Part 3 (1/2)
In 1620 the head of the Fitz-William family was created an Irish Peer; in 1742 the 3rd Baron was made Baron Milton in the peerage of Great Britain; and, 4 years later, Earl Fitz-William. In 1782, on the death of his uncle, the last Marquis of Rockingham, the Earl of that day succeeded to the Yorks.h.i.+re and Northamptons.h.i.+re estates of the Wentworths, and in 1807 they took the name of Wentworth as an affix. In the early part of the 19th century the name became again connected with Horncastle, when Earl Fitz-William, grandfather of the present Earl, hunted the local pack of foxhounds, which were kept in Horncastle, in what is still called Dog-kennel Yard, at the back of St. Lawrence Street. An old friend, formerly practicing as a Doctor in Horncastle, but lately deceased, has told the writer that he remembered seeing the Earl's hounds breaking cover from Whitehall Wood, in the parish of Martin.
There is one more Carlisle doc.u.ment deserving of quotation as it is of a peculiar nature. A Patent Roll of the reign of Elizabeth, {29i} A.D.
1577, records that a ”pardon” was granted to ”Sir Thomas Cecil, Knt., for acquiring the manor of Langton (by Horncastle) with appurtenances, and 30 messuages, 20 cottages, 40 tofts, 4 dove-cotes, 40 gardens, 30 orchards, 1,400 acres of (cultivated) land, 100 acres of wood, 100 acres of furze and heath, 200 acres of marsh, 40s. of rent, and common pasture, with appurtenances, in Horncastle, Thimbleby, Martin, Thornton and Woodhall, from Philip Tylney, Esq., by fine levied without licence.” This was a somewhat extensive acquisition. We have already recorded a more than questionable transaction in the transfer of land by Richard Thymelby and Robert Savile, A.D. 1564, and this transaction of Sir Thomas Cecil, 13 years later, seems also to have been in some way irregular, since it needed the royal ”pardon.”
There is nothing to show who this Philip Tylney was, who acted on this occasion as vendor, but Sir Thomas Cecil was the son of the great Lord Treasurer Burghley, who was Secretary of State under Edward VI., and for 40 years guided the Councils of Queen Elizabeth. Sir Thomas himself was a high official under Elizabeth and King James I.; he was knighted in 1575, received the Order of the Garter in 1601; under James I. he was made Privy Councillor, and having succeeded his father as Baron Burghley, was created by James Earl of Exeter. His brother Sir Robert also held high office and was made in 1603 Baron Cecil, in 1604 Viscount Cranbourne, in 1605 Earl of Salisbury. Thomas Cecil died Feb. 7, 1622, aged 80, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. He married 1st Dorothy, daughter of John Nevil, Lord Latimer, and 2nd, Frances, daughter of Lord Chandos. He was, doubtless, a man of large ideas and great ambition, his royal mistress was herself Lady of the manor of Horncastle, and Horncastle having thus been brought under his notice, he may have been too grasping in compa.s.sing his purposes. The Revesby Charters {30a} show that he purchased that estate in 1575.
We may add that the Cecils were descended from an ancient family located in Wales soon after the Norman Conquest, and acquired large possessions in the reign of King Rufus; the 14th in descent was David Cecil of Stamford, Sergeant at Arms to King Henry VIII., he was grandfather to the 1st Lord Burghley. {30b} The present representatives of this old family are the Marquis of Exeter of Burghley House, Stamford, and the Marquis of Salisbury of Hatfield House, Herts.
We have now reached the end of a somewhat lengthy series of owners formerly connected with Horncastle, its manor, and its soke, bringing us down to the early part of the 17th century, and we think that few towns, of its size, could show such a record of distinguished names. The information available as to more recent periods is more meagre. The Bishops of Carlisle continued to hold the manor down to the year 1856, and various parties held leases of it under them, they themselves residing here from time to time, {30c} until the episcopal palace was demolished in 1770, when the present Manor House was erected on its site.
