(2478), Barton-upon-Humber (5671), Brigg (3137), Broughton (1300), Brumby and Frodingham (2273), Cleethorpes with Thrunscoe (12,578), Crowle (2769), Gainsborough (17,660), Horncastle (4038), Mablethorpe (934), Market Rasen (2188), Roxby-cum-Risby (389), Scunthorpe (6750), Skegness (2140), Winterton (1361), Woodhall Spa (988).
2. Parts of Kesteven.—Municipal boroughs—Grantham (17,593), Stamford (8229). Urban districts—Bourne (4361), Bracebridge (1752), Ruskington (1196), Sleaford (5468).
3. Parts of Holland.—Municipal borough—Boston (15,667). Urban districts—Holbeach (4755), Long Sutton (2524), Spalding (9385), Sutton Bridge (2105). In the Parts of Holland the borough of Boston has a separate commission of the peace and there are two petty sessional divisions. Lincolnshire is in the Midland circuit. In the Parts of Kesteven the boroughs of Grantham and Stamford have each a separate commission of the peace and separate courts of quarter sessions, and there are 4 petty sessional divisions. In the Parts of Lindsey the county boroughs of Grimsby and Lincoln have each a separate commission of the peace and a separate court of quarter sessions, while the municipal borough of Louth has a separate commission of the peace, and there are 14 petty sessional divisions. The three administrative counties and the county boroughs contain together 761 civil parishes. The ancient county contains 580 ecclesiastical parishes and districts, wholly or in part. It is mostly in the diocese of Lincoln, but in part also in the dioceses of Southwell and York. For parliamentary purposes the county is divided into seven divisions, namely, West Lindsey or Gainsborough, North Lindsey or Brigg, East Lindsey or Louth, South Lindsey or Horncastle, North Kesteven or Sleaford, South Kesteven or Stamford, and Holland or Spalding, and the parliamentary boroughs of Boston, Grantham, Grimsby and Lincoln, each returning one member.
History.—Of the details of the English conquest of the district which is now Lincolnshire little is known, but at some time in the 6th century Engle and Frisian invaders appear to have settled in the country north of the Witham, where they became known as the Lindiswaras, the southern districts from Boston to the Trent basin being at this time dense woodland. In the 7th century the supremacy over Lindsey alternated between Mercia and Northumbria, but few historical references to the district are extant until the time of Alfred, whose marriage with Ealswitha was celebrated at Gainsborough three years before his accession. At this period the Danish inroads upon the coast of Lindsey had already begun, and in 873 Healfdene wintered at Torksey, while in 878 Lincoln and Stamford were included among the five Danish boroughs, and the organization of the districts dependent upon them probably resulted about this time in the grouping of Lindsey, Kesteven and Holland to form the shire of Lincoln. The extent and permanence of the Danish influence in Lincolnshire is still observable in the names of its towns and villages and in the local dialect, and, though about 918 the confederate boroughs were recaptured by Edward the Elder, in 993 a Viking fleet again entered the Humber and ravaged Lindsey, and in 1013 the district of the five boroughs acknowledged the supremacy of Sweyn. The county offered no active resistance to the Conqueror, and though Hereward appears in the Domesday Survey as a dispossessed under-tenant of the abbot of Peterborough at Witham-on-the-Hill, the legends surrounding his name do not belong to this county. In his northward march in 1068 the Conqueror built a castle at Lincoln, and portioned out the principal estates among his Norman followers, but the Domesday Survey shows that the county on the whole was leniently treated, and a considerable number of Englishmen retained their lands as subtenants.
