were used in building Halstead Hall, Stixwould. The windows are dressed with stone, these are large and arched, having mullions and the heads filled with stone tracery like church windows. This shows how the nobleman’s castle was changing into the nobleman’s palace or mansion. The building is at one corner of a quadrangle, and is itself a parallelogram, and, including the turret bases, eighty-seven feet long by sixty-nine wide, and 112 feet high to the parapet of the angle turret. The walls, which are built on massive brick vaulting, are immensely thick, being fifteen feet above, and even more on the ground floor. The windows of the basement chambers are close on the water of the moat, for several small chambers were made in the thickness of the walls, in which, too, are the four chimneys. The spiral staircase is in the south-east turret, and has a continuous stone handrail let into the brick wall, very cleverly contrived, and giving a firm and easy grasp. Each turret is octagonal, going up all the way from the ground and being finished with a cone. In each turret is a fireplace—a comfort to the warders, and useful at a pinch for heating the supplies of oil and lead which could be poured down through the machicolations on the heads of a too assiduous foe. From turret to turret, and projecting somewhat over these machicolations, runs a loopholed gallery, and here, too, the vaulting and the rich brick mouldings are better than anything else of the kind in England, with the exception of the smaller but elaborately enriched wall surfaces of Barsham, near Walsingham in Norfolk. There are little rooms in the turrets, on each floor, and the galleries on the second and third are divided into rooms, so that in the whole building there were some forty-eight rooms. The large central rooms would be hung with tapestry, the lowest being used for an entrance-hall, meals being served in the fine banqueting hall adjoining, the second for a hall of audience or withdrawing room, and the third for the state bedroom. The fireplaces are, in the large rooms, of great width, and the restored mantelpieces, the barbarous removal of which lately caused such a stir, show a number of most interesting coats-of-arms of the families who have been connected with Tattershall down to the time of Henry VI. The treasurer’s purse figures alternately with the shields, which bear the arms of the Cromwells, Tattershalls, and d’Eyncourts, of Marmion, Driby, Bernak, and Clifton; and on the second floor one panel represents the combat between Hugh de Neville and a lion. Neville and Clifton were the second and third husbands of Matilda Lady Willoughby, which points to the fact that these mantelpieces were not carved until after the Lord Treasurer’s death, 1455, when Bishop Waynflete was in charge of the work. Sir Thomas Neville was killed at the battle of Wakefield, 1460, and Sir Gervasse Clifton at Tewkesbury in 1471.

[Illustration: _Tattershall Church and Castle._]

[Sidenote: ESHER PLACE]

[Sidenote: TATTERSHALL CHURCH]

There are three other brick buildings, which always strike me as being worthy to rank along with Tattershall. The first, but following _longo intervallo_, is the Bishop of Lincoln’s palace at Buckden in Hunts., built by Bishop Hugh of Wells about 1225. Another is the beautiful old Tudor manor-house already alluded to at Barsham, near Walsingham, which Lord Hastings has just advertised for sale (November, 1913). This has more exquisite brick diaper work and mouldings on the outside of both house and gate-house than Tattershall Castle has even in the passages and vaulted rooms on the upper floor inside, and is a miracle of lovely brick building. But it is not nearly so big as Tattershall. The other bit of fine bricklaying which is of the same rather severe character as Tattershall and Magdalen School at Wainfleet, is the gate-house of Esher Place, occupied by Cardinal Wolsey October, 1529, to February, 1530. It belonged to the Bishops of Winchester, and Wolsey then held that see together with York. Waynflete, who was bishop 1447-1486, and finished Tattershall about 1456, a year after the Lord Treasurer Cromwell’s death, had partly re-built Esher Place in his inimitable brickwork, about seventy years before. He used bricks for the lintels and mouldings, and even put in the same sunk spiral handrail, which we have noticed as so clever and remarkable a device in the turret staircase at Tattershall. Waynflete’s arms, the lilies, so familiar to us at Eton and Magdalen, were found by the Rev. F. K. Floyer, F.S.A., only last year (1912), when some plaster was removed, on the keystone of the curiously contrived vaulting over the porch. It is noticeable that Henry Pelham, who bought the house in 1729, has introduced also his family badge, the Pelham buckle, which is cut on the stone capitals of the door. This badge we have spoken of in the chapter on Brocklesby. So we have two Lincolnshire families of note, each of which has left his cognisance on the gateway of the once proud Esher Place, the “Asher House” in that magnificent scene of Act III. in Shakespeare’s “Henry VIII.”

_Norfolk._ “Hear the king’s pleasure, cardinal; who commands you To render up the great seal presently Into our hands: and to confine yourself To Asher-house, my lord of Winchester’s, Till you hear farther from his highness.”