We have already stated that Queen Elizabeth leased the manor from the Bishop of Carlisle of that date, she was succeeded in the lease by King James I., who transferred it to Sir Henry Clinton, but owing to a legal error in that transaction, it proved void. One of the said Bishops in the next reign was Dr. Robert Snowden, whose family were located in this neighbourhood, his son being Vicar of Horncastle. Abigail Snowden married Edward, son of Sir Edward Dymoke, Knt., in 1654, and Jane Snowden married Charles Dymoke, Esq., of Scrivelsby Court; the former belonged to the, so called, Tetford branch of the Dymokes, who have of late years also succeeded to the Scrivelsby property. Bishop Robert Snowden granted a lease of the Horncastle manor to his kinsman, Rutland Snowden, and his a.s.signees for three lives; but this would appear to have been afterwards cancelled, owing to the ”delinquency” of the first grantee. {31a} The name of this Rutland Snowden appears in the list of Lincolns.h.i.+re Gentry who were ent.i.tled to bear arms, at the Herald's Visitation of 1634. {31b}
A break in the continuity of the sub-tenure of the manor here occurs, but not of long duration. The family of Banks are next found holding the lease, under the said bishops; the most distinguished of them being Sir Joseph Banks, the eminent naturalist, and patron of science in almost every form; who visited Newfoundland in pursuit of his favourite study; accompanied Captain Cook in his voyage to the South Seas; visited Iceland with Dr. Solander, the pupil of Linnaeus; made large natural history and antiquarian collections; {31c} became President of the Royal Society; and was largely instrumental in forming the schemes for the drainage and inclosure of the fens; and other works of public utility. His family acquired the Revesby Abbey estates in 1714, and were closely connected with Horncastle for more than a century, as he died in 1820.
One of his ancestors, also Joseph, was M.P. for Grimsby and Totnes; another, also Joseph, had a daughter, Eleonora, who married the Honble.
Henry Grenville, and was mother of the Countess Stanhope. Through this last connection, on the demise of Sir Joseph, the leased manor pa.s.sed, as the nearest male relative, to Col. the Honble. James Hamilton Stanhope, who served in the Peninsular War and at Waterloo. He died three years later, in 1823, and was succeeded by the late James Banks Stanhope, Esq., then a minor, and afterwards M.P. for North Lincolns.h.i.+re; who, some years ago, transferred all his manorial rights to the Right Honble. Edward Stanhope, 2nd son of the 5th Earl Stanhope, and M.P. for the Horncastle Division. He died 22 December, 1898, and his widow, the Honble. Mrs.
Stanhope of Revesby Abbey, became Lady of the Manor; this, on her decease in 1907 reverting to the family of the Earl Stanhope, of Chevening Park, Sevenoaks, Kent, in the person of his son, the Honble. Richard Stanhope, now residing at Revesby Abbey.
In 1856 the manoral rights of the Bishops of Carlisle were transferred to the See of Lincoln, and the Bishop of Lincoln is now _ex officio_ Patron of the Benefice. The head of the Stanhope family is still the chief owner of property in Horncastle; other owners being the Vicar with 92 acres, the representatives of the late Sigismund Trafford Southwell with 67 acres, representatives of the late W. B. Walter (now Majer Traves) with 58 acres; while Coningtons, c.l.i.therows, Rev. Richard Ward, and about 100 other proprietors hold smaller portions. We have mentioned the influence of Sir Joseph Banks in the drainage and enclosure of the fens, and on the completion of that important work in Wildmore Fen, in 1813, some 600 acres were added to the soke of Horncastle, about 80 acres being a.s.signed to the manor, while the glebe of the Vicar was increased so that it now comprises 370 acres.
We conclude this chapter with another record of the past, which should not be omitted. It is somewhat remarkable that although Horncastle has been connected with so many personages of distinction as proprietors, and for about 600 years (as already shewn) with royalty itself, as an appanage of the crown, it has only once been visited by royalty in person. History tells {32a} that ”on Sep. 12, 1406, Henry IV. made a royal procession” from this town (probably coming hither from Bolingbroke Castle, his birthplace), ”with a great and honourable company, to the Abbey of Bardney, where the Abbot and monks came out, in ecclesiastical state, to meet him,” and he was royally entertained by them. We may perhaps a.s.sume that as his father, John of Gaunt, had a palace at Lincoln, {32b} he was on his way thither, where also his half brother, Henry Beaufort, had been Bishop, but was promoted two years before this to the See of Winchester.
The nearest approach to another royal visit was that of the Protector, Oliver Cromwell, which however was of a private character. Although historians do not generally relate it, it is locally understood that, after the Battle of Winceby, on Oct. 11, 1643, Cromwell personally came to Horncastle to see that proper honours were paid, by the churchwarden, Mr. Hamerton, to the body of Sir Ingram Hopton, slain on that eventful day in single combat with Cromwell himself, who p.r.o.nounced him to be ”a brave gentleman,” he having, indeed, first unhorsed Cromwell. This visit would seem to be further proved by the fact that a man, named John Barber, died in Horncastle, aged 95, A.D. 1855 (or 1856), whose grandfather remembered Cromwell, on that occasion, sleeping in the house now called Cromwell House, in West Street (or rather an older house on the same site); while in the parish register of West Barkwith there is an entry of the burial of Nicholas Vickers, in 1719, with the additional note that he ”guided Cromwell over Market Rasen Moor,” in his journey northward after the battle. He may well, therefore, have taken Horncastle on his way.
