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.

GRANTS, GIFTS, AND BEQUESTS
TO THE
CORPORATION AND TOWN OF BOSTON,
FOR
RELIGIOUS, EDUCATIONAL, AND CHARITABLE PURPOSES.
THE property held in trust for these objects is large in amount, and various in
description. Under the old rdgine of municipal institutions, when self-elected
corporations acknowledged neither allegiance nor responsibility, nor submitted to
accountability to an elective body, as the source of their power; it could not be
expected that either good management or economy should exist in any very
superabundant degree in their proceedings. We have no authority to assert
that the Corporation of Boston during this period possessed more than an average
amount of the excellent characteristics to which we have alluded, and we are
equally without any authority, and entirely without any desire, to suppose that
it possessed less. We believe that it stood, at least, on a level with its neighbours.
We shall give as full an account of these matters as our prescribed limits will
allow, and shall make all our statements from official documnents,I without
either note or comment of our own, excepting such as may be necessary for
explanation and elucidation.
PHILIP and MARY, by royal grant, dated 6th January, 1553-54, gave to the
Corporation of Boston, subject to declared charitable uses, certain lands and
tenements, which have been termed the " Erection Lands." The following is
the preamble to this grant:"PHILIP and MARY, by the grace of God King and Queen of England, &c., to all persons
to whom these presents shall come, greeting. Whereas our borough of Boston, in our
county of Lincoln, is an ancient borough. And whereas 18 presbyters, 15 clerks, and 12
poor men, have been lately maintained within the said borough, for the glory and honour
of God, out of the issues and revenues of certain lands, tenements, possessions, and hereditaments of certain Guilds and fraternities, erected and founded within the said borough.
And whereas, by virtue and under pretence of a certain act of parliament, made in the first
year of the reign of our late most dear brother EDWARD the SIxr,, late King of England;
amongst other things for the dissolution of divers chantries, colleges, Guilds, fraternities,
free chapels, and other things; the said lands, tenemrents, possessions, and hereditaments,
came to the hands of our said late brother, under pretence of which, divine worship, and
relief and support of the poor inhabitants of the said borough, were withdrawn and taken
away, to the extreme grief of all honest and catholic inhabitants there. Now we, thinking
1 Abstract of" Returns of Charitable Donations continue the Inquiries concerning Charities in Eng.
for the benefit of Poor Persons, 26th George III. land and Wales," dated 30th June, 1837, and pub(1786), made by Ministers and Churchwardens;" lished 1839.
and "Report of the Commissioners appointed to