sumption of coarse wool, the staple commodity of the county There is also a large manufactory of soap, and a mill for making coarse paper.

An act was obtained in 1761 for cutting a canal between Louth and the North Sea. It commences about half a mile from the -town, and keeps parallel with the banks of the Ludd, which supplies it with water. It leaves the river about four miles from the town, and, by a sweep to the north, joins the sea at a place called Tetney Lock. The undertaking cost 12,000l. and the concern now pays very good interest. By this channel vessels of considerable burden regularly trade to several parts of Yorkshire, to Hull, and to London carrying out quantities of corn and wool, and .bringing in return, timber, coals, groceries, &c. Hence it has proved highly advantageous to the town and neighbourhood.

The open or common fields of Louth were inclosed by an act of Parliament in 1801. The number of inhabitants appears, by the return under the population act, to be 4,236, and the number of houses 950; but the former have been much increased since that return was made.

In Louth and its vicinity are some geological circumstances well worthy of minute investigation by the philosopher as well as chemist. Aswell spring turns a fulling mill only two hundred yards from the source of the stream. St. Helen's Well once supplied Louth park Abbey by means of a cut called Monk's Dyke. At the foot of the northern hills, several springs issue of a very peculiar nature. They run rapidly during the summer, but in winter are generally dry. The method of obtaining water by overflowing springs has been of the utmost utility to the lower part of the town, as well as to a great extent of fine marsh-land; which, till this discovery, made a few years since, possessed little else but stagnant water, retained in the adjacent ditches. A stratum of clay, about twenty-seven yards deep, runs in a sloping direction from the wolds to the sea, and extends several miles to the north and south. Beneath this is a stratum of gravel, which forms a grand reservoir of water. The argillaceous stratum being per

forated,

forated, and a cavity of three or more inches diameter made, a current rushes up to the surface, down which cavity a tube of tin or copper is then slided, and a perpetual fountain, of inexpressible value formed, at a very inconsiderable expence. These fountains are become general along this part of the coast, and furnish an ample supply of water for an extent of thirty miles in length and ten in breadth; and were it necessary, might be obtained upon the sea shore, as far as low water mark.

About one mile from the town is the site of Louth Park Abbey*, which was built by Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, in the year 1139. It was appropriated to Cistertian Monks, who were brought from Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire. In the time of Henry the Third, it is related that this house contained sixty-six monks, and 150 Conversi †. At the time of the suppression here were only twelve religious persons, and its annual revenues were then valued, according to Dugdale, at 1471. 14s. 6d.

BURWELL, which was once a market town, has a large handsome church with a good tower. A few vestiges of a religious house still remain, which was a priory and cell to St. Mary's Sylva majoris, and was founded by John de Hay; who endowed it with various lands; from whom was descended Gilbert de Umphraville, Earl of Angus, who lived at Burwell, and had the appointment of the prior, by a claim derived from his ancestor. Near the village is

BURWELL PARK, the seat of Mathew Bancroft Lister, Esq.

* From the circumstance of its being built in a park, it usually went by the name of the Monastery De Parcolude. Its manuscript minutes are often quoted by Bishop Tanner, in his Notitia Monastica, to ascertain the dates of other similar establishments.

+ The Conversi, in Monasteries, were persons retained to perform all kinds of laborious business in the Abbies and Granges. They were made from novices, and learning being expressly forbidden them, they could never be. come Monks. Harleian MSS. 63. B. 10.

who is sole proprietor of the parish. The house is a handsome modern mansion, built about the year 1760, by the father of the present possessor. It is delightfully situated in a well wooded park, which contains about three hundred acres, and is well stocked with deer. SARAH, wife of the celebrated Duke of MARLBOROUGH, who, by the ascendancy she obtained over Queen Anne, is supposed to have had a considerable share of influence in the politics of the day, was born here when the house was occupied by Mathew Lister, Esq. descendent of Sir Mathew Lister. In the vicinity of Burwell is

HAUGHAM, remarkable for a hill called Skirbeck, out of the side of which occasionally rushes a torrent of water sufficient to fill a tube of thirty inches in diameter. The stream continues to run for several weeks together from a place, where, at other times, there is not the smallest appearance of a spring. This sudden irruption is observed generally to happen after long and heavy rains, and is a phænomenon not common, but in very mountainous countries.

