Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/271

 Viscount Welles died in 1499, and the male line of the Welles became extinct, but the Willoughby line went on, for Cicely, the sister of the unfortunate Richard Welles, had married Sir R. Willoughby, and her grandson William succeeded to that title as the ninth Lord Willoughby. He was the father of Catharine Duchess of Suffolk and subsequently wife of Richard Bertie, whose monument occupies so large a space in the Willoughby chapel at Spilsby. The Welles estate remained with the Willoughbys (who in 1626 were created Earls of Lindsey) till 1650, when the extortionate fines levied on Royalist families by the Parliament made it necessary for Belleau and Welle to be sold. Belleau went to Sir H. Vane, and Well to W. Wolley, who sold it about 1700 to Anthony Weltden, a man who had a romantic career in the early days of the Hon. East India Company. From him Well passed to James Bateman, one of whose sons became Lord Bateman. Another, James, succeeded to the estate and built the present house about 1725, a wing of which was pulled down about 1845. This James married Anne, daughter of Sir Robert Chaplin of Tathwell, who also came to live and die at Well. Bateman's daughter and heiress married a Dashwood in 1744—probably it was he who planted the Vale (he died in 1825)—and in 1838 the estate was purchased by Mr. Christopher Nisbet Hamilton, whose daughter, Mrs. Hamilton Ogilvy, has just sold it to Mr. Walter H. Rawnsley.

The following lines were written on the gate at the top of Well Vale by a traveller taking his yearly tramp from Horncastle for a dip in the sea at Mablethorpe, a good twenty miles.

Some say "All's well that ends well," But here Well begins well. They say too "Truth is in a well," But here there is in truth a Well. Welcome then Well! since I well come along to her, For well I've known Well and the charms that belong to her Passing well to the view looks the Vale of fair Well, And I, passing Well too, must bid her farewell 'Till again I'm this way; or perhaps for aye. Farewell then (or 'vale') to fair Well Vale. Farewell! Fair Well!

This is more than a mere assemblage of puns—there is some poetry in the old fellow, and the penultimate line has an added pathos from the fact that only a few months later the poet