Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/450



Boston Boston Boston! Thou hast nought to boast on But a grand sluice, and a high steeple, And a proud conceited ignorant people, And a coast which souls get lost on.

And certainly Boston once had some reason to be proud, for though the town was quite an infant till the beginning of the twelfth century, in 1113 "Fergus, a brazier of St. Botolph's town" was able, according to Ingulphus in his "Chronicles of Croyland Abbey," "to give 2 Skillets (Skilletas) which supplied the loss of their bells and tower." The gift, whatever it was (probably small bells), must have been of considerable value to Croyland, which had been burnt down in 1091, and argues much prosperity among Boston tradespeople. Indeed, the town and its trade rose with such rapidity during the next hundred years that when, in the reign of King John, a tax or tythe of a fifteenth was levied on merchants' goods, Boston's contribution was £780, being second only to the £836 of London. For the next two centuries it was a commercial port of the first rank, and merchants from Flanders and most of the great Continental towns had houses there.

When in 1304 Edward I. granted his wife Queen Margaret the castle and manor of Tattershall to hold till the heir was of age, he added to it the manor of St. Botolph and the duties levied on the weighing of the wool there. This was set down as worth £12 a year. A wool sack was very large—one sees them now at Winchester, each large enough to fill the whole bed of a Hampshire waggon—but at 6s. 8d. a sack the duties must have been often worth more than £12, for there was no other staple in the county but at Lincoln, and that was afterwards, under Edward III. in 1370, transferred to Boston, and whether at Boston or Lincoln, when weighed and sealed by the mayor of the staple, it was from Boston that it was all exported.

When a staple of wool, leather, lead, etc., was established at any town or port it was directed that the commodities should be brought thither from all the neighbourhood and weighed, marked and sealed. Then they could be delivered to any other port, where they were again checked. In 1353, during the long reign of Edward III., the staple was appointed to be held in Newcastle, York, Lincoln, Norwich, Westminster, Canterbury, Chichester, Winchester, Exeter and Bristol. Of these, York