Chapter XI: Part 11

On Monday, October 9, that commander drew out from Boston; and his advanced guard of foot, under Major Knight, summoned Bolingbroke Castle, but received for answer that “bugbear words must not win castles and should not make them quit the place.” That night the foot was quartered in three detachments at Stickney, Stickford, and Bolingbroke; and in the morning preparations were made to mount a mortar on Bolingbroke church tower, which would have rendered the castle untenable. During the day its defenders fired upon their assailants to some purpose, for some of the latter were killed, and Quartermaster Vermuyden, son of the famous Dutch engineer, was bruised by a shot. The cavalry, whose troops were scattered throughout the neighbouring villages, were ordered by Manchester to rendezvous at Horncastle; but Fairfax, who commanded that way, had his outposts at Thimbleby and Edlington driven in. The former troop tried to get into Horncastle, but found it barricaded by the Royalists; and on their joining Fairfax at Kirkby, whither Manchester rode that day, the first order was countermanded, and the rendezvous fixed at Kirkby and Bolingbroke. On Wednesday the 11th, the foot was drawn up at the latter place; but the horse under Fairfax and Cromwell—who was unwilling to fight on account of the hard duty of the last few days—advanced two miles through Asgarby to the higher ground at Winceby, five miles south-east of Horncastle. The Cavaliers, under Sir John Henderson, arrived at the same point from Horncastle by the hill road through High Toynton, their object being the relief of the besieged castle; and it is said that neither party expected to meet its opponents so soon. The King’s troops had seventy-four colours of horse and twenty-one of dragoons, with some infantry in the rear; and the “rebel” horse were as numerous, though their companies were fewer. The passwords for the two sides are variously given as for the King “Cavendish” and “Newcastle,” and for the Parliament “Religion” and “Truth and Peace.”[125] The armies met on a high plateau—one of the highest points of the Southern Wolds; on the north-east was a deep ravine, now called the Ramshaw, which prevented the free manœuvring of the Royalist cavalry. A strategist like Cromwell would see his advantage at a glance; and about midday, with the vanguard singing their battle-psalm, he charged the Royalist left wing under Henderson, after their dragoons had fired the first volley. He was received, however, with a second, which killed the horse under him; and as he rose to his feet he was knocked down by Sir Ingram Hopton,[126] who called to him to yield. But his assailant was speedily killed in the rush, while he himself secured another horse from a trooper. The fight had lasted about half-an-hour, when the Royalist right and centre under Sir W. Saville were seized with panic at a charge from Fairfax, and broke in flight. The disadvantage of the ground was now apparent. The Royalist horse were driven back upon the foot, which had no room to deploy and let them pass; and tradition says that at the boundary between Winceby and Scrafield—along what is still known as “Slash Lane”—a closed gate intercepted their headlong flight, and here the Roundhead troopers, pressing upon the confused multitude, did terrible execution. Their victory was complete; and the pursuit was continued, in spite of the tired horses, beyond Horncastle. Eight hundred prisoners were taken, and the number of the dead, some of whom were drowned in crossing the fens, is variously placed between 500 and 1000. The Parliament’s loss was trifling, and included but a single officer. The affair was entirely a cavalry action, for Manchester’s foot was not engaged, and the Royalist infantry seem to have run away without striking a blow. If the scythes now displayed on the walls of Horncastle Church were carried, as tradition says, by some of the foot at Winceby, it seems that many of them were peasant levies, indifferently armed.

The consequences of the victory, for the moment at least, were far-reaching. A Puritan chronicler[127] could truthfully exclaim: “Yorkshire is discouraged, Lincolnshire is delivered, Cambridge is secured.” On the very day of Winceby some of Newcastle’s forts at Hull were captured by the garrison; and the following day he raised the siege and retreated to York. On the 20th Lincoln capitulated to Manchester, who soon after laid siege to Gainsborough.[128] Manchester did his best by persuasion to win back the county to Parliament; and a number of Royalist gentry changed sides from a rumour that the King was bringing over an army of native Irish. The scare of “Popery” was always the Parliament’s strongest card. Their own alliance at this time with the equally foreign Scots, which really changed the fortune of the war, aroused no such feeling. Late in the year a force of 800 Danes, sent by the King’s uncle, Christian IV., landed on the Lincolnshire coast, and met with a warmer reception than their pirate forefathers. The trained bands were called out, and killed about fifty of them, forcing the rest back upon their ships. Winter set in early, and there was much snow in November. The force besieging Gainsborough suffered much privation; and an Essex officer among them writes:[129] “Our lying in the field hath lost us more men than have been taken away either by the sword or bullet.” He adds that at the time of writing he had only two shillings, and his troop was without money, even for shoeing their horses, repairing saddles, &c. The perseverance of Fairfax, who was in command, was at length rewarded by the surrender of the town on December 20.

