Page:The Victoria History of the County of Lincoln Volume 2.pdf/331



INCOLNSHIRE being chiefly an agricultural county it is necessary to obtain some idea of the natural conditions in early times to understand the progress made. Large portions of Holland, the East, West and Wildmoor Fens, and the Isle of Axholme, were then under water, or subject to frequent floods, the wolds were bleak and cold, almost without woods, and the heath was more or less a waste, while the Kesteven Forest, disafforested in 1230, extended from Swaton and Bicker Bridge to East Deeping and Spalding Bridge.

In each parish around the church, which usually occupied a central position, lay the tofts and crofts of the villagers with the house of the lord of the manor close by. On the tofts were the humble homes, the barns and the sheds of the freeholders and villeins, and adjacent thereto their crofts or small home closes. A little distance off were the two or three large open fields, the meadow and the waste. These fields were divided into furlongs and wongs, in which were the selions or rigs of different owners, each containing half an acre or so, scattered about in most inconvenient fashion, and divided by strips of turf, called balks, with 'headlands' at the top affording access to the lands. The field sown with corn was protected by some kind of fence, while the fallow field was common pasture for the cattle and sheep of the holders of lands in the vill.

The early records of our county tell of liberty and prosperity. Domesday Book mentions 10,820 sokemen, exceeding in number the villeins and bordars combined; and there were sixty-six manors on which there were no villeins, fourteen being, however, waste. These sokemen were freemen, holding their lands freely by fixed agricultural services, more or less onerous, and soon commuted for money payments. The population of the county in 1086, which 'stands at the very top,' compared with other counties, the increase in its value, and the undoubted importance of Lincoln, are all signs of prosperity. Some description of a Lincolnshire estate may help to explain matters. There were in 1086 sixty-six tenants holding directly of the king, besides Sortibrand and other thegns. Of these ten were ecclesiastics, who held 195 manors, 710 manors being held by laymen. Two great estates will serve as examples. The bishop of Lincoln held thirty-one manors, of which twenty-five were held by sub-tenants; and two knights are expressly mentioned at both Stow and Louth. Ivo Tailboys held fifty-eight manors, of which his tenants held forty-five. Now these great lords did not grant out to under-tenants much the larger portion of their estates without good reason. They had to provide a fixed number of knights to follow the king,