Natural History. 69 



sion. Beyond the forest was the rich pasture of the maritime 

 marshes merging into salt 'fitties,' purple with sea-lavender 

 and thrift, or grey with the frosted sea-orache, muddy stretches, 

 green with glasswort, and then the flat seabeach 



A coast 



Of ever-shifting sand, and far away 

 The phantom circle of a moaning sea. 



Then beyond Horncastle and Spilsby, where the chalk dips 

 below the fen ' from the foot of the wolds, the green flat 

 stretched away illimitable, to an horizon where from the 

 roundness of the earth, the distant trees and islands were hulled 

 down like ships at sea. The firm horse-fen lay, bright green, 

 along the foot of the wold ; beyond it the browner peat or 

 deep fen ; and among that, dark velvet alder beds, long lines of 

 reed-rond, emerald in spring and golden under the autumn 

 sun ; shining c eas ' or river reaches ; broad meres dotted with 

 a million fowl. . . . Here and there, too, upon the far 

 horizon, rose a tall line of ashen-trees, marking some island of 

 firm rich soil. . . . Overhead the arch of heaven spread 

 more ample than elsewhere, as over the open sea ; and that 

 vastness gave, and still gives, such cloudlands, such sunrises, * -_ i| 

 such sunsets, as can be seen nowhere else within these isles.'* ^ 

 This was the land of the Girvii or Fenmen, a tribe of Angles 

 who, even in Danish days, remained practically unsubdued 

 within the fastnesses of their impassable morasses. 



During the Norman period Lincolnshire contained no less 

 than ninety religious foundations Abbeys, Monasteries, 

 Preceptories of Knights Templars, alien Priories and Hospitals ; 

 four principal castles Lincoln, Tattershall, Carlton, and 

 Sleaford ; and nine crenellated or fortified mansions. Most of 

 these have entirely disappeared, and there is perhaps no other 

 county so utterly devoid of picturesque ruins. With the 

 exception of the great gateway of Thornton, near Ulceby, 

 the Western part of Crowland, and some remains at Tupholme, 

 Kirkstead, and Louth, and the castles at Lincoln, Somerton, 

 and Tattershall, scarce a remnant now remains, and even the 

 site of the buildings is in many cases with difficulty made out.f 

 Nowhere else in England, however, do we find so many 



* Kingsley's Hereivard. 



f For a list of Lincolnshire Religious Houses and Castles, see The Lincoln Pocket 

 Guide, 1880, pp. 178-180, by Sir C. H. J. Anderson, Bart. 