In the following month (January 1644), the Newark people addressed a “remonstrance” to the King on the condition of Lincolnshire. They represented that the whole county “is now in possession of the Rebels,” mentioning in particular “that seditious town of Boston,” and urged that, unless a diversion was made by his Majesty’s troops elsewhere, the whole force of the county, which was “above 5000 foot and twenty troops of horse,” would be “poured down” upon them. About the same time a hot dispute arose in Parliament about the Lincolnshire command. Lord Willoughby had much resented his supersession by the Earl of Manchester, which in his opinion lacked the authority of Parliament. Cromwell, as usual, was ready with the first blow. He moved that Lord Willoughby cease to be Major-General in Lincolnshire, as he had abandoned Gainsborough and Lincoln in the summer without necessity, and had permitted loose and profane conduct among his soldiers. These charges caused much ill-feeling. Sir Christopher Wray warmly defended Willoughby, who challenged Manchester to a duel; and three of Wray’s sons went so far as to cudgel one of the Earl’s officers. Cromwell’s motion, however, was carried; and with much difficulty Willoughby was induced to serve under Manchester. With the Lincolnshire levies he appears to have taken part in the siege of Newark in March; and, according to Mrs. Hutchinson, the brilliant feat of Prince Rupert in relieving the place and capturing most of the besieging force (March 22), was only rendered possible by the cowardly flight of the Lincoln men. This exploit caused such a panic that within three days Lincoln, Sleaford, and even distant Crowland were abandoned by their garrisons, and the defences of Gainsborough were dismantled. In his remonstrance to the House of Lords on April 8 the Earl of Essex himself used the words—“Lincolnshire is lost.” Two days before, however, Crowland had been recovered; and in three weeks Manchester and Cromwell were advancing against Lincoln. On May 3, with his army drawn up at Canwick, Manchester summoned the city by trumpet, and, on being denied, sent two regiments of foot against it, while Cromwell with 2000 cavalry held in check a relieving force. The garrison were expelled from the lower town and retreated into the Castle, after attempting to set fire to many houses. The assault on the Castle, which was delayed two days by heavy rain, took place on Monday, the 6th; and the infantry came on with such ardour that, despite the slippery state of the hill, the works were taken in a quarter of an hour. The Royalist loss was 900 in killed and prisoners—the latter including the governor, Sir Francis Fane, and Sir Charles Dalison. The upper town, having been taken by storm, was given over to the soldiers for pillage. It was on this occasion that the Cathedral suffered most at the hands of Puritanism. Pleading a recent ordinance of Parliament, the troopers tore up all the sepulchral brasses, damaged the carvings, and smashed the painted windows. If we are to believe “Aulicus,” the Oxford newswriter, whose statements are disputed, they even stabled their horses in the nave. Other churches were much injured in the assault. St. Swithin’s was destroyed by fire; St. Martin’s and St. Michael’s were much damaged by cannon; and St. Botolph’s fell down two years later through the injuries which it now received. Two extra-mural churches, St. Nicholas’ and St. Peter’s Eastgate, had already been demolished by Lord Willoughby’s order as interfering with the city’s defences.

The whole county had now been reoccupied for the Parliament; and Manchester, throwing a bridge across the Trent at Gainsborough, marched with the army of the Eastern Association to besiege Newcastle in York. The victory of Marston Moor on July 2 decided the fate of the North and East of England. But in the next few weeks the King gained marked successes in the West; and on the return of Manchester to Lincoln on August 6, there were divided counsels among the Parliamentary commanders, which developed later into an open breach between Cromwell and Manchester. For four weeks the latter lay inactive at Lincoln, though Cromwell vehemently urged him to besiege Newark. When at length he moved southwards on September 4, the Newark garrison resumed their activity, and appeared before Sir Robert Carr’s fortified house at Sleaford, the defenders of which had to retire upon Lincoln. On October 5 a force of 500 Cavaliers captured and taxed Stamford; and perhaps it was part of the same band which, a day or two later, once more occupied Crowland for the King. This daring move brought the Fen men out in strength, though at the time the pay of the Boston garrison was four months in arrear; and by October 12 a force of 4000 men of the trained bands, under Sir T. Fairfax and Fleetwood, had assembled to block up the watery citadel. But rain fell in torrents, and most of the besiegers had to be sent back to their counties, although the approaches to Crowland were carefully guarded. On October 29, the water having subsided, a closer investment became possible; and a body of horse under Colonel Hacker was detached to confront a relieving force from Newark. The two bodies came into collision at Denton, when, in Colonel Hacker’s words, his men “shouted as if the skies would have fallen” and fell upon the enemy, who fled, leaving 400 prisoners. Three weeks later another attempt at relief was frustrated by a Royalist repulse near Grantham; and on November 6 an ordinance of Parliament provided for the erection of three forts against Crowland at a cost of £600. In the first week of December the famished garrison of 275 men, whose besiegers had been subsisting comfortably on fish and wild fowl, were allowed to march off to Newark without their arms.

The campaign of 1645 was almost wholly unfavourable to the King. When the two armies faced each other at Naseby on June 14, for the decisive struggle, Colonel Rossiter, with the Lincolnshire troops, arrived just in time to take part in Cromwell’s charge on the Royalist left wing. The King retreated eastward after his defeat; but in August he was again approaching the Associated Counties with an army of about 3000 men. In that month the Newarkers made two raids upon Stamford, and carried off some of their opponents; and on the 23rd the King himself passed through the town. But his cause was declining rapidly; and on April 27, 1646, he left Oxford in disguise to take refuge with the Scots before Newark. The night of May 3—his last as a free man—he passed at Stamford in the house of Mr. Wolph; and with the surrender of Newark by his command on May 6, two days after he reached the Scots, the first Civil War ended.

In the second Civil War of 1648 Lincolnshire took little part. Early in June an attempt was made by Michael Hudson, rector of Uffington—the chaplain who had guided the King in disguise through the eastern counties—to raise a Royalist force. Accompanied by Stiles, the Crowland parson, he occupied Woodcroft House, near Stamford, where he was soon besieged. On the surrender of the place he was denied quarter, and, having been thrown into the moat, was “barbarously knocked on the head.” A more serious rising took place at the end of the month. A body of Cavaliers from Pontefract, 600 strong, entered the Isle of Axholme and pushed on to Lincoln, where they doubtless hoped to find arms and ammunition, but the magazine had been removed to Hull. After plundering the houses of the chief Parliamentarians, they attacked the Bishop’s Palace, whither the little garrison of a hundred had retired, and reduced it in three hours; they then wrecked and burnt the building, leaving it in ruins. But their commander, Sir Philip Monkton, found it impossible to hold the town, and on July 4 his force was defeated and dispersed near Nottingham by Colonel Rossiter, who commanded for the Parliament in Lincolnshire.

