Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/201

 the darkness would be just salvation to him. Probably such a picture was in Shakespeare's mind when he wrote:—

How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

The chapel attached to the hermitage was one of four churches in Lincolnshire dedicated to St. Edmund King and Martyr. A licence was granted by Edward II. for land and rent to be appropriated by the Vicar of Tealby for the payment of the chaplain; and, by a document signed at Tealby in the year 1323 and witnessed by nearly all the dignitaries of the Cathedral of Lincoln, the foundation was placed under the jurisdiction of the Lincoln Dean and Chapter. Ten years later we find the hermitage called "Spital-on-the-Street," so that its uses had already been enlarged, though we have no documentary evidence of this. All we know of, is the building of a house for the chaplain by John of Harrington in 1333.

In 1396 Richard II., "at the request of his dear cousin John de Bellomonte, grants to Master Thomas de Aston, Canon of Lincoln, leave to newly build a house adjoining the west side of the chapel of St. Edmund the King and Martyr at Spitell o' the Street, for the residence of William Wyhom the Chaplain and of certain poor persons there resident and their successors," and before the end of the fourteenth century it had buildings sufficient for the maintenance of these poor persons. As such it escaped in Henry VIII.'s time, but in the sixteenth century the property was seized by Elizabeth for her own use in the most barefaced manner and sold by her. The Sessions for the Kirton division of Lindsey were for many years held in the chapel, but subsequently it fell into disrepair and was pulled down by Sir William Wray in 1594, and a new sessions house built close by, on which was this Latin couplet,

Hæc domus odit amat punit conservat honorat Nequitiam pacem crimina jura bonos.

In 1660 Dr. Mapletoft, of Pembroke College, Cambridge, being appointed Sub-Dean of Lincoln and also Master of the Spital Hospital, at once rebuilt the chapel and set to work to improve the revenue, and when he became Dean of Ely in 1668, he