Читать книгу Records, Historical and Antiquarian, of Parishes Round Horncastle - J. Conway Walter - Страница 11

In the middle of the south wall of the nave there is also an old piscina, with aumbrey above it, which would indicate that, in the original church, there was here a chantry. [29] The present pulpit, and the choir seats in the chancel, are of modern oak richly carved; and the vestry, at the back of the organ, is screened off by similar rich modern oak carving. The tower has a west door, with a four-light window over it; a two-light window above this, with corresponding ones in the north and south faces. Within the tower, over an ancient fireplace, is embedded in the wall, 4ft. from the ground, a curious old gurgoyle head of peculiar hideousness, which doubtless, at one time, grinned down from the original roof. Over the said fireplace there is this inscription graven in a stone:—“Sixpence in bread every Sunday for ever for the poore women present at divine service, given by John Andred, M.A., rector of Bolingbroke, Anno Domini MDCLXXX.”

In the churchyard is a tall monument, surmounted by a cherub with expanded wings, in memory of Edward Stanley Bosanquet, who died July 16th, 1886, formerly vicar; also of his wife Emmeline, and three children, who died at different dates. Outside the north wall are some stone ends of seats, formerly in the tower.

It may here be worthy of remark that Chancellor Massingberd, in his account of the battle of Winceby mentions that “among the slain on the side of the King was a Lincolnshire gentleman of the name of Hallam, the immediate ancestor of the Historian of the Middle Ages,” Henry Hallam. The name is not a common one; and on a broken stone slab, lying behind the N.E. buttress, under the N.E. window, is the fragmentary inscription, “Body of Henry Hallam, who dyed January The 6, 1687.” [30a]

We conclude our notice of this church with the words of the Precentor:—“We may realize the magnitude, and the beauty of the (former) entire church, when we bear in mind that, besides what we now see, there was a wide nave, a north aisle, doubtless equal in dimensions and style to that now standing, and a long chancel reaching to the limits of the churchyard.” A building so fine would attest the former importance of the place; and we now proceed to consider other proofs of that importance which we know to have existed.

Bolingbroke is, indeed, a place of no mushroom growth. The Castle was built in the reign of Henry I. by William de Romara, Earl of Lincoln, who also founded the Abbey of Revesby about 1143. But history carries us back to a still earlier date, and to an older, and even more interesting, and more important family than that of Romara. The mother of William de Romara (or, according to others, his grandmother) was Lucia, a Saxon heiress [30b]; sister of the powerful Morcar, Earl of Northumberland, who for some time withstood the Conqueror, and daughter of Algar, Earl of Mercia, who was the brother of Edgiva, King Harold’s Queen (others making Edgiva the sister of Lucia). She was also a near relative of the renowned “Hereward the Wake,” the stubborn champion of Saxon freedom. There was an earlier Algar, Earl of Mercia, who, 200 years before, fell in the famous fight of Threckingham (between Sleaford and Folkingham) against the Danes, about A.D. 865. He was the son of another Algar, and grandson of Leofric, both successively Earls of Mercia; the wife of the last-named being the Lady Godiva (or God’s gift, “Deodata”), renowned for her purity and good works. This Lady Godiva was the sister of Turold, or Thorold, of Bukenale (Bucknall), [30c] Lord of Spalding, and Vice-Count, or Sheriff of the County of Lincoln. And these Thorolds, father and son, were among the chief benefactors of the famous Monastery of St. Guthlac, at Croyland; a similar good work being also performed, in her own day, by the aforesaid Lady Lucia, who was chief patroness of the Priory of Spalding [31a] an offshoot of the greater Croyland Abbey. Thus William of Romara was not only a Norman “of high degree,” on his father’s side, but, through his mother, he came of a race of Saxons, powerful, brave, and distinguished for their services to their country and religion. It has been frequently observed that, although the Normans conquered and subjugated Saxon England, the stubborn Saxon eventually absorbed, or prevailed over, his Norman master; and we have an illustration of it here, not uninteresting to men of Lincolnshire. The name of Romara has long been gone, in our country and elsewhere, beyond recall; but the old Saxon name of Thorold yet stands high in the roll of our county families. There is probably no older name in the shire; none that has so completely maintained its good position and succession, in unbroken descent. [31b]