At the outset of the struggle the feeling of Lindsey inclined towards the King; but the insecurity produced by the constant forays from Newark turned the balance the other way. Holland and Kesteven, especially the fen district, supported the Parliament. The nobility and gentry were about evenly divided. Of the two chief peers, Montagu Bertie, second Earl of Lindsey, followed the King through all his misfortunes, and was one of the few who attended his funeral; Theophilus Clinton, Earl of Lincoln, who held Tattershall Castle for the Parliament throughout the war, changed sides, like Lord Willoughby, in 1647, and with him was impeached and thrown into the Tower, when the Independents gained the upper hand. Of the principal county families (besides those already mentioned), the Dymokes, Heneages, Husseys, Nevilles, Skipwiths, and Thorolds were for the King; the Brownlows, Fitzwilliams, Massingberds, Nelthorpes, Trollopes, and Whichcotes for the Parliament; and the Andersons, Cholmeleys, Harringtons, Listers, and Pelhams were divided. According to one list,[130] the number of persons in the county compounding for their estates was 180, and the total amount of their compositions was £80,800. This, however, does not include the sums set aside for the maintenance of ministers in parishes where the compounder possessed an impropriation. In some instances where the composition-fine could not be paid in full, the estates were either let or sold outright to some supporter of the Parliament at a ruinous loss. This happened to the estates of the Earl of Lindsey near Alford; his mansion and lands at Belleau were sold below their value to Sir Harry Vane the younger, who was residing there in 1655, when he was sent for by Cromwell and imprisoned in Carisbrooke Castle. Nor was it only persons of influence and large holders of property who were subject to fine. Anthony Gurley of the Close, Lincoln, had to pay £1, which was assessed upon “his books and apparel.” Sutton Dalton, who had some landed property, was fined £100 for spending only two days in Newark garrison. Sir William Clarke, of North Scarle, used to go to Newark on market-days, and for this offence was imprisoned for six months and had to pay £21. Of the seven Associated Counties, Lincolnshire, which had suffered the most heavily by the war, contributed to the Treasury by far the greatest sum in fines inflicted upon Royalist estates.

The Church history of the county would require a separate chapter; but much of the material has been lost beyond recall. When Walker was compiling his “Sufferings of the Clergy,” in Anne’s reign, he could not get proper returns from Lincolnshire; and the number of ejected clergy which he gives (37) must be far below the true figure. Bishop and Dean-and-Chapter had been abolished in November 1643, and the cathedral was served by a Sunday-lecturer, who, though he may have been episcopally ordained, yet in sympathy, like Hudibras,

“Was Presbyterian true blue.”

In 1644 the Earl of Manchester, who presided over a commission for purging the Association of “scandalous” ministers, appointed committees for the separate counties; but the minutes of the Lincolnshire Committee have not survived; perhaps they were not kept; for the business was done by sub-committees of five, who would not allow the accused clergyman to be present “lest it should discourage the witnesses,” and made him pay even for a copy of the depositions. The clergy of Stamford were all deprived for Royalism; and when Paul Prestland, the rector of Market Deeping, fled to avoid arrest, his wife and children had to spend many months first in a barn and then in the belfry of the church. Thomas Gibson, vicar of Horncastle, a man of exemplary piety, was imprisoned five times, once spending four months in Tattershall Castle, and on his release had to maintain himself by teaching. Several clergy were ejected simply for going to His Majesty’s garrisons; against one, the rector of Hykeham, it was even made a charge that he had by him many copies of the Oxford “Aulicus” gazette. Some were deprived for using the prayer book, or complying strictly with its directions; the rector of Hareby lost his living for “preaching but seldom, and not being above half-an-hour in the pulpit, and having no books.” Though many of the clergy must have taken the Covenant, there is little trace that the Presbyterian “Classis” system was ever adopted within the county. In fact, the ease with which Anglicanism was restored, after eighteen years of persecution, is strong proof that even the most Puritan districts were weary of ecclesiastical chaos.

DODDINGTON HALL

BY REV. R. E. G. COLE, M.A.

Some six miles to the south-west of Lincoln, well within view of the great Minster on its sovereign hill, but on the very border of Nottinghamshire, stands the little village of Doddington, otherwise Doddington-Pigot, situated on the slightly rising ground which here forms the watershed between the valleys of the Witham and the Trent. Its most notable feature is the Elizabethan mansion, known as Doddington Hall, which is the more prominent, inasmuch as it is not secluded in any surrounding park, but stands guarded only by its own picturesque gate-house, in close and friendly proximity to church, and rectory, and village.

