The history and antiquities of Boston, and the villages of Skirbeck, Fishtoft, Freiston, Butterwick, Benington, Leverton, Leake, and Wrangle; comprising the hundred of Skirbeck, in the county of Lincoln. Including also a history of the East, West, and Wildmore fens, and copious notices of the Holland or Haut-Huntre fen ... sketches of the geology, natural history, botany, and agriculture of the district; a very extensive collection of archaisms and provincial words, local dialect, phrases, proverbs, omens, superstitions, etc. By Pishey Thompson. Illustrated with one hundred engravings.

90 SEQUESTRATION OF THE PROPERTY OF THE ROYALISTS IN 1648.
slighted." In the Mayor's accounts, 1645 and 1646, the following items
occur,"A present of sack and fish to the Earl of Manchester, 81. 13s. Supper and present to
Col. Hatcher,' 41. 4s. 6cl. Entertaining the Scottish Commissioners, at the Crown, 41. 6s. 4d.
Wine and sugar to Sir Thomas Fairfax, 18s."
The people of Boston at this time appear to have had as great a disrelish for
ecclesiastical authority as they had for regal; Dr. Williams, Bishop of Lincoln,
when writing to Mr. Ferrers, under date 1646, observes, "You see the times
grow high and turbulent, and no one knows where the rage and madness of
them may end; I am just come from BOSTON, where I was used very coarsely."e
The ministers of the borough were either only paid in part, or altogether
unpaid, at this time; for, in July of this year, an order was received from the
Committee of Parliament, relative to the 1" plundered ministers," and 1501. was
ordered to be paid to them. The town-clerk was directed to apply to the
sequestrators of the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln, by whom this 1501. was to be
paid to the Corporation, for the use of the ministers of the borough.3 In
September, letters were addressed to Sir G. Scroope, and his lady, and their
servants, directing them to pay all the rents of their estate in Lincolnshire,
coming due at Michaelmas, to the Corporation, or to their receivers.4
In 1648, the Mayor charges in his accounts "Expenses of a messenger to
London to the General, on account of the affairs of the Corporation." 301. were
"employed in securing the town and country from the common enemy." In
November of this year, the Corporation paid 111. 8s. for gunpowder sent to
Tattershall, and 11. 4s. for " powther" sent to Bolingbroke.
A very extensive system of sequestration was this year put in execution
throughout the kingdom: 180 persons in Lincolnshire had fines and sequestrations laid upon themselves and their estates, amounting in the whole to
83,9591. 5s. ld. This was the amount which they paid for their loyalty to the
dethroned, and soon-to-be-decapitated, monarch. We have seen that this was
a tax which would fall lightly upon the people of Boston, who had very little
loyalty to the King as an individual, to pay for; although we are willing to
hope, and believe, that they were loyal to the constitution and people of
England. There were only four persons in Boston, and not one in the other
parishes of the hundred of Skirbeck, who were affected by the act of sequestration: these were,Mr. Thomas Brown of Boston, who paid............ 200
Nightingale Kyme, Gent. ~........................ 68
George Thorold, Esq. ~........................... 330
Joseph Thorold, Gent..... * * - - a - -***. 96
There appear to have been great peculations in collecting these fines and
sequestrations; and the Parliament sent messengers, or commissioners, into the
different counties to watch the conduct of the committees of sequestration.
There is a long and curious letter in the British Museum, written by Joseph
Hull, one of these messengers, and addressed to his employers, dated Freiston,
14th September, 1648:
"There was so little business to be done at Boston, that no Committee of Sequestration
This was most probably the Colonel Hacker 2 Life of Nicholas Ferrers. WORDSWORTH'S
who took so prominent a part in the trial and exe- Ecclesiastical Biography, vol. v. p. 190.
cution of Charles I. (1649), and who was himself 3 Corporation Records 4 Ibid.
executed for having done so in 1660.