A History of Horncastle.

by James Conway Walter.

PREFACE.

The following pages may truthfully be said to be the result of labours, extending over many years, and of researches in directions too many to tell.

Born within almost a mile of Horncastle, and only by a few months escaping being born in it, since his father, on first coming to the neighbourhood, resided for a time in Horncastle, {0} the author, from his earliest years (except for periodical absences) has been connected with the life, social or civil, of the place, probably more closely and more continuously, than any other person living, in like circ.u.mstances.

The notes on which this compilation is based were begun more than 30 years ago. While writing a volume of _Records of more than_ 30 _Parishes around Horncastle_, published in 1904; and, before that, while describing about as many more, in a volume, _Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood_, published in 1899, he had constantly in view the crowning of the series, by the history of the old town, round which these sixty, or more, parishes cl.u.s.ter; the haunt, if not quite the home, of his boyhood, and familiarized to him by a life-long connection.

For this purpose sources of information have been tapped in every possible direction; of public inst.i.tutions, the official records, and t.i.tle deeds, where available, have been carefully consulted; especially should be here mentioned various deeds and charters, which are quoted in Chapter II, from the archives of Carlisle Cathedral, which have not hitherto been brought before the public, but of which the author has been allowed free use, through the courtesy of the librarian. These are of special value, from the long connection of the Manor of Horncastle with the See of Carlisle.

In other cases the author has been allowed the privilege of more private testimony; for instance, his old friend, the late Mr. John Overton (of a highly respectable family, for generations connected with the town and county), has most kindly given him the use of various family MS. notes, bearing on parish and other matters. Mr. Henry Sharp has freely a.s.sisted him with most varied information, derived from long years of connection with the town, in public or private capacity. The late Mr. Henry Boulton, ancestrally connected with various parts of the county, was remarkable for a mind stored with memories of persons and things, in town and neighbourhood, which he freely communicated to the author, who saw much of him in his later years. While, last but not least, the late Mr.

William Pacey, whether in his "Reminisences of Horncastle," which he contributed to the public newspapers, or in his personal conversations, which the present writer enjoyed for many years, yielded up to him treasure, collected by an indefatigable student of local lore, who entered into such work _con amore_.

To all these the author would now fully, and gratefully, acknowledge his indebtedness; but for them this work could not have been produced in anything like its present fulness. In some of the matters dealt with, as for instance in the accounts of the Grammar School, as well as in other portions, he may fairly say, in the language of "the pious aeneas"

(slightly modified), "quorum pars (ipse) fui," (aeneid ii, 6); and in these he has drawn not a few of the details from his own recollections.

In stringing these records together, of such varied character, and on subjects so numerous, he cannot but be conscious that, in the endeavour to give all possible information, and to omit nothing of real interest, he may, on the other hand, have laid himself open to the charge of being too diffuse, or even needlessly prolix. Others not sharing his own interest in the subjects treated of, may think that he has occasionally "ridden his hobby too hard." If this should be the judgment of any of his readers, he would crave their indulgence out of consideration for the motive.

These are the days of historic "Pageants," drawn from life, and with living actors to ill.u.s.trate them. We have also our "Gossoping Guides,"

to enable the tourist to realize more fully the meaning of the scenes which he visits. From both of these the author "has taken his cue." He had to cater for a variety of tastes; and while, for the general reader he has cast his discriptions in a colloquial, or even at times in a "gossoping," form, he believes that the old town, with its "Bull Ring,"

its "Maypole Hill," its "Fighting c.o.c.ks," its "Julian Bower," and other old time memories, can still afford _pabulum_ for the more educated student, or the special antiquary.

Like the composer of a Pageant play, his endeavour has been rather to clothe the scenes, which he conjures up, with the flesh and blood of quickened reality, than in the bare skin and bones of a dry-as-dust's rigid skeleton. How far he has succeeded in this he leaves to others to decide; for himself he can honestly say, that it has not been from lack of care, enquiry, or labour, if he has fallen short of the ideal aimed at.

