Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/361

 t'wall, Betty?" replied "I didna get him ower at a'—I just threshed him through th' hog-hole" (the hole in the wall for the sheep, or hoggetts, to pass through).

Speaking of tippling, there is no more delightful story than this from Westmorland, of a mouse which had fallen into a beer vat and was swimming round in despair, when a cat looked over, and the mouse cried out, "If ye'll git me oot o' this ye may hev me." The cat let down her tail and the mouse climbed up, and shaking herself on the edge of the vat, jumped off and went down her hole, and on being reproached by the cat as not being a mouse of her word, answered, "Eh! but ivry body knaws folks will say owt when they're i' drink."

There are several pretty little bits of country near Spilsby, but the most interesting of the by-ways leads off from the Horncastle road at Mavis Enderby, and, going down a steep hill, brings us to Old Bolingbroke, a picturesque village with a labyrinth of lanes circling about the mounded ruins of the castle, where, in 1366, Henry IV. "of Bolingbroke" was born. It was built in 1140 by William de Romara, first Earl of Lincoln, and was, till 1643, when Winceby battle took place, a moated square of embattled walls, with a round tower at each corner. Here Chaucer used to visit John of Gaunt and the Duchess Blanche of Lancaster, on whose death, in 1369, he wrote his "Book of the Duchess." The castle, after the Civil Wars, sank into decay, and the gate-house, the last of the masonry, fell in 1815. The road onwards comes out opposite Hagnaby Priory. William de Romara, who three years later founded Revesby Abbey, had for his wife the second Lady Lucia, the heiress of the Saxon Thorolds, an honoured name among Lincolnshire families. She brought him, among other possessions, the manor of Bolingbroke. Her second husband was the Norman noble, Ranulph, afterwards earl of Chester. The Thorolds were descended from Turold, brother of the Lady Godiva. There apparently were two Lady Lucias, whose histories are rather mixed up by the ancient chroniclers. The earlier of the two was, it seems, the sister of the Saxon nobles, Edwin and Morcar, and of King Harold's queen Ealdgyth. Her hand was bestowed by the conqueror upon his nephew, Ivo de Taillebois (= Underwood), who became, according to Ingulphus and others, a monster of cruelty, and died in 1114.

There are several by-ways to the north-west of Spilsby, which