first of Edward IV., he was the same year attainted, and divers of his manors given to Lord Hastings. But after King Henry VII. obtained the crown, he was again restored, and his attainder wholly reversed, first of Henry VII., in which year he had summons to Parliament, by the title of "Willielmo Vicecomiti Beaumond," and lived long after, viz. to the twenty-third of that reign, but having no issue this manor again came into the hands of the crown.

After this it became a barony of the Clintons, King Edward VI. having been pleased, in exchange with Edward, Lord Clinton, for the manors of Powick, Hanley, and Pixhand, in the county of Worcester, to give the said Lord the manor of Folkingham, parcel of the estate forfeited by Thomas, then late Duke of Norfolk,a certain rents and farms in the parish of Birthorpe, the manors of Aslackby and Lee, and the parsonage of Stow, and chapel of Burford, all in this county.

This place was lately the property of R. Winne, esquire, and is now, with the exception of a few freeholds, wholly belonging to Sir Gilbert Heathcote, baronet: most of the houses in the town also belong to him.

At the

The change in the appearance of this place, from what it was forty or fifty years ago, is such, that, to a person acquainted with it then, it would scarcely be thought the same. former period it consisted of little else than a mass of irregularly built and dirty looking thatched cottages; even the Inn itself was but a miserable hovel, compared with the present elegant structure. In the middle of the market-place was a large pond, on each side of which were usually laid enormous piles of timber. Nearly opposite to the Green Man pub

a "The Duke of Norfolk hath, by gifte, a 600 marks landes of Bellamontes in Lincolnshir," LELAND'S ITINERARY, vol. i. p. 31.

lic house, stood the Market-cross, Butchery, and Town-hall, which seemed to have been erected at a period when elegance and conveniency of structure received little or no attention. On the opposite side of the market-place stood the House of Correction. Added to the above, the market-place contained two wells from which the inhabitants obtained their usual supply of water. Thus, the external appearance of the whole place presented a tout ensemble, of which those who have known it only in its present state can form but a faint conception.

Soon after the estate came into the possession of its present owner, it began gradually to assume a better appearance, and under the management and direction of the late Thomas Forsyth, esquire, most of the new buildings were erected, and the different alterations and improvements made. By the judicious removal of the aforementioned obstructions, the closing up of the wells, and we may add the almost entire rebuilding of the whole place, there is now scarcely a small town in the county of Lincoln, which appears to greater advantage than Folkingham. It is situated on the south side of a gently sloping hill, posseses a very spacious market-place, and the surrounding scenery is extremely picturesque. As the traveller approaches it from the south, on the London road, its appearance, from the disposition of its various buildings, is particularly striking, and, what perhaps is worthy of notice, the eye is not now arrested by a single rudely formed or dirty looking cottage; the more humble dwellings of the poor being secluded from public view.

That Folkingham was once a place of considerable importance, is evident from the circumstance of Gilbert de Gaunt having made it the head of his baronies; but it has probably been a place of much greater note, than either legendary relation, or historical records, have handed down to us; for Time,

the great leveller of places, as well as of distinctions, has swept into oblivion much which relates to the pristine state of a place, whose claims to the attention of the antiquary, though faded, are not yet annihilated.

It possesses, notwithstanding its contiguity to the fens, every advantage arising from a salubrious air and good water. There are many excellent springs in its immediate vicinity, but that to which the inhabitants chiefly resort is south-west of the town, and commonly known by the name of Pearson's spring. In a meadow on the north side, is a very beautiful spring, called Dunn's well, where there has doubtless been a bath erected at some time or other. South-east, in a meadow occupied by the Rev. Charles Day, is a periodical spring called Swallow pit, which some suppose to have a communication with the Trent, from the well-known fact of its rising only when the waters of that river are most abundant.

In a meadow west of the town, belonging to Mr. John Eastland, are two barrows, or tumuli, on one of which there appears to have been a mill erected at no distant period, several traces of which being distinctly visible.

No reason can be assigned, perhaps, why the first syllable in Folkingham should, as in many instances it is, be spelled with an a. This is quite a modern innovation, for it is not to be found so spelled in any ancient record. The Domesday account gives it Folchingeham and Fulchingeham; Leland and Collier write Fokingham; Dugdale and Madox, and after them the Rev. Mr. Cox, Folkingham. Tradition, however, mentions a circumstance which is said to have given rise to the name of Falking ham, as spelt with an a,-viz. that the three Chiefs who bore the title of Kings, slain in the famous battle between the English and the Danes, A. D. 869 or 870, (for an account of which see "Threckingham,") are supposed to have fallen in this parish, from which incident it was afterwards called Fall-king-ham.