Part 11

In the flowing tracery and foliage of the south porch gable are three interesting shields—Edward the Confessor, a cross patonce between five martlets; St. Edmund, three crowns two and one; and the royal arms of England, three lions passant gardant. The figure in the apex of the gable is missing, but, from the adoring angels on either side, it was probably that of the Virgin and Child. The whole of the south side is a perfect example of Curvilinear art; the flowing lines of the window tracery and pierced parapets, buttresses with niches and pinnacles enriched with foliage and carvings of vigorous yet refined workmanship, the bold and lofty staircase turrets at the east end of the nave, all disposed in perfect harmony and proportion, and tied together by the admirable group of mouldings sweeping round the base. Here is English Gothic at its zenith—vigorous, yet refined; luxuriant, yet restrained. The priests’ door on the south side of the chancel cuts rather clumsily into the jamb and sill of the window, owing to lack of space between the latter and the adjoining buttress. The writer recollects a church in Suffolk where a similar difficulty had been surmounted by throwing the buttress clear of the wall on a flying arch and placing the door beneath it—a pretty instance of the manner in which the mediæval builder created a virtue out of a necessity. The east end is perhaps the most pleasing part of the exterior—admirably proportioned, vigorous, and graceful, the seven-light window one of the finest in the whole country; were this the only portion of the church left to us, it would yet have proclaimed the unknown architect a master of his craft.

The interior is at first disappointing; the arches only chamfered, not a moulding or a piece of carving visible; rood-screen, pews, pulpit, and every scrap of old woodwork swept away. But walk into the chancel, turn to the north wall, where Roger de Potesgrave, in eucharistic vestments, lies under an arched recess, and a little farther east appears a mass of tracery and sculpture, like an elaborate aumbry; it is the Easter Sepulchre, perhaps the richest in England, except one of the same date at Hawton, near Newark. Below, in canopied niches, sleep four Roman soldiers; next, the sepulchre itself, a small recess, with figures of the three women and the attendant angels, and above this the risen Christ attended by adoring angels. For richness and delicacy of execution it is beyond praise. Easter sepulchres in stone (often they were of wood, and have been swept away) were designed as a permanent receptacle for the celebration of a rite marking the advent and holiness of Easter. On Good Friday the consecrated host was deposited in the sepulchre, where it was continually watched until Easter morning, when it was again placed on the altar. In the articles of inquiry issued by Cranmer in 1547 one is, “Whether they had upon Good Friday last past the sepulchre with their lights, having the sacrament therein?” On the south side of the chancel are fine sedilia in three compartments, in design and execution equal to the Easter Sepulchre; the seats are covered by groining and trefoil arches with gables, above which are sculptured Our Lord, the Blessed Virgin, SS. Barbara and Katherine, and St. Michael; the cornice bears figures of angels crowning the saints below and swinging censers. A recent writer on English mediæval figure sculpture says: “The stone of these pieces is the Lincoln and Ancaster oolite, and they are insertions in the body of the building, so they are probably importations from the Lincoln or Stamford workshops. Of coarser texture than the carvings of clunch at Ely, they have less freedom and incisive cutting, but their composition has the same quality of decorative story-telling.”

From the north wall of the chancel several steps lead up into the vestry, which has a double piscina, and below which is a vaulted undercroft, known as the “scaup” (skull) house. The south transept, known as the Winkill Aisle, from the local family who were probably benefactors to the church, has sedilia and a double piscina.

The architectural features of the church are beautifully illustrated by a series of forty plates in Bowman and Crowther’s _Churches of the Middle Ages_, but the full story of its connection with the Abbey of Bardney still waits investigation from the patient historian, and would probably prove of great interest.

BOSTON CHURCH

BY G. S. W. JEBB, M.A.