The origin of the three main divisions of Lincolnshire is anterior to that of the county itself, and the outcome of purely natural conditions, Lindsey being in Roman times practically an island bounded by the swamps of the Trent and the Witham on the west and south and on the east by the North Sea, while Kesteven and Holland were respectively the regions of forest and of fen. Lindsey in Norman times was divided into three ridings—North, West and South—comprising respectively five, five and seven wapentakes; while, apart from their division into wapentakes, the Domesday Survey exhibits a unique planning out of the ridings into approximately equal numbers of 12-carucate hundreds, the term hundred possessing here no administrative or local significance, but serving merely as a unit of area for purposes of assessment. The Norman division of Holland into the three wapentakes of Elloe, Kirton and Skirbeck has remained unchanged to the present day. In Kesteven the wapentakes of Aswardhurn, Aveland, Beltisloe, Haxwell, Langoe, Loveden, Ness, Winnibriggs, and Grantham Soke have been practically unchanged, but the Domesday wapentakes of Boothby and Graffo now form the wapentake of Boothby Graffo. In Northriding Bradley and Haverstoe have been combined to form Bradley Haverstoe wapentake, and the Domesday wapentake of Epworth in Westriding has been absorbed in that of Manley. Wall wapentake in Westriding was a liberty of the bishop of Lincoln, and as late as 1515 the dean and chapter of Lincoln claimed delivery and return of writs in the manor and hundred of Navenby. In the 13th century Baldwin Wake claimed return of writs and a market in Aveland. William de Vesci claimed liberties and exemptions in Caythorpe, of which he was summoned to render account at the sheriff’s tourn at Halton. The abbot of Peterborough, the abbot of Tupholme, the abbot of Bardney, the prior of Catleigh, the prior of Sixhills, the abbot of St Mary’s, York, the prioress of Stixwould and several lay owners claimed liberties and jurisdiction in their Lincolnshire estates in the 13th century.
The shire court for Lincolnshire was held at Lincoln every forty days, the lords of the manor attending with their stewards, or in their absence the reeve and four men of the vill. The ridings were each presided over by a riding-reeve, and wapentake courts were held in the reign of Henry I. twelve times a year, and in the reign of Henry III. every three weeks, while twice a year all the freemen of the wapentake were summoned to the view of frankpledge or tourn held by the sheriff. The boundaries between Kesteven and Holland were a matter of dispute as early as 1389 and were not finally settled until 1816.
Lincolnshire was originally included in the Mercian diocese of Lichfield, but, on the subdivision of the latter by Theodore in 680, the fen-district was included in the diocese of Lichfield, while the see for the northern parts of the county was placed at “Sidnacester,” generally identified with Stow. Subsequently both dioceses were merged in the vast West-Saxon bishopric of Dorchester, the see of which was afterwards transferred to Winchester, and by Bishop Remigius in 1072 to Lincoln. The archdeaconry of Lincoln was among those instituted by Remigius, and the division into rural deaneries also dates from this period. Stow archdeaconry is first mentioned in 1138, and in 1291 included four deaneries, while the archdeaconry of Lincoln included twenty-three. In 1536 the additional deaneries of Hill, Holland, Loveden and Graffoe had been formed within the archdeaconry of Lincoln, and the only deaneries created since that date are East and West Elloe and North and South Grantham in Lincoln archdeaconry. The deaneries of Gartree, Grimsby, Hill, Horncastle, Louthesk, Ludborough, Walshcroft, Wraggoe and Yarborough have been transferred from the archdeaconry of Lincoln to that of Stow. Benedictine foundations existed at Ikanho, Barrow, Bardney, Partney and Crowland as early as the 7th century, but all were destroyed in the Danish wars, and only Bardney and Crowland were ever rebuilt. The revival of monasticism after the Conquest resulted in the erection of ten Benedictine monasteries, and a Benedictine nunnery at Stainfield. The Cistercian abbeys at Kirkstead, Louth Park, Revesby, Vaudey and Swineshead, and the Cistercian nunnery at Stixwould were founded in the reign of Stephen, and at the time of the Dissolution there were upwards of a hundred religious houses in the county.
In the struggles of the reign of Stephen, castles at Newark and Sleaford were raised by Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, against the king, while Ranulf “Gernons,” earl of Chester, in 1140 garrisoned Lincoln for the empress. The seizure of Lincoln by Stephen in 1141 was accompanied with fearful butchery and devastation, and by an accord at Stamford William of Roumare received Kirton in Lindsey, and his tenure of Gainsborough Castle was confirmed. In the baronial outbreak of 1173 Roger Mowbray, who had inherited the Isle of Axholme from Nigel d’Albini, garrisoned Ferry East, or Kinnard’s Ferry, and Axholme against the king, and, after the destruction of their more northern fortresses in this campaign, Epworth in Axholme became the