Now the Lady Lucia inherited many of the lands of her Saxon ancestors; and among those which passed to her Son William of Romara, was Bolingbroke. He was a man of many, and wide domains, but of them all he selected this, as the place for erecting a stronghold, capable of defence in those troublous times. The castle is described by Holles (temp. Charles I) as “surrounded by a moat fed by streams, and as covering about an acre and half; built in a square, with four strong forts,” probably at the corners; and “containing many rooms, which were connected by passages along the embattled walls and capable to receyve a very great prince with all his trayne.” The entrance was “very stately, over a fair draw bridge; the gate-house uniforme, and strong.” The gateway, of which the crumbling ruins were engraved by Stukeley in the first half of the l8th century, finally fell in 1815; and nothing now remains above ground. The whole structure was of the sandstone of the neighbourhood, which, as Holles observes, will crumble away when the wet once penetrates it. The moat is still visible; and further, in the rear of it, to the south, beyond the immediate precincts, there is another moated enclosure, still to be seen, the residence doubtless of dependants under the shelter of the castle; or these may have been earthworks excavated by the forces besieging the castle. We cannot here give in detail the long and varied history of the great owners of Bolingbroke. But, omitting minor particulars:—“A Gilbert de Gaunt by marrying a Romara heiress, obtained the estate. One of his successors of the same name, joining the Barons against King John and Henry III., forfeited it. It was then granted to Ranulph, Earl of Chester. It afterwards passed to the de Lacy family, earls in their turn, of Lincoln; and by marriage with Alicia de Lacy, Thomas Plantagenet, grandson of Henry III. obtained it, with the title. A later Gaunt, the famous John, Duke of Lancaster, married the heiress of this branch of the Plantagenets, and so in turn became Earl of Lincoln and Lord of Bolingbroke, and their son Henry, born here April 3, 1366, became Henry IV. As being the birthplace of a sovereign, the estate, instead of remaining an ordinary manor, was elevated to the rank of an ‘Honour’” (Camden’s Britannia, p. 471) and is entitled, in all legal documents “the Honour of Bolingbroke.” Since the accession of Henry IV. it has remained an appanage of the Crown; and as Duke of Lancaster, King Edward is “Lord of the Honour,” at the present day. Gervase Holles states that Queen Elizabeth made sundry improvements in the interior of the castle, adding “a fayre great chamber with other lodgings.” The Constable of the Castle was (in his day) “Sir William Mounson, Lord Castlemayne, who received a revenue out of the Dutchy lands of £500 per annum; in part payment of £1,000 yearly, given by the King to the Countess of Nottingham his lady.” He also says “In a roome in one of the towers they kept their audit for the whole Dutchy of Lancaster, Bolingbroke having ever been the prime seat thereof, where the Recordes for the whole country are kept.” [32]

And he then gives a detailed account of the following supernatural occurrence, as being beyond controversy authenticated:—Which is, that the castle is haunted by a certain spirit in the likeness of a hare; which, “att the meeting of the auditors doth runne betweene their legs, and sometimes overthrows them, and soe passes away. They have pursued it downe into the castleyard, and seen it take in att a grate, into a low cellar; and have followed it thither with a light, where, notwithstanding they did most narrowly observe it, and there was no other passage out, but by the doore or windowe, the roome being all close-framed of stones within, not having the least chinke or crevice, they could never finde it. Att other times it hath been seen to run in at the iron grates below into other of the grotto’s (as their be many of them), and they have watched the place, and sent for hounds, and put in after it; but aftar a while they came crying out.” (Harleian M.S.S. No. 6829, p. 162). The explanation of this hare-brained story we leave to others more versed in the doings of the spirit world; merely observing that such an apparition has not been entirely confined to Bolingbroke Castle.

The town of Bolingbroke confers the title of Viscount on the family of St.-John of Lydiard Tregoze, Co. Wilts. The career, the abilities, the accomplishments, the vicissitudes, and the writings, of the great statesman, author and adventurer, Henry St.-John, Viscount Bolingbroke, during the reigns of Anne, William and Mary, and George I. are too well-known, to need further mention here.

Saunders in his History of Lincolnshire (Vol. ii., p. 101, 1834) says that there was then still in the church the remains of an altar cloth, beautifully embroidered, and traditionally said to have been the work of Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster, wife of John of Gaunt, and mother of Henry IV., who is celebrated in Chaucer’s poem “the Dream.” Chancellor Massingberd, however, writing his account of Bolingbroke Castle in 1858 (“Architect Soc. Journ.” vol. iv. p. ii.) says that it had then disappeared, and not been seen for some 20 years, having probably been disgracefully purloined.

The parish register dates from 1538; a rather unusual occurrence, as the keeping of registers was only enforced 1530–8 by Act of 27 Henry VIII., and the order was in few cases observed till a later period.