HISTORY

Botulf (_i.e._ Ruling Wolf) is said by Bede to have been born in the seventh century of a gentle Saxon family, and to have studied with his brother Adulf on the Continent. On his return (Adulf remaining to preside over a monastery at Utrecht, and becoming Bishop of Maestricht), Botulf begged permission of Ethelmund, King of East Anglia, to found a monastery in some retired and desolate spot, and chose Icanho (Ox Island) beside the Witham, probably the site of Boston. At Icanho he died on 17th June 655. The monks’ huts were burnt by the Danes in 870, but the relics of the saint had been safely translated, part to Ely, and part to Thorney, and the site of Boston was in later Saxon times included in the wapontak of Skirbeck. After the Norman Conquest the greater part of the parish of Skirbeck, with its two churches, one of which presumably stood on the site of Boston Church, was granted as part of the honour of Richmond in Yorkshire to Alan Rufus, who, shortly before his death in 1089, obtained the ordination of the rectory of Boston, and granted the patronage to the Benedictine Abbey of St. Mary at York, the monks of Boston constituting a priory of that abbey, and the church, which was probably of wood, apparently serving both the parish and the priory. A new church of stone was built at once. It consisted of a nave 25 feet by 60 feet, with aisles each 12 feet wide, a chancel, and a western tower 9 feet square; the floor level was about 4 feet below the present floor. The foundations were exposed in the restoration, 1851-53. The priory buildings were on the north side of the church. In 1309, when the fervour excited by the preaching of the friars was still felt, and the prosperity of the town was at its height, the pious gratitude of the burghers led them to begin the present magnificent church, the foundation-stone being laid on the Monday after St. John Baptist’s Day by Dame Margaret Tilney, assisted by Richard Stephenson, merchant, and John Truesdale, the rector. This church originally consisted of a nave of seven bays with aisles, a chancel originally of three bays, and a south porch. In the Perpendicular Period the chancel was lengthened by two bays, when Fleming, formerly rector of Boston, was Bishop of Lincoln; and the magnificent tower was added outside the former west window. A chamber was also added over the porch, and there were six subsidiary chapels (all but one of which have now been destroyed), besides, at least, two others (those of St. Mary and SS. Peter and Paul) at the east ends of the south and north aisles respectively, screened off within the church itself. The whole was probably completed about 1500; as it now stands the church is, in cubical content, the largest purely parish church in the kingdom, and is only surpassed in floor area (20,270 square feet) by those of St. Michael, Coventry (24,015 square feet), and of Yarmouth (23,265 square feet).

In 1480 the Knights Hospitallers, who had a commandery in the parish, founded by the De Multons about 1230, purchased the advowson from St. Mary’s Abbey, and made the parish church their collegiate church. They also obtained an appropriation of the rectory, and a vicarage was ordained. The Knights maintained a college of ten priests, living in a house in Wormgate (_i.e._ Withamgate). The old church of the Knights was deserted, and was eventually pulled down in 1626, the material being used to repair St. Botulf’s. After the sale of the advowson the priory became of small importance, and was dissolved in 1536. The Order of the Knights was dissolved in 1540, and its possessions confiscated by King Henry VIII., who, in 1545, sold the endowment of the rectory and the patronage of the vicarage to the newly-created corporation of Boston, subject, however, to the payment of the vicar’s stipend, and to the duty of repairing the chancel. At the Reformation the screens were broken away, and the church despoiled of its furniture and decoration.

During the great rebellion it was used as a cavalry stable, the horses being tethered to iron rings fixed in the pillars. The Antipædobaptists then had a congregation in Boston (which was revived and endowed in 1756, and is still flourishing), and were influential in the neighbourhood; this led to the destruction of the mediæval fonts in Boston and many of the neighbouring churches. The brasses also were torn up, and what remained of the stained glass and stone imagery was broken, and the chapels and other buildings encircling the church were gradually removed during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