[Picture: Signature of J. Conway Walter]

CHAPTER I.

PART I-PREHISTORIC. HORNCASTLE-ITS INFANCY.

In dealing with what may be called "the dark ages" of local history, we are often compelled to be content with little more than reasonable conjecture. Still, there are generally certain surviving data, in place-names, natural features, and so forth, which enable those who can detect them, and make use of them, to piece together something like a connected outline of what we may take, with some degree of probability, as an approximation to what have been actual facts, although lacking, at the time, the chronicler to record them.

It is, however, by no means a mere exercise of the imagination, if we a.s.sume that the site of the present Horncastle was at a distant period a British settlement. {1a} Dr. Brewer says, "nearly three-fourths of our Roman towns were built on British sites," (Introduction to _Beauties of England_, p. 7), and in the case of Horncastle, although there is nothing British in the name of the town itself, yet that people have undoubtedly here left their traces behind them. The late Dr. Isaac Taylor {1b} says, "Rivers and mountains, as a rule, receive their names from the earliest races, towns and villages from later colonists." The ideas of those early occupants were necessarily limited. The hill which formed their stronghold against enemies, {1c} or which was the "high place" of their religious rites, {1d} and the river which was so essential to their daily existence, of these they felt the value, and therefore naturally distinguished them by name before anything else. Thus the remark of an eloquent writer is generally true, who says "our mountains and rivers still murmur the voices of races long extirpated." "There is hardly (says Dr. Taylor {2a}) throughout the whole of England a river name which is not Celtic," _i.e._ British.

As the Briton here looked from the hill-side, down upon the valley beneath him, two of the chief objects to catch his eye would be the streams which watered it, and which there, as they do still, united their forces. They would then also, probably, form a larger feature in the prospect than they do at the present day, for the local beds of gravel deposit would seem to indicate that these streams were formerly of considerably greater volume, watering a wider area, and probably having ramifications which formed shoals and islands. {2b} The particular names by which the Briton designated the two main streams confirm this supposition. In the one coming from the more distant wolds, he saw a stream bright and clear, meandering through the meadows which it fertilized, and this he named the "Bain," {2c} that word being Celtic for "bright" or "clear," a characteristic which still belongs to its waters, as the brewers of Horncastle a.s.sure us. In the other stream, which runs a shorter and more rapid course, he saw a more turbid current, and to it he gave the name "Waring," {2d} which is the Celtic "garw" or "gerwin,"

meaning "rough." Each of these names, then, we may regard as what the poet Horace calls "nomen praesente nota productum," {2e} they are as good as coin stamped in the mint of a Cun.o.belin, or a Caradoc, bearing his "image and superscription," and after some 17 centuries of change, they are in circulation still. So long as Horncastle is watered by the Bain and the Waring she will bear the brand of the British sway, once paramount in her valley.

These river names, however, are not the only relics of the Britons found in Horncastle. Two British urns were unearthed about 50 years ago, where is now the garden of the present vicarage, and another was found in the parish of Thornton, about a mile from the town, when the railway was being made in 1856. The latter the present writer has seen, although it is now unfortunately lost. {2f}

These Britons were a pastoral race, as Caesar, their conqueror, tells us, {2g} not cultivating much corn, but having large flocks and herds, living on the milk and flesh of their live stock, and clad in the skins of these, or of other animals taken in the chase. The well-watered pastures of the Bain valley would afford excellent grazing for their cattle, while the extensive forests {2h} of the district around would provide them with the recreations of the chase, which also helped to make them the skilled warriors which the Romans found them to be. {3} Much of these forests remained even down to comparatively recent times, and very large trees have been dug up, black with age, in fields within four or five miles of Horncastle, within very recent years, which the present writer has seen.

