Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/32

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St. George's Square, Stamford.

and for this reason. It happened that, just as Henry III. had given it to his son Edward I. on his marriage with Eleanor of Castile in 1254, so, in 1363, Edward III. gave the castle and manor of Stamford to his son Edmund of Langley, Duke of York; this, by attaching the town to the Yorkist cause, when Lincolnshire was mostly Lancastrian, brought about its destruction, for after the battle of St. Alban's in 1461, the Lancastrians under Sir Andrew Trollope utterly devastated the town, destroying everything, and, though some of the churches were rebuilt, the town never recovered its former magnificence. It still looks beautiful with its six churches, its many fragments of arch or wall and several fine old almshouses which were built subse
 * ing and Gothic architecture was destroyed in the year 1461;