Needless to say, the place had a long history before the present Hall was built. Already at the time of the Domesday Survey it had its church and priest, and its manor had been given by Ailric, its owner in Edward the Confessor’s reign, as an endowment to the newly built Abbey of Westminster. Mention is especially made of the woodland, which still is such a feature of the place, and which then formed an unbroken tract, a mile and a half in length, and half a mile in breadth. No other property was held by the Abbey in Lincolnshire, and doubtless the distance made its personal management by the Abbot and convent difficult and inconvenient. At all events, from very early times the manor was held under them, for a fee-farm rent of £12 per annum, by the knightly family of Pigot, whose long tenure, lasting for some ten generations, attached their name to that of the place, to distinguish it from the several other parishes so-called. Even so, difficulties at times arose; and in 1303 the Abbot had to make complaint in the King’s courts that Sir Baldwin Pigot had failed to render the customary rents and services, and that when he caused his beasts at Doddington to be seized, the knight and his men had rescued them and assaulted the Abbot’s servants. As a rule, however, this fixed rent of £12 continued to be paid by successive tenants to the monastery until the Dissolution. It then passed into possession of the Crown; in 1661 it was sold with other Crown rents by Charles II. to Sir Edmund Turnor, and from his direct descendant it was redeemed by the late owner of Doddington in 1860, after a continuous payment of some 700 years.

It is not our purpose here, however, to trace the early history of the place. It will be sufficient to say that as early as 1194 John Pigot asserted against the Abbot his right to hold not only the manor, but the advowson of the rectory, the patronage of which has remained to his successors down to the present day. Another Sir John Pigot in 1275 claimed to have not only right of free chase and warren in his woods at Doddington, but also his own gallows there—a right which he pleaded that his ancestors had exercised for a hundred years past. The last of the family, yet another Sir John Pigot, was High Sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1433, and died without surviving issue in 1450. His widow not only retained possession of the estate, in spite of two remarriages, but contrived to sell the reversion of it after her death to her neighbour, Sir Thomas Burgh, Knt.

Sir Thomas Burgh, who was summoned to Parliament in 1487, and in the same year was created K.G., became the owner of Doddington in 1473, and the inheritance of it continued in his family for some 110 years. Their chief Lincolnshire manor place, however, was at the Old Hall, Gainsborough, and Doddington was an outlying possession with which they had little personal connection. We cannot wonder, therefore, that when Thomas, 5th Baron Burgh, also K.G., fell into difficulties, chiefly owing to the burdens entailed by his honourable offices as Governor of Brill and Lord Deputy of Ireland under the thrifty Queen Elizabeth, Doddington was the first of his estates sold to meet his expenses.

This was in 1586, and the purchaser was John Savile, Esq., son of Sir Robert Savile, of Howley, co. York. At this time he was M.P. for Lincoln, and doubtless found it convenient to have a residence in the neighbourhood; and as John Savile of Doddington he held the office of High Sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1590. Later he became “the famous Sir John Savile,” who was several times Knight of the Shire for Yorkshire, and was created Lord Savile of Pontefract in 1628. His son Thomas, born at Doddington in 1590, became Comptroller and Treasurer of the Household to Charles I., and was created Earl of Sussex in 1644.

In 1593 Mr. Savile, having ceased to represent Lincoln, sold his Doddington estate. It was bought by Thomas Tailor, gent., who for many years had been Registrar to the Bishops of Lincoln, and whose neat handwriting may still be seen in the diocesan registers, dating from at least 1570. His residence hitherto had been in the parish of St. Martin, Lincoln, in which his two wives and others of his family were buried. The first of these wives was a daughter of Sir William Hansard, of South Kelsey, Knt.; the second a daughter of Martin Hollingworth, Mayor of Lincoln in 1560. Evidently the office of Episcopal Registrar was a lucrative one, for it appears by the inquisition taken after his death that, besides Doddington, he had purchased five other Lincolnshire manors, with messuages and lands in other parishes to the extent of nearly 10,000 acres.

Whatever the ancient manor-house at Doddington may have been like—and it had at least served as a residence for one of Mr. Savile’s position—we must suppose that it had become out of date, and not suited for the requirements of a man of Thomas Tailor’s wealth. And if we wish to see what sort of mansion was considered suitable, when Elizabeth was Queen, as the residence of a man of means, wishing to retire and set up as a country gentleman, we may find one in the present Hall, which remains in all essentials in its original state as it was built by him between the years 1593, when he purchased the estate, and 1607, when he died. Probably the date 1600 on a leaden plate at the top of the central cupola, marks the year of its completion.

Its site, closely adjoining the parish church, was doubtless that of the former manor-house. The principal entrance is on the east, through a three-gabled gate-house, two storeys high, standing back from the public road. Coped walls of brick connect this gate-house with the Hall itself, and enclose a quadrangle, which appears in 1700 as an open grassy court, but is now well-nigh filled by four stately cedars of Lebanon. A similarly walled quadrangle on the west is laid out as a flower garden. Between these courts is placed the house itself, facing east and west, and rising in three storeys to the height of 52 feet, surmounted by a plain parapet and flat roof of lead, from which rise three octagonal turrets of brick, capped with leaden cupolas. Roughly speaking, its ground plan is of that E-shape, fancifully said to represent the initial letter of the great Queen’s name, with projecting wings at either end, and a smaller projection in the centre, the lowest storey of which forms an entrance porch on either side. Its extreme length from north to south is 160 feet, and its greatest breadth at the wings is 75 feet. The house, as well as the gate-house and connecting walls, is built of brick, with stone groins, string-courses and coping, and has large square, stone-mullioned windows. Many of the small-sized bricks, made in fields close by, and of unsifted clay, are over-burnt and black; these are built in alternately with the others, or in parts are arranged so as to form a diamond pattern.

