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.

636 THE FENS.
Although the opposition of the commoners seems to have been based upon
the most frivolous and untenable grounds, which do not contravene any of the
assertions or statements made by the " dreyners," there is reason to fear that
neither this proposal, dated August 25th, 1654, nor the petition presented to
Parliament on the 31st of October in the same year,' procured any relief for
Sir WILLIAM KILLIGREW and his fellow-participants. Sir William lived nearly
forty years after the date of his petition to Parliament, and died in 1693, at a
very advanced age; and, we fear, after a long struggle with poverty.2 The
unsettled state of public affairs, party spirit, and other causes growing out of
the circumstances of the period, appear to have impeded, what to us seems to
have been, the plain and palpable course of justice.3
At Michaelmas Term, 1661, GEOGcE KIRmm and others, the surviving participants, endeavoured to renew the decree made by Charles I. in 1638, and to
recover possession of the land which it awarded to them. Upon a motion in
the Duchy Court of Lancaster, the participants obtained an injunction; they
also endeavoured to procure assistance from the Sheriff to enable them to get
and keep possession. Various other proceedings are stated to have taken place
between Mr. Kirke and his party, and the commoners. The latter, however,
appear to have been successful, and to have retained the possession and enjoyment of their ancient privileges.
We do not know whether any of the parties to the grants made by Charles I.
in 1638 were connected with the family of Heron of Cressy Hall; the following
paper, however, shows that family was interested in some similar grant. This
document was circulated in the form of a printed handbill:4"I, Henry Heron of Cressy Hall, in the county of Lincoln, esquire, do hereby give notice
to all and every of the freeholders and commoners, having right of common in all or any of
the common fenns, lying and being within the said county of Lincoln, that I have executed
a deed unto the Mayor and burgesses of the borough of Boston, in the said county of Lincoln, of all the right, title, and interest of, in, or unto all the said common fenns, which I
or my ancestors had, by virtue of any grant or law of sewers made in the reign of our late
sovereign lord King Charles the First, or at any time since, in trust for all the freeholders
and commoners having right of common in the said common fenns. And that the said act
is acknowledged before Henry Pacey, Esq., a Master in Chancery Extraordinary, in order to
be enrolled in the High Court of Chancery, and then the said deed to be kept among the
ancient writings belonging to the Corporation of Boston, for the benefit of the aforesaid
freeholders and commoners. Witness my hand, this -- day of June, A.D. 1713,
" HENRY HERON."
Mr. MACAULAY, referring to the condition of the country between Cambridge
and the Wash in 1689, says," It was a vast and desolate fen, saturated with all the moisture of thirteen counties, and
overhung, during the greater part of the year, by a low grey mist; high above which rose
-visible many miles-the magnificent tower of Ely. In that dreary region, covered by vast
flights of wild fowl, a half-savage population known by the name of the Breedlings, then led
an amphibious life,-sometimes wading, and sometimes rowing, from one islet of firm
ground to another. The roads were among the worst of the world."'' See p. 632. 4 Norwich, printed by Henry Crossgrove, 1713.
2 Woon says he was buried in Westminster Mr. Heron was this year elected one of the repreAbbey.-Athen. Oxon., vol. iv. p. 694. sentatives in Parliament for Boston. Was there
3 We have given this long account of the unfor- any connexion between this grant, which was really
tunate undertaking of the EARL of LINDSEY and of no value, and the election? We do not find the
his participants, because, although it entirely re- deed among the "antient writings" of the Corpolates to the Holland or Haute Huntre Fen, it is ration.
intimately blended with the history of the imme- 5 History of England, vol. iii. p. 41.
diate neighbourhood of Boston.