CHAPTER III.
Having, so far, dealt with the more or less conjectural, prehistoric period of Horncastle's existence in Chapter I, and with the Manor and its owners.h.i.+p in Chapter II, we now proceed to give an account of the town's inst.i.tutions, its buildings, and so forth. Among these the Parish Church, naturally, claims precedence.
ST. MARY'S CHURCH.
This is probably not the original parish church. There is no mention of a church in _Domesday Book_, and although this is not quite conclusive evidence, it is likely that no church existed at that date (circa 1085 A.D.); but in Testa de Nevill (temp. Richard I.) we find ”Ecclesia de Horncastre,” named with those of (West) Ashby, High Toynton, Mareham (-on-the-Hill), and (Wood) Enderby, as being in the gift of the King; {33a} while at an Inquisition post mortem, taken at Horncastle, 8 Richard II., No. 99, {33b} the Jurors say that ”the Lord King Edward (I.), son of King Henry (III.), gave to Gilbert, Prior of the alien Priory of Wyllesforth, and his successors, 2 messuages, and 6 oxgangs (90 acres) of land, and the site of the Chapel of St. Laurence, with the appurtenances, in Horncastre,” on condition that they find a fit chaplain to celebrate ma.s.s in the said chapel three days in every week ”for the souls of the progenitors of the said King, and his successors, for ever.” This chapel probably stood near the street running northwards from the Market Place, now called St. Lawrence Street, though, a few years ago, it was commonly called ”Pudding Lane.” It is said to have formerly been a main street and at the head of it stood the Market Cross. Bodies have at various times been found interred near this street, indicating the vicinity of a place of wors.h.i.+p, and, when a block of houses were removed in 1892, by the Right Honble. E. Stanhope, Lord of the Manor, to enlarge the Market Place, several fragments of Norman pillars were found, which, doubtless, once belonged to the Norman Chapel of St. Lawrence. {34}
The date of St. Mary's Church, as indicated by the oldest part of it, the lower portion of the tower, is early in the 13th century. ”It is a good example of a town church of the second cla.s.s (as said the late Precentor Venables, who was a good judge) in no way, indeed, rivalling such churches as those of Boston, Louth, Spalding or Grantham; nay even many a Lincolns.h.i.+re village has a finer edifice, but the general effect, after various improvements, is, to say the least, pleasing, and it has its interesting features. The plan of the church (he says) is normal; it consists of nave, with north and south aisles; chancel, with south aisle and north chantry, the modern vestry being eastward of this; a plain low tower, crowned with wooden spirelet and covered with lead. Taking these in detail: the tower has two lancet windows in the lower part of the west wall, above these a small debased window, and again, above this, a two-light window of the Decorated style, similar windows on the north and south sides, and at the top an embattled Perpendicular parapet. The tower opens on the nave with a lofty arch, having pilaster b.u.t.tresses, which terminate above the uppermost of two strings; the base is raised above the nave by three steps, the font being on a projection of the first step. This lower portion of the tower is the oldest part of the church, dating from the Early English period. The chamber where the bells are hung is, by the modern arrangement, above this lower compartment, and is approached by a winding staircase built on the outside of the southern wall, a slight disfigurement.”
There are six bells, with the following inscriptions:-
(1) Lectum fuge. Discute somnum. G. S. T. W. H. Penn, Fusor, 1717.
(2) In templo venerare Deum. H. Penn nos fudit. Cornucastri.
(3) Supplicem Deus audit. Daniel Hedderley cast me. 1727.
(4) Tho. Osborn fecit. Downham, Norfolk. 1801. Tho. Bryan and D. Brown, Churchwardens.
(5) Dum spiras, spera. H. Penn, Fusor, 1717. Tho. et Sam. Hamerton Aeditivi.
(6) Exeat e busto. Auspice Christo. Tho. Loddington, LL.D., Vicar H P.
1717.
Near the south Priest's door, in the chancel, a bell, about 1 ft. in height, stands on the floor, unused; this was the bell of a former clock in the tower. The ”Pancake Bell” is rung on Shrove Tuesday, at 10 a.m.; the Curfew at 8 p.m., from Oct. 11 to April 6, except Sat.u.r.days, at 7 p.m., and omitting from St. Thomas's Day to Plough Monday. The ”Grammar School Bell” used to be rung daily, Sundays excepted, at 7 a.m., but of late years this has been discontinued, the Governors refusing to pay for it.