We may be permitted here to quote the description of the house as given by such an authority on the architecture of the period as Mr. Gotch. “Twelve years later,” he says, than Barlborough in Derbyshire, “we get Doddington in Lincolnshire (1595), a plan which reverts to the type of Montacute. It has the usual characteristics of the simplest kind—wings one room thick—the entrance at the end of the hall, leading on the left to the buttery, pantry, and kitchens; the parlour at the head of the hall, and the principal staircase adjacent. Here, however, as at Montacute, the hall is only one storey in height; it has a room above it, the great chamber, and on the top floor the gallery extends over the whole central part from wing to wing.

“There is an entrance court in front of the house, enclosed by a wall. It is approached through one of the quaint gate-houses of the time, which were a reminiscence of a more turbulent state of society, when it was necessary for all who went to the house to do so under the porter’s eye, but which in the calmer times of Elizabeth were occupied by some of the numerous functionaries who ministered to the pleasures of the rich. The detail at Doddington is of the plainest, the only attempt at richness being round the front door. The windows are of reasonable size, the strings are narrow, and are all of the same quasi-classic profile. The parapet is perfectly plain, and the roof is without gables, the sky-line being broken, as at Barlborough, with turrets, formed by carrying up the porch and the two projections in the internal angles of the front. The house is an example of a plain and businesslike type, which may be accounted for by the fact that it was built for a business man, one Thomas Tailor, Registrar to the Bishop of Lincoln.”[131]

What style Thomas Tailor kept up in his stately mansion we cannot tell, but that he had not impaired his fortune in the building of it is evident from his will, proved at Lincoln, 30th November 1607, in which he disposes of considerable sums of money, while the inquisition taken after his death sets forth in detail his numerous landed estates. Though his two wives and most of his children had been buried at St. Martin’s Church, Lincoln, he willed his “bodie to be buried in the parishe church of Doddington.” He was buried there on 26th November 1607, as we learn from the transcript of a former parish register, though there is nothing to mark the place.

He was succeeded by his only son, a second Thomas Tailor, born at Lincoln in 1580, who seems to have been a somewhat eccentric character, if we may judge from the following stories related of him, which were taken down from the mouth of an old inhabitant of Doddington:—“Tommy Tailor once told his steward who was going to Lincoln to market to bring him a goose. On his return he asked about it, and the man told him they were so dear he had not got one. So Tommy shut him up in a room with a lot of money on the table, and kept him there two days, asking him when he came out if he had now discovered that the use of money was to buy what one wanted, not to keep to look at. Another day he met a woman on the road carrying some butter; he asked what it was a pound. The woman told him, and he bought it of her, taking it and putting it on the branch of a tree. She walked on, but soon turned back to take it away. However, he was lying in wait, and pounced on her just as she had taken it down, and said he had bought and paid for it, and he should put it where he liked. Another person on whom he played the same kind of trick took away the chicken he had bought, threw his money at him, and called him _an owd fule_. He kept his money in a great chest, and hid it away, and, unfortunately, died very suddenly of smallpox before he explained where he had put it.” Some have fancied that his ghost still walks the Hall in anxiety for his hidden money; and it was commonly believed of a late owner of Doddington, who was fond of employing his leisure in working in the woods, that he was in search of “Tommy Tailor’s _chist_.”

As Thomas Tailor of Doddington-Pigot, he held the office of High Sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1620, and in the visitation of the county in 1634 he signs the short pedigree of his family, comprising only two generations. It was, perhaps, a mark of his eccentricity that, though he had served as High Sheriff, he had not cared to apply for a grant of arms, and the herald has appended to the pedigree a note: “He had been high shreife, but had no coate.” It is doubtful whether he had ever married; but, at all events, he left no issue, and in his nuncupative will, declared 13th December 1652, he acknowledges his niece, Elizabeth, Lady Hussey, to be his heiress.

Thomas Tailor had lived through all the stress of the Civil War, without either himself or his house having apparently been affected by it. In the course of it Lincoln had been twice besieged and taken; Cromwell’s forces had encamped on the neighbouring moor of North Scarle, and must have passed within sight of Doddington as they marched thence to defeat the Royalists at Gainsborough. The house and parish must have been well within reach of the Parliamentary forces at Lincoln, as well as of the King’s troops at Newark, who on one occasion extended their forays past it as far as Kettlethorpe, and on another burnt the very similar hall of the Jermyn family at Torksey, which was garrisoned by the Parliamentary troops. Yet he and his estates seem to have escaped unscathed. It was far otherwise with the family into whose possession Doddington now passed.