On the resumption of the Church services at the Restoration of Charles II., some slight attempts at improvement were made, a new font and reredos and a beautiful pulpit and altar rails being provided. Towards the end of the eighteenth century the present ceiling was put up. The original ceiling of the nave was a flat wooden one, doubtless elaborately carved and gilded, nailed on the under surface of fifteen huge beams which cross the church between each pair of clerestory windows. The ceiling seems to have been injured by fire, and the beams themselves became rotten at the ends, and tended to sag in the centre, and were therefore supported by uprights nailed against the wall with trusses at an angle of 45°; these uprights and trusses were then concealed by panelling which was made to resemble the springers of a sham vault, and was painted a dirty yellow. The lean-to roofs of the aisles were similarly concealed by sham vaulting, and the chancel, hitherto covered with a semi-octagonal roof, divided by boldly moulded ribs into panels, had a sort of sham tunnel vault at a much lower level, so low, indeed, as to have to be tilted upwards to bring it above the crown of the chancel arch. An organ was provided and placed in the chancel arch, having in front of it a gallery supported on oaken columns (now in the Roman church in Boston). The western portion of the church was shut off by a high screen with wrought-iron gates, and the remaining portion of the nave arranged with the pulpit in the centre, and square pews gradually sloping upwards so as to be level with the sills of the windows. The chancel was used only for the quarterly communion. In 1835 the Municipal Reform Act vested the patronage in the Bishop of the diocese, who twice collated under this Act, but the corporation was permitted to sell, and in 1853 did sell, the advowson to Mr. Ingram; he devised it to his widow; she, in turn, devised it to Sir E. Watkin, her second husband, whose representatives in 1906 conveyed it to the Bishop of Lincoln in right of his see. The restoration of the church was begun in the middle of the nineteenth century, about £11,000 being spent under the direction of Sir G. Gilbert Scott. The fabric was put in good repair generally, the stone vaulting of the tower was inserted, a new font was erected, the pews were replaced by oaken benches, the organ placed in a chamber to the north of the chancel, the east window provided with new tracery and filled with poor stained glass, a new altar table with a good red frontal, and some new plate, were purchased, and canopies, copied from Lincoln Cathedral, were added to the stalls; provision was also made for lighting and warming the church. An offering from the Bostonians of America was devoted to restoring the sole remaining chapel, which is situated on the western side of the south porch. The church was re-dedicated in 1853.

Since then there have been a few slight improvements; six of the sixteen windows in the aisle have had stained glass inserted, and it is generally good. The chapel has had three of its windows fitted with stained glass, and has been furnished with an altar and reredos, and a screen separating it from the church provided; two additional frontals have been given for the high altar, and it is backed by an elaborate, though as yet incomplete, reredos of carved oak, designed by Weatherley. The church is still much disfigured by the ugly ceiling, and has a cold unfurnished look, to remedy which screens, stained glass, and colour decoration would be required; unfortunately, the church is so large that nothing can be done which does not involve a considerable expenditure.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION

The church consists of a nave of seven bays 150 feet long and 44 feet broad, north and south aisles each 28 feet broad, a chancel of five bays 87 feet long, a western tower (making the total length 293 feet), a south porch with chamber over it, and a chapel 18 feet by 40 feet immediately to the west of the porch. All the nave and aisles windows, except the four at the ends of the aisles, have decorated tracery, two designs (one of them a very poor one) being alternated throughout; the three western bays of the chancel have also decorated tracery. The four end windows of the aisles, the west window of the chapel, and the four windows in the eastern bays of the chancel are Perpendicular. The great east window has modern tracery, copied from the east window of Carlisle Cathedral. The three south windows of the chapel have reticulated tracery. The tower is vaulted at a height of 157 feet. Below the vaulting are the door, three great windows (west, north, and south), and above them four pairs of windows with ogee heads; between the two sets of windows the walls are pierced by an interior passage. Above the vaulting is a ringing chamber, and over that the belfry surrounded by an exterior passage. Access to this is gained by two staircases, the lower portions of which are no part of the tower, but are contained in turrets, which were the principal decoration of the west front before the tower was built. The belfry contains the clock and a peal of twelve bells, on which tunes are played by machinery every three hours. The bells are dated as follows: 1 and 2, 1785; 3, 1772; 4, 1710; 5, 1617; 6, 1758; 8, 1867; and the remaining four, 1897. The roof of the tower rests on the transoms of the four great belfry windows, the upper part being hollow. On the top of the square tower stands the octagonal lantern, which appears never to have been finished. The total height is 280 feet. The furniture is not very noticeable, except the series of sixty-four _misericorde_ stalls in the chancel. The altar is a modern one, 12 feet long. There are a modern brass eagle lectern, a very poor litany desk, and the base of a poor modern screen; the renaissance pulpit, with its sounding board recently restored, is one of the best pieces of furniture. The font was designed by Pugin, and is as satisfactory as could be expected; the benches are clumsy and raised on platforms, and the alleys except the central one have been filled with unnecessary benches, and so appear unduly cramped, but there is a good open space at the west end. At present the base of the tower is used as a vestry, but the erection of a new vestry opening from the chancel is in contemplation. An organ is mentioned as having been in existence in 1480, but it was destroyed in 1590; a new organ was begun in 1713 by Schmidt, and it has since been continually repaired and added to; there are now 2378 pipes. It is rather buried in an organ chamber built out on the north side of the chancel, and has a poor monotonous case dating from the last restoration.