Such were some of the earlier inhabitants of this locality, leaving their undoubted traces behind them, but no "local habitation" with a name; for that we are first indebted to the Romans, who, after finding the Briton a foe not unworthy of his steel, ultimately subjugated him and found him not an inapt pupil in Roman arts and civilization. Of the apt.i.tude of the Briton to learn from his conquerors we have evidence in the fact, mentioned by the Roman writer Eumenius, that when the Emperor Constantius wished to rebuild the town Augustodunum (now Antun) in Gaul, about the end of the 3rd century, he employed workmen chiefly from Britain, such was the change effected in our "rude forefathers" in 250 years.

We may sum up our remarks on the Britons by saying that in them we have ancestors of whom we have no occasion to be ashamed. They had a Christian church more than 300 years before St. Augustine visited our sh.o.r.es. They yet survive in the st.u.r.dy fisher folk of Brittany; in those stout miners of Cornwall, who in the famed Botallack mine have bored under the ocean bed, the name Cornwall itself being Welsh (_i.e._ British) for corner land; in the people who occupy the fastnesses of the Welsh mountains, as well as in the Gaels of the Scottish Highlands and the Erse of Ireland. Their very speech is blended with our own. Does the country labourer go to the Horncastle tailor to buy coat and breeches? His British forefather, though clad chiefly in skins, called his upper garment his "cotta," his nether covering his "brages," scotice "breeks." Brewer, _Introduction to Beauties of England_, p. 42.

PART II-THE DIMLY HISTORIC PERIOD.

The headquarters of the Roman forces in our own part of Britain were at York, where more than one Roman Emperor lived and died, but Lindum, now Lincoln, was an important station. About A.D. 71 Petillius Cerealis was appointed governor of the province by the Emperor Vespasian, he was succeeded by Julius Frontinus, both being able generals. From A.D. 78 to 85 that admirable soldier and administrator, Julius Agricola, over-ran the whole of the north as far as the Grampians, establishing forts in all directions, and doubtless during these and the immediately succeeding years, a network of such stations would be constructed in our own country, connected by those splendid highways which the Romans carried, by the forced labour of the natives, through the length and breadth of their vast empire.

Coins of nearly all the Roman Emperors have been found at Horncastle; one was brought to the present writer in the 1st year of the 20th century, bearing the superscription of the Emperor Severus, who died at York A.D., 211.

NOTE ON ANCIENT COINS FOUND AT HORNCASTLE.

The following list of Roman and other coins found at Horncastle, has been supplied by the Rev. J. A. Penny, Vicar of Wispington, who has them in his own possession.

Consular, denarius, silver.

s grave, or Roman as, heavy bra.s.s.

Augustus, quinarius (half denarius). B.C. 27A.D. 14.

Claudius, bra.s.s, of three different sizes. A.D. 4154.

Vespasian, denarius, silver. A.D. 6979.

Domitian, bra.s.s. A.D. 8196.

Nerva, bra.s.s. A.D. 9698.

Trajan, bra.s.s, of two sizes. A.D. 98117.

Hadrian, bra.s.s. A.D. 117138.

Antoninus Pius, denarius, silver. A.D. 138161.

Faustina I., his wife, bra.s.s.

Lucius Verus, bra.s.s. A.D. 161169.

Marcus Aurelius, bra.s.s. A D. 161180.

Faustina II., his wife, bra.s.s.

Caracalla, denarius, silver. A.D. 211217.

Julia Saemias, mother of Emperor Heliogabalus, denarius, silver. A.D.

218222.

Gordian III., denarius, silver. A.D. 238244.

Philip I., bra.s.s. A.D. 244249.

Hostilian, denarius, silver. A.D. 249251.

Gallienus, bra.s.s. A.D. 253268.

Salomia, his wife, bra.s.s.

Victorinus, bra.s.s (Emperor in West). A.D. 253260. (10 varieties).

Marius, bra.s.s (Emperor in West). A.D. 267.

Claudius II. (or Gothicus), bra.s.s. A.D. 268270.

Tetricus I., bra.s.s (Emperor in Gaul). A.D. 270273.

Tetricus II., bra.s.s (Emperor in Gaul). A.D. 270274.

Probus, bra.s.s. A.D. 276282.