Elizabeth, Lady Hussey, who now inherited it, was the only child of the first Thomas Tailor’s daughter, Jane, by her marriage with George Anton, Esq., Recorder of Lincoln, 1598-1612, and M.P. for that city in 1588 and 1592. She married Sir Edward Hussey, of Honington, Knt. and Bart., and so added Doddington to the possessions of that distinguished Lincolnshire family. Sir Edward, her husband, was eldest son of Sir Charles Hussey, of Honington, Knt., and grandson of Sir Robert Hussey, who was a younger brother of John, Lord Hussey of Sleaford, beheaded by Henry VIII. for his supposed complicity in the Lincolnshire rising of 1536. He was already a knight at the time of his father’s death in 1609, having received that honour at Whitehall in 1608, and shortly afterwards, on 29th June 1611, he was advanced to the dignity of baronet. The original bond, cancelled by being cut into shreds, by which he bound himself to furnish £1095 by three yearly instalments for the maintenance of thirty foot soldiers in Ireland for three years, is still preserved at the Hall. He was High Sheriff in 1618 and 1637, and Knight of the Shire in the Parliament summoned to meet at Westminster, 13th April 1640. When the Civil War broke out he exerted himself zealously on the Royalist side as one of the King’s Commissioners of Array; and in 1642, when the loyal gentry of Lincolnshire resolved to provide horses for the King’s service, Sir Edward undertook to supply six, his brother Sir Charles Hussey, of Dunholme, providing two. Later he and his brother and other Lincolnshire loyalists assembled at Newark for its defence, and there Sir Charles Hussey died. Shortly before its surrender by the King’s order in 1646, we find Sir Edward at Honington endeavouring to make his peace with the Parliament. He was very aged and infirm, he says; he had taken the Covenant; his estates had been sequestered; and he asks that his wife may be allowed to compound for him. In spite of his pleading, the great fine of £10,200 was imposed. This was finally reduced to £8750, of which £4500 was raised and paid in December 1647, and three months later Sir Edward Hussey died. His eldest son, Thomas Hussey, some time M.P. for Grantham, had predeceased him in 1641; the next brother, Captain John Hussey, had been slain in the fight with the Parliamentary troops at Gainsborough in 1643. It was left to his widow, and to his eldest son’s widow, Rhoda, now remarried to Ferdinando, 2nd Baron Fairfax, to clear the impoverished estates, and to raise the remainder of the fine, which was finally paid off in 1650. For this purpose Lady Hussey had to sell her jointure, and it must have been a relief to her when, on her uncle’s death at the end of 1652, she inherited Doddington and his other estates. She enjoyed them, however, for no more than six years, dying early in 1658.

She was succeeded in the ownership of Doddington by her grandson, Sir Thomas Hussey, Bart., born in 1639, whose long minority, with the addition of his grandmother’s inheritance, must have done much to repair the shattered fortunes of the family. At the Restoration we find him, with his mother, Lady Fairfax, then a second time a widow, living at Doddington, and contributing, himself £60, and Lady Fairfax £30, towards a loan for the restored King.

In 1662, 20th February, the marriage took place at Great St. Helen’s, London, of “Sir Thomas Hussey, Bart. of Doddington, bach., and Sarah Langham, aged twenty-one, daughter of Sir John Langham, Knt. and Bart., of Cottesbroke, Northants.” Portraits of Sir Thomas and Lady Hussey still look down on the gallery of their former home; and what the house itself resembled in their time we may see from the engraving of it, which was executed by John Kip, after a drawing by Leonard Knyff, _c._ 1700. It represents the Hall and gate-house much as they are at present, with an open grassy court between. Gardens formally laid out, and orchards of young trees in rows, surround the house; but we cannot tell how much of this is due to the artist’s imagination.

Sir Thomas Hussey was High Sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1668, and Knight of the Shire 1681-95. As such he took a prominent part in the reception of a new charter granted to the city by Charles II. in 1685. On this occasion Sir Thomas Hussey, driving in, we must suppose, from Doddington, was met at the entrance of Lincoln by the Mayor and Corporation, who received the new charter from him on the green against St. Katharine’s. After this Sir Thomas, with the Mayor and aldermen, walked up the city to the Guildhall, with bands playing and bells ringing, and the conduits running claret wine, that all might drink the King’s and the Duke of York’s health. At the Guildhall the charter was read publicly by the town-clerk, Mr. Original Peart, and the ceremony terminated with a great dinner at the Mayor’s, and more drinking of healths. Towards the charges of renewing the charter, the Bishop of Lincoln gave £20, and Sir Thomas Hussey and three other gentlemen £10 a-piece.

Sir Thomas Hussey died 19th December 1706, and was buried, as his wife and many children who died young had been, in the vault of the Hussey family in Honington Church. There his monument, with his bust in marble, may still be seen; but it is in their house of Doddington that the portraits of himself and Dame Sarah, his wife, and their three surviving daughters have been preserved. The church, too, possesses a memorial of him, in the shape of a handsome silver paten and flagon, bearing his coat-of-arms, and the date 1707. His niece Rhoda, daughter of his sister, Rhoda Hussey, by her marriage with John Amcotts, of Aisthorpe, Esq., had already presented to the church a silver alms-dish in 1671, engraved with the Amcotts arms. As he left no male issue, his baronetcy passed to his cousin, Sir Edward Hussey, of Caythorpe, who already held the baronetcy conferred by Charles II. on his father in 1661.

His three surviving daughters became co-heiresses of his estates. The eldest of these was Rebecca Hussey, who “after a life spent principally in devotion and acts of charity, died unmarried, 21st August 1714.” She took care that her charities should not end with her life. Two at least of these—Rebecca Hussey’s Book Charity, and Rebecca Hussey’s Charity for the Relief of Poor Debtors—have kept her name in remembrance down to the present day. The latter was paid for many years out of the Doddington estate, but is now represented by an invested sum of £3192. The youngest was Elizabeth, who in 1714 married Richard, son and heir of Sir William Ellys, of Nocton, Bart., sometime M.P. for Grantham, but who died childless in 1724, and is commemorated with her mother and sister Rebecca on a monument in Honington Church.