MONUMENTS

The oldest monument in the church is one dated 1340, a black marble slab in memory of Wisselus Smalenburg, citizen and merchant of Münster. It was originally in the Church of the Franciscan Friars, but was buried on the destruction of that church, then built for about a hundred years into the wall of a cottage, and eventually was placed in Boston Church, near the west end of the north aisle, in 1897. There are two good fifteenth-century altar tombs in recesses in the south aisle: one of a Knight Hospitaller in full armour, the other of a lady; both are unidentified. They were originally in the Knights’ Church, and, when that was pulled down in 1626, were moved to Boston Church, but have only been in their present position since 1853, when the lady’s tomb had the arms of Tilney carved upon it, though without any idea that she really belonged to the Tilney family. On each side of the altar is a black marble slab with brass; that on the north being in memory of Walter Peascod and his wife; that on the south in memory of Richard Strensal, rector from about 1375 to his death in 1408. He is vested in surplice, almuce, and cope, the orphrey of the cope being adorned with figures of the Apostles under canopies. Both these were originally in the Chapel of SS. Peter and Paul. Towards the west end are some slabs which have no doubt been engraved with figures, the faces and hands joined in prayer being now filled in with concrete. The monuments generally seem to have had their places much shifted in the restoration in the middle of the nineteenth century.

ENDOWMENTS

The parish was originally endowed with tithes (which are now represented by farms allotted in lieu thereof on the enclosure of the fens) and glebe. On the ordination of the vicarage in 1480, the vicar was allowed the use of the rectory house (pulled down in 1750, and now represented by a house built in 1870), and also had a stipend of £33, 6s. 8d. (fifty marks), charged upon the endowments of the rectory: he also receives from the Governors of Boston Grammar School an annual income of £266, 13s. 4d., representing the provision made by Philip and Mary when they restored to the Corporation of Boston the ancient endowments of the trade guilds, out of which the Grammar School and the assistant clergy had been supported. These endowments had been confiscated in 1552, under Edward VI., by William Parr, Marquis of Northampton, who subsequently took part in the attempt to set Lady Jane Grey on the throne: the vicar also has a fen allotment and various small modern endowments which, allowing £75 for fees, bring up the income to about £400 per annum net. Provision is also made under the charter of Philip and Mary for a second priest—the lecturer—who receives £250 per annum from the Governors of the Grammar School, and interest on £200 (Falkner’s Legacy), which latter sum is in the hands of the Corporation. The Mayor’s Chaplaincy, founded in 1557 by Henry Fox, has an endowment of about £160 per annum, managed by the Boston Charity Trustees. There is a modern endowment of about £45 per annum, given by the Misses Gee, for the curate of St. James’; the Ecclesiastical Commission allow two sums of £60 each towards the stipends of the fourth and fifth priests; and there are other small endowments for the choir, the fabric and the poor, which bring up the total income from endowments in connection with the church to about £1000 per annum. It is impossible to exactly distinguish the rectory endowments from the other lands held by the Corporation, but, roughly, their value may be taken at £1200 per annum. About £2000 per annum is raised by voluntary subscription in connection with the church.