Tattershall had a double moat, the outer one reaching to the River Bain. Over both of them the entrance would probably be, as it certainly was over the inner one, protected by a drawbridge and portcullis. This was still to be seen in 1726 at the north-east corner of the quadrangle. All that is now left is this one great pile of the Lord Treasurer’s and one guard-house of the fifteenth century. The original castle was begun 200 years earlier, when Robert, the direct descendant of Hugh Fitz Eudo—founder in 1138 of the Cistercian abbey of Kirkstead, who had received the estate from William the Conqueror—obtained leave from Henry III. to build a castle there. We have seen how the castle became the property of Joan who married Sir Robert Driby, whose daughter Alice consigned it at her marriage to Sir W. Bernak, and their daughter Matilda married Lord Cromwell, whose grandson was the High Treasurer to Henry VI. He built the brick castle, but died soon after doing so, leaving his collegiate church to be finished by his executors. The college he had founded was to consist of a warden, a provost, six priests, six lay clerks, and six choristers, and the almshouse was for thirteen poor of either sex. The original building for this still exists, and is of very humble appearance, having, it is said, been put up to serve first as a lodgment for the masons engaged on the castle and church. Of these the latter is singularly well built, as any building supervised by Bishop William of Waynflete was sure to be, and evidently of very good stone; and the two buildings being close together are striking specimens of the secular and ecclesiastical architecture of the period.

[Sidenote: THE BRASSES]

The Treasurer’s wife, who was sister and coheir of William fifth Baron d’Eyncourt, died a year before her husband. They are buried in the church, and two very fine brasses once marked the spot. He was a K.G., and this shows him with the Garter and Mantle of his Order, but the brass is sadly mutilated now; while her effigy is, sad to say, lost entirely.

Two other fine brasses of this family are in the church. One, of the Treasurer’s niece, Joan Stanhope, who married first Sir Humphrey Bourchier, son of the Earl of Essex, who was made fourth Baron Cromwell in her right in 1469; and secondly, after her first husband had been slain at the battle of Barnet, 1471, Sir Robert Ratcliffe. She died in 1479, and was succeeded in the property by her sister Matilda, who had married Lord Willoughby d’Eresby. Her brass has also been a particularly fine one. She died in 1497, and ten years before this the Tattershall estate had passed to the Crown. The inscription on her brass is filled in by a later and inferior hand, and no mention is made of her two next husbands.

[Sidenote: THE WINDOWS]

There is a very fine brass also of one of the last provosts or wardens of the college, probable date between 1510 and 1520. In 1487 Henry VIII. granted the manor to his mother, Margaret Countess of Richmond, and, the Duke of Richmond having no issue, Henry VIII., in 1520, granted it with many other manors in the neighbourhood to Charles Duke of Suffolk. This grant was confirmed by Edward VI. on his accession in 1547, but the duke and his two sons having died, he granted it, in 1551, to Edward Lord Clinton, afterwards Earl of Lincoln. The Clintons held it till 1692, when it passed, through a cousin Bridget, to the Fortescue family under whom both church and castle have suffered severely. Amongst other vandalisms, Lord Exeter, when living at Revesby, was allowed to remove the fine stained glass windows to his church of St. Martin’s in Stamford, in 1757. He paid £24 2_s._ 6_d._ to his steward for white glass to be put in in their stead, but the glass was not put in, and for eighty years the church was open to the wind and rain. The removal at all was a disgraceful business, and no wonder the Tattershall folk threatened to kill the glazier who was employed to take the windows out.

[Illustration: _Tattershall Church._]

The castle is now (1912) the property of Lord Curzon, who is putting it into repair. The story of its sale quite recently to a speculator, and the ruthless tearing out by his creditors of the fine historic mantelpieces is one which reflects little credit on any concerned in it. They are now replaced.

[Sidenote: THE KEEP RESTORED]

But “All’s well that ends well,” and Lincolnshire may congratulate herself that the finest old brick building in the country is in such good hands, and that the needed restoration is being carried out so admirably. It was no easy task to find oak trees to supply the beams which carry the floors, as each had to be twenty-four feet long and eighteen inches square.[27] The floors are now in, and the roof, which had been off for 250 years, reinstated. In the inner ward the ground plan of the kitchen has been laid bare; this was close outside the south-east angle of the keep and connected with it by a covered passage leading from the staircase turret. The turrets and parapets are repaired, and the floors and roof being again in place and the moat refilled with water, though not what one would call a comfortable residence, it will be a most interesting place to visit, and never again, we trust, be likely to fall into the neglect which it has suffered for the last two hundred years. Enough pottery and metal has been found to form the nucleus of a collection which will be preserved for visitors to see. But no collection will ever be half as interesting as the sight of this magnificent brick building itself, and the close examination of all its structural details.

[Illustration: _Scrivelsby Stocks._]

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