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.

32 THE GIRVIT, OR FENMEN.
Brought forward...... 24,416
Lincoln Mans (houses).......... 982
Stamford,....................................................................... 317
Torksey,,,,........................... 102
25,817
The total population of the above classes in England, at this time, was
300,755, of which the five Danish counties, Norfolk, Lincoln, Suffolk, Essex,
and Yorkshire, contained 100,794. These numbers may be considered as representing so many families, and if we take five as the general average of a
family, we shall have the Anglo-Saxon population at the time of the Conquest
1,503,775. But as all the monks, and nearly all the parochial clergy are
omitted, and very few of thefreemen are enumerated, except in the Danish
counties, we shall, probably, be justified in taking the population at the Norman conquest, at a little over two millions of persons.
"There can be no doubt," says Mr. TURNER, "that nearly three-fourths of the AngloSaxon population, at the time of the Domesday survey, were in a state of slavery, and nothing could have broken their bonds but such events as the Norman Conquest, and the
civil wars which it excited and fostered."
The ancient inhabitants of the fens appear to have been a distinct race of
people; they are mentioned by BEDE as the GIRVII, who inhabited Cambridge,
Northampton, and Huntingdon, with part of Lincolnshire; and had their own
princes, dependent on the kings of Mercia.1
"These people have been, from the earliest times, distinguished by manners and habits,
which were the consequence of their isolated state, living in a country almost inaccessible,
and at all times very uninviting to strangers. They were called Gyrvii, because Gyr in
English is the same as profundi palus, a deep fen, in the Latin."2 CAMDEN says, "they that
inhabit this fennish country, and all the rest beside (which, from the edge and borders of
Suffolk, as far as Wainfleet in Lincolnshire, contains threescore and eight miles, and millions
of acres), were, in the Saxon Times, called GYRvII, that is Fen-men, or Fen-dwellers, a kind
of people, according to the nature of the place where they dwelt, rude, uncivil, and envious
to all others whom they call upland men; who, stalking on high, upon stilts, apply their
minds to grazing, fishing, or fowling. The whole region, which in winter season, and sometimes most part of the year, is overflowed by the spreading waters of the rivers Ouse, Grant,
Nen, Welland, Glen, and Witham, having not lodes and sewers large enough to void away;
but, again, when their streams are retired within their own channels, it is so plenteous and
rank of a certain fat grass and full hay, which they call lid, that when they have mowen
down as much of the better as will serve their turn, they set fire on the rest, and burn it in
November, that it may come up again in great abundance. At which time a man may see
this fenny and moist tract on a light flaming fire all over every way, and wonder thereat."3
We are aware that CAMDEN is here describing the character and habits of
the Fen-men, as he found them in the reign of ELIZABETH; but the condition
of the fens had then altered very little from what it was at the Norman conquest, and the people inhabiting them had, probably, altered as little; and
CAMDEN'S sketch may, we think, be taken as a tolerably accurate description of
the GYRVII in Anglo-Saxon and Danish times.
We here bring this long section to a close. We are aware that we have
been treating of LINCOLNSHIRE at large, rather than of BOSTON as a part, but
we [have already stated our reasons for doing so, and hope they will prove
satisfactory.
1 BEDE'S Ecclesiastical History, lib. iii., cap. 20.: and from Gyrva, Saxon for marsh lands. INGUL2 Register oJ Peterborough. Girvii has also been PHUS, p. 50.
derived from the British Gyrwys, drivers of cattle, 3 CAMDEN'S Britannia, Cambridgeshire.