RECTORS AND VICARS

1228. John Romanus. His legitimacy was doubtful, and he had to obtain a papal dispensation before holding the benefice. He was Canon and first Sub-Dean of York Minster, and afterwards Treasurer and Archdeacon of Richmond. He was the father of the Archbishop of York of the same name. He died in 1256 at an advanced age. It is not known who was his successor in the rectory.

1309. John Truesdale, as rector, laid the foundation of the present church.

Henry de Hemmyngburgh, afterwards Sub-Dean of Lincoln.

1316. Mr. John Barett.

1362. William de Sandford.

John Strensal, rector in 1378 and 1381.

1408. Richard Fleming, afterwards Bishop of Lincoln and Archbishop-designate of York.

1425. John Ickworth.

1431. Richard Layot.

1448. John Marshall.

1462. Roger Cheshire.

1482. William Smyth, the first vicar, presented by the Knights of St. John. All the rectors had been presented by St. Mary’s Abbey. He was prebendary of Heyther in Lincoln Cathedral. He was buried in Boston Church, but his brass, mentioned by Colonel Holles and by Browne Willis, is not now visible.

1505. William Gunays, died at Boston.

1505. Robert Wylburfos, died at Boston.

1512. John Tynemouth, Bishop of Argos, buried in Boston Church.

1524. John Mabledon, D.D., a brother of the Order of St. John. He resigned on a pension of £6, 13s. 4d. per annum.

1536. Brian Sandford, probably an opponent of the changes which had already begun when he was instituted. In 1552, when the church was being spoiled of its plate and furniture, the Corporation order communication to be had with Vicar Sandford for surrendering his benefice.

1554. Robert Richardson, whose tenure of office just coincided with the reign of Queen Mary. He would be the first of eighteen vicars presented by the Corporation of Boston.

1559. William Fiske, preferred to Moulton vicarage.

1561. William Holland.

1583. Lewis Evans.

1584. James Worshippe, M.A., formerly Mayor’s Chaplain.

1592. William Armstead.

1594. Samuel Wright, B.D.; he resigned.

1599. Thomas Wooll, M.A., a Nonconformist. He was presented at the Archdeacon’s visitation in 1606 “that he weareth not the surplice; it hath been tendered to him, and he sitteth upon it.” He was preferred in 1612 to the rectory of Skirbeck.

1612. John Cotton, M.A.: after twenty years of nonconformity he found it necessary to resign his benefice, and flee to America to avoid prosecution. In compliment to him and other refugees the settlement of Trimountain had its name changed to Boston. He died there in 1652.

1633. Anthony Tuckney, D.D., a Nonconformist, Mayor’s Chaplain from 1629, Master of Emmanuel College in 1644, Trinity College in 1653, and Regius Professor of Divinity in 1655 at Cambridge, and therefore non-resident. From 1651 the Corporation paid Banks Anderson (who had since 1643 been minister at Holbeach) £70 per annum to minister in the church; but as he was an antipædobaptist, a separate minister had to be hired to administer holy baptism. Anderson was one of the elders summoned by Cromwell to his Independent Convention at the Savoy in 1658. About the time of his arrival in Boston, a great witch-hunting campaign took place. On the Restoration he formed an Independent congregation; he died in 1668, and was buried in the church. Tuckney resigned his vicarage in 1660, and his other preferments in 1662. He died in 1670.

1660. Obadiah Howe, D.D., a Puritan, previously successively in charge of Stickney and Gedney. His brass is in the chapel.

1683. Henry Morland, M.A., previously Lecturer. He died at Boston.

1702. Edward Kelsall, M.A., previously Master of the Grammar School. He died at Boston.

1719. Samuel Coddington, M.A., also previously Master of the Grammar School. He died at Boston.

1732. John Rigby, M.A., also previously Master of the Grammar School. He died at Boston.

1746. John Calthrop, M.A., also Vicar of Kirkton, and a prebendary of Lincoln Cathedral. He represented the clergy of the diocese in Convocation. He was buried at Gosberton, of which place he was a native.

1785. Samuel Partridge, M.A. He also held the rectory of the south mediety of Leverton till 1797, and was also Vicar of Wigtoft and of Quadring.

1817. Bartholomew Goe, B.A.