THE SILTING OF THE RIVER
In the sixteenth century several trade companies—cordwainers,
glovers, etc.—received charters. In this century
Queen Elizabeth gave the mayor and burgesses a "Charter of
Admiralty" over the whole of the "Norman Deeps" to enable
them to repair and maintain the sea marks, and to levy tolls
on all ships entering the port. But trade was then declining
owing to the silting up of the river. This, in 1569, when the
town was made a Staple town, had been in good order, and
navigable for seagoing ships of some size, the tide water running
up two miles inland as far as Dockdyke (now Dogdyke), and
then a large trade was done in wool and woollen goods between
Boston and Flanders. Hence it was that when, in the reign
of Henry VII., a council was held to discuss the two great needs
of the town, viz., the restraining the sea water from flooding the
land, and the delivery of the inland waters speedily to the sea, it
was to Flanders that the Boston men turned for an engineer,
one Mahave Hall, who built them a dam and sluice in the year
1500. This is called the Old Sluice, and was effectual for a
time. But in Queen Elizabeth's reign the river below Boston
was getting so silted up again that the waters of South Holland
were brought by means of two "gowts" (go outs), or "clows,"
one into the Witham above Boston at Langrick, and one below
into the harbour at Skirbeck, to scour out the channel. The
Kesteven men, from a sense of being robbed of their waters,
opposed, but their objections were over-ruled by the chief
justices. In 1568-9 the "Maud Foster" drain was cut and
named after the owner, who gave easement over her land on
very favourable terms.
In the map to the first volume of the "History of Lincolnshire," published by Saunders in 1834, the Langrick Gowt (or gote) finds no place; but the "Holland Dyke" is probably meant for it. The Skirbeck dyke is marked very big and called "The South Forty-foot," which, along with the North Forty-foot and Hobhole drains, and others of large size, aided by powerful steam pumps, have made the Fens into a vast agricultural garden.
But the Elizabethan expedient was only successful for a time, and in 1751 a small sloop of forty to fifty tons and drawing about six feet of water could only get up to Boston on a spring tide. To remedy this and also to keep the floods down, which, when the cutfall was choked, extended in wet seasons west of the
