Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/195

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on the heads of knights at this date," and he shows an engraving of the brass, which, of course, cannot be earlier than 1578. Richard Disney was one of those who profited most largely by the dissolution of the monasteries. His first wife, Nele Hussey, was grand-daughter of the unfortunate John Lord Hussey, who was beheaded in 1537. Early in the next century one branch of the Disneys removed from Norton to the next parish of Carlton-le-Moorland, where Ursula Disney's burial on August 22, 1615, is in the register; and her husband, Thomas, removed to Somerton Castle, three miles to the east, the lease of which he bought from Sir George Bromley, but, having no issue, he sold it again to Sir Edward Hussey. Canon Cole also notices that it was while the Disneys were at Carlton that the very unusual event in Elizabethan times, the rebuilding of a great part of the parish church, took place. Churches, as a rule, were getting dilapidated, and the archdeacon's visitations, preserved in the bishop's registry at Lincoln, some of which go back to the time of Henry VII., show many presentments for absence of service-books, decay of walls and roofs, or churchyard fences. For instance, at Bassingham in 1601 the churchwardens are cited "for that their churchyard fences toward the street are in manie places downe, by reason whereof their churchyard is abused by swyne and such unseemlie cattell."

The smiling youthful faces of the figures in this most remarkable brass, and the modern-looking whiskers and beard and moustache, combined with the helmet, give a singularly unancient look to the wearers, and irresistibly call to mind what one has so often seen of late in the twentieth-century pageants.

DODDINGTON HALL

Between the road which runs west from Lincoln to Saxilby, and the old Roman Foss Way from Lincoln to Newark, which went on by Leicester, Cirencester, and Bath to Axminster, a tongue of Nottinghamshire runs deep into the county. South of this and north of the Foss Way are a few villages of no particular importance, amongst them Eagle, which was once a preceptory of the Knights Templars. But here also, within six miles of Lincoln, is Doddington. This deserves especial mention for its fine Elizabethan hall, which is still very much as it was three hundred years ago.