Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/389

 of Thomas Goodrich, Bishop of Ely, 1534, Lord Chancellor, 1550, and coadjutor in the first Communion Office with Cranmer.

The next place on the Spilsby and Sleaford road is ''Revesby Abbey'' (Hon. R. Stanhope), a fine deer park with a modern house, built by J. Banks-Stanhope, Esq., 1848. The previous house had been the residence of the great naturalist, Sir Joseph Banks, P.R.S., who died in 1820, and took part with Rennie in devising and carrying out the drainage of the East Fen. The abbey, founded in 1143 by W. de Romara, Earl of Lincoln, was colonised from Rievaulx, and was itself the parent of Cleeve Abbey in Somerset. The abbey was a quarter of a mile south-east of the present church, in which are preserved the few fragments now extant of a building which was once 120 feet long and sixty feet wide. The Hon. Edward Stanhope in 1870 discovered the tombs and bodies of the founder and his two sons. The founder, who had become a monk, had requested to be buried "before the high Altar," and his tomb was inscribed, "Hic jacet in tumba Wiellielmus de Romare, comes Lincolniae, Fundator istius Monasterii Sancti Laurentii de Reivisbye." The site of his re-burial is marked by a granite stone. Among the abbey deeds is one by which the Lady Lucia's second husband, Ranulph Earl of Chester, gives to the abbey "his servant Roger son of Thorewood of Sibsey with all his property and chatells." I don't suppose that Roger found the abbey folk bad to work for; they certainly did much for the good of the neighbourhood, notably in keeping up the roads and bridges, which was one of the recognised duties of religious houses; but all this came to an end when in 1539, like so many other Lincolnshire estates, it was granted by Henry VIII. to his brother-in-law the Duke of Suffolk. The Duke died in 1545, and was buried at Windsor; his two sons both died in one day, July 16, 1551,  in the Bishop of Lincoln's house at Buckden.

The road past the park gates is very wide, with broad grass borders on either side, and a fine row of wych elms bordering the park, at each end of which are some model farm buildings of the best Lincolnshire kind; and, to take us more than a thousand years back, we have two large tumuli quite close to the road. There were three, but one, after being examined by Sir Joseph Banks in 1780, was levelled in 1892; later the existing two were explored and one was found to contain a