William of Burnham, Roger of Burnham, John of Thetilthorpe, Thomas Melton, Geoffrey Lundels, Vincent Bavant, John Gardner, John Cutwulf, Richard of Belwood, and John at Hagh. These were no doubt the principal Socmanni of the Isle: for the commons are said to be "appendant to their free tenements."

By this deed the Lord of the Manor grants the commons of the said Isle to these and all his other tenants. He gives them privilege to dig in the moors and marshes turf, trees, and roots found within the soil of the said moors and marshes; to dig turf for the walls of their houses, and to enclose the walls of their messuages or mansions; to dry flags in all the wastes, for to cover the ridges of their houses and walls, and to bring trees to repair the river of Trent, when cause of repairing is, and to make them new. He also granted them the further privilege of putting their hemp to be rated in the waters of the said wastes, except in the Skiers, a place in the parish of Haxey, which was reserved for the use of the said Lord; and that those who, by their tenure, were bound to enclose the Lord's woods, might take underwood from certain places for that purpose. He further grants them the privilege of keeping dogs, free from the molestation of his servants; exempts them from the penalty for not appearing to ring their swine; and ordains that the chase of beasts of commoners be made only once a year; and that none of the tenants should be amerced for trespass, when impeached by the minister of the said Lord, without answer given in Court; and "then by their peers to be fined if they be amerciable."

This deed bears date at Epworth, the first day of May, in the year of the reign of Edward the Third (after the Conquest), thirty three, and is now among the public records in the Tower. The original is in French.

A small glimmer of light is hereby thrown on the state of the country at this period.

First, we learn that the low lands which, in more remote ages, were dry, had become marsh, and the fen full of a decayed subterraneous forest, for leave is given to the tenants to dig out of such grounds trees and roots. We may infer also, that considerable attempts must have been made, even at this early period, to staith and embank the Trent; for that must be the meaning

of

of the words " to bring trees to repair the Trent, and if need be to make them new." The walls of the houses of the inhabitants, it appears, were constructed of turfs, and thatched with flags or reeds; and hemp was one of the principal products of the land. Cutwulf is the only Saxon name in the list of the tenants. The old appellations of Ulf, Alnod, Guede, Weghe, Rolf, Ulfenisc, and Colgrim, had now given place to the Norman names Geoffrey, Richard, William, Robert, and Roger.

After the year sixteen hundred and twenty six, the history of this district becomes more interesting, as it formed part of the great improvement which then took place in the drainage of the Level of Hatfield Chase, by Sir Cornelius Vermuyden, and which Dugdale, in his History of Drainage, praises as one of the greatest works ever effected by any individual. I must, however, confess that I am of the same opinion expressed by Mr. Hunter, in his History of the Deanery of Doncaster, that "it was a great pity to have destroyed such an interesting country as the great Chase, for the purpose of converting it into arable land, the expense having been far more than the freehold of it was worth."

During the troubles of King Charles the First, this country again retrograded; for it was not to be expected, that, during the Civil War, when the laws could be violated with some degree of impunity, the natives would patiently endure a system of operations which was attended with very considerable temporary inconvenience during its execution, and which, if finally successful, must cause a complete change in their habits, by destroying one principal means of procuring subsistence: especially as they took that part in the national quarrel which finally prevailed. As no effectual measures were taken, on the restoration of King Charles the Second, to subdue the outrages and depredations of these Girvii,* they continued to exist almost as a distinct

race

* "The dwellers in the Lincolnshire fens were, in the Saxon times, called Girvii, or Fen Dwellers; a race of men, according to the nature of the place where they dwell, rude, uncivil, and envious to all others." Persons acquainted with the Islonians thirty or forty years ago will readily admit that they were the true descendants of the ancient Girvii. The great facility of intercourse with other parts of the kingdom, which has taken place during the last twenty-five years, owing to the improvements of the roads, and the establishment of steam packets, which run daily between Gainsbrough and Hull, has tended very much to ameliorate, if not totally to destroy their unfavourable characteristics.

E

race of people for another century. We shall treat of these events somewhat at large in the following chapters.

WITH regard to the Geology of this district, it may perhaps be sufficient to observe, that, when stripped of the covering of soil, and of the deposits and accumulations of past centuries, there appears a stratum of clay and another of sand. The clay forms the bottom of the channel of the Trent, and also of the high grounds in the parish of Owston, Upper Burnham, and Lower Burnham. It extends beyond the Lawns, in the parish of Epworth, and forward to Belton. On the low grounds, next to Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire, sand generally prevails, interspersed here and there with clay. Beneath this is a sand rock, the same which is generally penetrated, in sinking wells, in the neighbourhood of Bawtry. This clay is capable of being made into good bricks, tiles, and other articles of coarse earthen manufactory. It contains, however, small pieces of limestone, which, if not carefully separated, swell in the bricks, after they have been burnt, and causes them to crack and fall in pieces.