On a hill near TATHWELL, where is a large mansion be longing to Charles Chaplin, Esq. are six oblong Barrows, lying in a line from east to west.

COCKRINGTON was anciently the head of the barony of Scotiney. From Sir Adrian Scrope, or Scroop, Knt. of this place, was descended Adrian Scrope, Esq. who was educated at Oxford, and became one of the loyal attendants to Charles the First at Edgehill, where he was severely wounded, and left among the dead; but being brought off by his son, was recovered by the immortal Dr. William Harvey; who, while the battle was at its height, was attending the Prince and Duke at a distant station. On the coronation of Charles the Second, A.D. 1661, Scrope was made Knight of the Bath. This person forms a fine contrast to one descended from another branch of the family confounded with him, who, Anthony Wood says, "was Adrian Scrope, Esq.

of

of Warmsley in Oxfordshire; sometime a gentleman commoner of Hart Hall, and afterwards a noted puritan, which made him take up arms for the blessed cause in the beginning of the Presbyterian rebellion; in which being first a captain, he was at length a colonel in a regiment of horse. When King Charles I. was tried for his life by a pack of hell hounds, this person, Adrian Scrope, sat and was one of his judges in that dismal tragedy, and afterwards signed the bloody warrant for severing his head from his body." For this, after the restoration, he suffered execution, Oct. 19th, 1660. Sir Carr Scrope, the famous poet and satirist, in the time of Charles the Second, was son of Adrian Scrope the loyalist. Near this place, on the opposite side of the Lud, is

ALVINGHAM, famous only for a small monastery of Gilbertine Monks and Nuns, formed by Walter de Bec, whose sister became one of the first Nuns.

• WRAGGOE WAPENTAKE contains the parishes of Barkwith East, Barkwith West, Benniworth, Biscathorpe, Brough cum Girsby, Haiton, Hatton, Kirmond le Mire, Langton, Ludford, Panton, Sixhills, 'Sotby, Willingham South. Apley, Bardney, Bullington, Fulnetby, Goltho, Holton le Bickering, Legsby, Lissington Rand, Snelland, Staifield, Stainton cum Newball, Torrington East, Torrington West, Tupholme, Wickenby, and Wragby.

Near the head of the small river Bain, which empties itself into the Witham, is the village of LUDFORD, by which a roman vicinal road passes from Castor, in a direction southward, and another south-west from this place to Lincoln. Many coins have been dug up here, whence it is conjectured that this must have been a Roman station.

Y y 4

* Wood's Athe. Oxon. Vol. II. 167.

At

At SIXHILL, was a Gilbertine Abbey, founded in the time of King Stephen, by de Grelle, an ancestor of Thomas de la Warre. In the time of King John the various endowments were confirmed to the Nuns and brethren of Sixhill. According to Speed its revenues were valued, at the dissolution, at 1781. 8s. 9d. per annum. In this religious house Edward the First confined Mary the wife of Cristopher Seton, and sister of Robert Bruce, King of Scotland, A. D. 1306*. It was granted at the dissolution to Thomas Henneage, Esq. in whose family it still remains; and they have a Roman Catholic Chapel here for themselves and the accommodation of others of the same persuasion. The residence of the Henueages is at HAINTON HALL, which is a very ancient and handsome seat. It stands low, and has been in the family ever since the time of Henry the Third. The present proprietor, George Robert Henneage, Esq. has made considerable improvements to his house by the addition of a new wing and by other alterations. The house contains some pictures, and several fine family portraits, particularly one of Sir Thomas Henneage, who was M. P. and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, in the time of Queen Elizabeth. The village of Hainton has a church with a steeple, which Mr. Gough forgot to include with that of Linwood, when he observed of the latter," the church has a decent spire, the only one to be seen in the round of fiftynine parishes here abouts+."

GIRSBY, near Brough, is a seat of Thomas Lister, Esq. who has lately rebuilt the house, and is making various improvements in the pleasure grounds and adjacent lands.

WRAGBY,

Which is called a village in the Magna Britannia, and erroneously said to stand on the river Witham, is a small market town,

* Hemingford, p. 224, Edit. Hearne.

+ Gough's Camden, Vol. II. p. 267.

situated