Between these came Sarah, who had been already married at the age of twenty-two, at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, in 1700, during her father’s lifetime, to Robert Apreece, Esq., of Washingley, co. Hunts. In a partition of their father’s estates between her and her sister Elizabeth, in 1717, Honington had fallen to her share, but under her sister’s will in 1724 she became possessed of Doddington also for her life, with remainder to her son and daughter as tenants in common. Her son, Thomas Apreece, inherited Washingley and Honington, and was the father of Sir Thomas Hussey-Apreece, created a baronet in 1782. But Mrs. Sarah Apreece bought up her son’s contingent share of Doddington, and by her will, dated 1747, she settled the whole estate on her daughter Rhoda, the wife of Captain Francis Blake-Delaval, R.N., the owner of the great Northumbrian estates of Seaton-Delaval, Ford Castle, and Dissington. It was evidently her wish to secure the continuance of her father’s name and estate, for she strictly entailed Doddington on the second son of her daughter’s marriage, enjoining that he should take the name and arms of Hussey, and resign Doddington to his next brother, if he should succeed to his father’s estates. We are told that amongst their many seats Captain and Mrs. Blake-Delaval resided chiefly at Seaton-Delaval and at Doddington, and we may well believe that it was to Mrs. Delaval’s affection for her family, and her desire to perpetuate their memory in the house that was her own inheritance, that we owe the many family groups of her children, which seem to have been designed for the places they occupy on its walls.

She died in 1759, leaving a numerous and distinguished family of eight sons and four daughters, remarkable for their good looks and talents, which made them of note in the society of the day. Especially was this the case with the eldest son, Sir Francis Blake-Delaval, K.B., who inherited his father’s great estates in Northumberland, and made himself conspicuous in the annals of the time for his wit and gallantry, his reckless extravagance and dissipation. He, however, was not otherwise connected with Doddington than as a visitor to the house, to which he brought his theatrical friend Foote in 1752, and where his own full-length figure, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, may still be seen. We are more concerned with his next brother, on whom Doddington had been entailed. This was John Delaval, born in 1728, who, in accordance with Mrs. Apreece’s will, assumed the name of Hussey on his mother’s death in 1759, and became successively Sir John Hussey-Delaval, Bart., in 1761, Baron Delaval of Redford in the peerage of Ireland in 1783, and Baron Delaval of Seaton-Delaval in the peerage of Great Britain in 1786. He represented Berwick in Parliament from 1754 to his elevation to the British peerage. In 1750 he had married Susannah, widow of John Potter, Esq., Under-Secretary of State for Ireland; she was his first cousin, her mother having been Margaret Delaval, his father’s sister. The young couple at once made Doddington their country residence, John Delaval acting as virtual owner of the mansion and estate, both of which showed signs of energetic management and lavish expenditure. New marble mantelpieces were bought for the more important rooms of the hall in 1760, and to the same date we may ascribe the classic broken architraves with which they and many of the doors are surmounted. The present great staircase was put up in 1761, and the long gallery refloored at a cost of £500, under the direction of Mr. Lumby, the surveyor of Lincoln Cathedral. At the same time the enclosure of the moorlands on the estate was vigorously carried on, many thousand plants of quick being purchased for enclosure, and labourers continuously employed in dyking and fencing and paring sods. Another improvement was the formation of a hop-garden of twenty-six acres in the parish—the only one, it is said, in Lincolnshire. In this Lady Delaval took especial interest, and part of it was known as My Lady’s Acre. In 1770, on the death of his eldest daughter Rhoda at the age of eighteen, he undertook the restoration of the church, adding to it the present south aisle and west tower, and giving it the shape which it retains to-day. He showed his good taste, when church architecture was at its lowest ebb, by copying, though unskilfully, in his additions the fourteenth century work which remained in the older part.

In 1771, however, his eldest brother, Sir F. B. Delaval, died, and Sir John Hussey-Delaval succeeded to the great Northumberland estates. According to the settlement, Doddington ought to have passed from him to his next brother, Edward Hussey-Delaval, Esq., but a compromise was agreed to by which he retained possession of Doddington on condition of paying his brother an annuity of £400. A consideration for this mentioned in the deed is that he found the mansion and offices in a very ruinous and decayed condition, and had laid out upwards of £17,000 in building farm-houses, planting timber, making fences, and draining and enclosing the moors.

Naturally, with his accession to these more important estates, his interest in Doddington declined. The restoration of the church, begun so energetically in 1770, was not completed till 1775. On Sunday, 18th June 1775, the church was reopened in the presence of 800 people, the Sub-dean of Lincoln, the Rev. Robert Dowbiggin, taking the chief part in the ceremony. By that time, however, Sir John’s only son was dying at Bristol, and none of the family were present. In their absence, the rector, the Rev. R. P. Hurton, entertained at dinner at the Hall “thirty gentlemen and ladies of the first fashion in the county, including the Champion of England, both Neviles (_i.e._ of Thorney and of Wellingore), Mr. Amcotts (of Kettlethorpe), &c.” Refreshments were liberally provided for the other less distinguished guests.

The very first funeral that took place in the newly-opened church was that of Sir John’s only son and heir, John Hussey-Delaval, who died at the Hotwells, Bristol, on 7th July 1775, in the twentieth year of his age. On Sunday, 15th July, his body, in charge of a Bristol undertaker, arrived at Newark, where it was met by Mr. Portes, the Doddington steward. Next morning they left at ten o’clock, and were met between Newark and Collingham by all the servants in black hat-bands and gloves. Within half a mile of Doddington they were met by the labourers, six of whom in black cloaks, hat-bands, and scarves, acted as bearers. On arrival at Doddington at 2 P.M. the body was laid in the White Hall till 5 P.M. Again none of the family were present, but the rector and Mrs. Hurton, with eight others, followed next the body. Then came the tenantry and a large concourse of people. We learn that “there was a very good collation and great plenty of victuals, with a very well furnished table in the Low Paper Parlour, where Mr. Hurton and the other clergymen and several more dined. The tenants dined in the steward’s room: 4 bottles of rum, 4 of brandy, 18 of white and 18 of port wine were consumed, and there was ale enough in the cellar.” The charge of the Bristol undertaker was £203, 8s. 9d., “besides the local bills, some £43 more.” His father began to build a handsome mausoleum in the grounds at Seaton-Delaval, but this was never used, and his body, with that of his sister Sophia, Mrs. Jadis, who died in 1793, still remains in the vault beneath the church, in which the only memorial of him consists of the blackened walls which were so coloured for his funeral.