Interspersed amongst the clay is a large bed of gypsum or plaster, which varies considerably both in thickness and horizontal extent; and is found both on the tops of the hills and at all depths. The beds of gypsum differ from what is usually understood by mineralogists as beds; for, instead of forming a continuous layer amongst the clay, they are found in masses, thick at the centre and thinner towards the edges. These masses are imbedded among the clay strata, in some places to the extent of several acres, and in others of only a few yards, or even inches. It may, however, be obtained with such facility that the owners of the soil dig where the masses lie nearest the surface, and then fill the pits up again; so that, though large quantities are continually excavated, there are no extensive and permanent quarries.

Gypsum is used principally for making chamber floors. It is first burnt, then reduced to powder by thrashing it with flails, and afterwards sifted. The powder is then mixed with water to the consistency of that thin mortar which is termed grout, and used for cementing walls, which, in the inside are filled

up

up with uneven stones. This paste is then spread on reeds or laths nailed across the joists, which hardens in twenty-four hours, and forms a floor, as it were, of one continuous slab of stone.

The sand rock in the Isle of Axholme, when not covered by the clay, is covered with gravel, and in some places the gravel rests upon the clay.

This gravel is of two sorts calcarious and quartz. The quartz gravel occurs under the peat and vegetable matter on the western side of the Isle, towards Thorne. The calcarious gravel is found at High Burnham; it can be traced also in a field near Low Melwood, in the parish of Owston, and is found in large quantities on the west side of Hardwick Hill, on the other side of the Trent, in the parish of Scotton. Wroot is a hill of calcarious gravel, much the same as at Lindholme. This gravel is composed of pebbles, rounded in various degrees and mixed with granular quartz, varying in size from sixpence to a foot in diameter. These pebbles are for the most part magnesian limestone; but various other sorts may be found interspersed amongst them, Several of these stones bear the marks or impressions of organic remains, such as casts of bivalve shells, about half an inch long, and a quarter of an inch broad, of small cockles, parts of the vertebral column of the encrinus, and of the enchinus, and a rare unknown species of the madreporite*.

The surface of the ground, on the south and south-west sides of the high land of the Isle, is generally covered with loose yellowish quartz sand. This sand contains small angular pieces of whitish flint, about the size of a pea, and in many places forms the substratum to the peat; for the low grounds on the north and west and south-west side, both the clay and sand, are cover, ed with a bed of peat and peat earth, varying in thickness from one to twenty feet.

Peat is a substance composed of decayed vegetable matter, possessing strong antisceptic qualities, and, when dried, is very inflammable. Branches and trunks of trees are frequently found in beds of peat; and to so great an extent has this been the case in the Isle of Axholme, that as many as six hundred trees have been dug out of a piece of ground not exceeding the extent of ten acres. We can have no difficulty, therefore, in accounting for the for

* Peck.

mation of those beds of peat which are found in the low grounds of the Isle of Axholme; for when we consider how repeatedly large forest trees may have come to perfection, and then have gone to decay, even centuries before man set his foot upon the ground, we have a sufficient natural cause for the accumulation of these immense deposits of vegetable matter*.

When the peat has become entirely disintegrated, so as to present an uniform earthy appearance, it is termed peat-earth, though it still retains its inflammable properties; and this earthy matter is uniformly analogous to the stratum on which the plant formerly grew. Peat-earth covers the south-west part of the Isle. The pure peat is found in perfection near Crowle. Some authors

* It has been well observed by Davy, in his Agricultural Chemistry, that as soon as the smallest layer of earth is formed on the surface of a rock, the seeds of lichens, mosses, and other imperfect vegetables, which are constantly floating in the atmosphere, and which have made it their resting place, begin to vegetate: their death, decomposition, and decay, form a certain quantity of organizable matter, which mixes with the earthy materials of the rock. In this improved soil more perfect plants are capable of subsisting: these in their turn absorb nourishment from water and the atmosphere, and after perishing, afford new materials to those already provided. The decomposition of the rock still continues; and at length, by such slow and gradual processes, a soil is formed in which even forest trees can fix their roots, and which is fitted to reward the cultivator.

In instances where successive generations of vegetables have grown upon a soil, unless part of their produce has been carried off by man, or consumed by animals, the vegetable matter increases in such a proportion, that the soil approaches to a peat in its nature; and, if in a situation where it can receive water from a higher district, it becomes spongy and permeated with that fluid, and is gradually rendered incapable of supporting the nobler classes of vegetables.

Many peat mosses seem to have been formed by the destruction of forests, in consequence of the imprudent use of the hatchet by the early cultivators of the country in which they exist. When the trees are felled in the outskirts of a wood, those in the interior exposed to the influence of the wind, and having been accustomed to shelter, become unhealthy and die in their new situation; and their leaves and branches, gradually decomposing, produce a stratum of vegetable matter. In many of the great bogs of Ireland and Scotland the larger trees which are found in the outskirts of them bear marks of having been felled. In the interior few entire trees are found; and the cause is probably that they fell gradually by decay, and that the fermentation and decomposition of the vegetable matter was most rapid where it was in the greatest quantity.

Lakes and pools of water are sometimes filled up by the accumulation of the remains of aquatic plants; and in this case a sort of spurious peat is formed. The fermentation, however, in these cases seems to have been of a different kind. Much more gaseous matter is evolved in the neighbourhood of morasses in which aquatic plants decompose, usually the cause of its being aguish and unhealthy, whilst that of the true peat, or peat formed on soils originally dry, is always salubrious.