In the cellars of the Hall there is still some ale which was brewed at the time of young John Delaval’s birth, 26th May 1756, and was bottled in order to be drunk at that coming of age which never took place. Some of the bottles bear the Apreece arms; others a stamp with the name of Sir J. H. Delaval, Bart., or the initials J.H.D.

After his son’s death Lord Delaval, as he shortly after became, not being on good terms with Edward Delaval, his brother and next male heir, cut down all the timber at Doddington that would fetch any money. In the engraving of the Hall in Sir Thomas Hussey’s time we may see a row of young elms standing along the churchyard wall. An old man, employed as a carpenter on the estate, who died, aged 95, in 1858, recollected cutting these down. It blew hard at the time, and Lord Delaval looked out of a window of the gate-house, and gave directions how they should fall. They were then very large, beautiful trees, and the wood quite sound and red. He recollected also fine oaks all over the lordship, but all were cut down for bark and “kids.” This is fully confirmed by the estate accounts of 1775 and the following years, and is the reason why there are no very old trees on the estate, those now in the extensive woods having grown up since Lord Delaval’s time.

On June 3, 1780, Lord Delaval’s youngest daughter, Sarah Hussey-Delaval, then only sixteen, was married by special licence at Grosvenor House, her father’s London residence, to George Carpenter, second Earl of Tyrconnel. He is said to have been the handsomest man of his time, while she is spoken of as “the wild and beautiful Countess of Tyrconnel,” and as “the lovely Lady Tyrconnel, who had hair of such luxuriance that when she rode, it floated upon the saddle.” The following month they visited Doddington. “I am delighted,” writes Lord Tyrconnel, “with Doddington; it has an air of grandeur and solitude about it which pleases me extremely; it is a cruel hardship upon it that you should have two other places which you prefer to it. We have this evening been to Lady Delaval’s hop ground. We had such a game of Blindman’s Buff in the Hall: Mr. and Mrs. Hurton and Mrs. Grant were of the party.”

An elder daughter, Frances, had married in 1778 John Fenton-Cawthorne, Esq., of Wyerside, co. Lanc., who represented Lincoln in Parliament from 1784 to 1793. Lord Delaval exerted his interest actively in his favour, and we hear of Lincoln freemen being entertained at dinner at Doddington, while his steward’s letters to his lordship treat frequently of electioneering matters at Lincoln, of Mr. Cawthorne’s visits there at the time of the races, of his dining with the Hunting Club and “at what they call the Lunitick Club,” and with the aldermen on the day of the Mayor’s election, of his distribution of coals among the freemen, and of the three rival candidates in 1790 walking the streets with their colours flying.

Another of Lord Delaval’s daughters, Elizabeth, was married 21st May 1781, to George, Baron Audley. This marriage also was by special licence at her father’s town house, which at this time was in Hanover Square. The rector of Doddington, Mr. Hurton, of whom we have already spoken, went up to London to perform the ceremony. Lady Audley only lived till 11th July 1785.

Lord Delaval himself died at Seaton-Delaval, 17th May 1808, at the age of eighty, being found dead in his chair in the breakfast-room. His remains were conveyed in state from the north, and interred in the family vault which he had made in St. Paul’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey, in which his wife Susannah Lady Delaval had already been buried in 1783, and his favourite daughter, Sarah Hussey, Countess of Tyrconnel, in 1800. The _Gentleman’s Magazine_ of the day makes mention of “the great funeral pomp and splendour” of his interment: this may well have been the case, as the cost of it was no less than £2300. No other monuments, however, than plain flat stones, with short inscriptions and almost obliterated coats-of-arms, mark the place of their burial; while above them hang the tattered banners, begrimed with the London dirt of a hundred years, on which the arms of Delaval, Blake, and Carpenter (Tyrconnel) may still be distinguished. At Doddington his only memorial is the hatchment in the church, which was fixed to the front of the Hall on his death.

He bequeathed Ford Castle to his granddaughter, Lady Susannah Hussey Carpenter, the only surviving child of his favourite daughter Sarah, Lady Tyrconnel, whose marriage in 1805 to Henry de la Poer Beresford, 2nd Marquis of Waterford, brought it to that family, in whose possession it has continued nearly to the present day. Doddington, however, with Seaton-Delaval and other entailed estates, descended to his next brother, Edward Hussey-Delaval, the only survivor of that band of eight brothers on whom Doddington had been successively settled, and not one of whom left a son to succeed him. As a young man he had been a Fellow-Commoner, and afterwards a Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge. Here he was a contemporary and friend of the poet Gray, who makes frequent mention of him in his letters. Later he established himself in a house which he had built for himself on his own plan and designs on a piece of ground leased to him by the Crown in Parliament Place. Its site is now covered by the Houses of Parliament, but two views of it taken from opposite points, painted by his friend G. Arnold, A.R.A., now hang in the Library at Doddington, and show its gardens running down to the river-side, with Westminster Bridge in the near distance. Here he devoted himself to philosophical and chemical pursuits, being a Fellow of the Royal and other learned societies, both home and foreign, and gaining their gold medals and other honours by his various papers and treatises published in their Transactions, or as independent works. Late in life he had married, and had an only daughter.