Lincoln Record Society

Grantham had considerable local importance as a garrison town for both sides during the first Civil War. Its situation on the Great North Road gave it additional military and strategic significance. The Hallbook contains the recorded minutes of Grantham Corporation; it reflects the fates of successive aldermen who joined the Royal forces, went as hostage to Lincoln, and suffered imprisonment in Nottingham castle, and it provides a fascinating glimpse into the lives of the townspeople during this time of crisis. Householders were forced to pay taxes to both sides in the war, as well as shouldering their normal burden of taxation. Besides contributing to poor relief, their time and talents were also in demand for many tasks, including paving the streets, reinforcing the banks of the Witham, maintaining the town wells, doing watch and ward, paying quarteridge, and removing refuse from the streets. This latest volume of the Lincoln Record Society provides much evidence about the local impact of hostilities on the social and economic life of the town.

Bishop Edward Lee Hicks kept a diary throughout his episcopate at Lincoln, from 1910 to 1919. The two foolscap volumes from which this book is edited offer an honest picture of the daily life of a bishop in the period immediately before and during the first world war, a portrait of church and society in a largely rural diocese in the last phase before the radical transformation which the `Great War' hastened. Bishop Hicks had special interest in women’s suffrage, the Labour movement and temperance reform; in church affairs he was an advocate of liberal theology and biblical criticism, the development of women’s work, a social gospel, and co-operation with the nonconformists; he was also President of the Peace League throughout the period covered by the diaries. The diary presents a largely church-centred picture; but it is also valuable as a personal view of such matters as Lincolnshire social life including the impact of war on the county, conditions of travel at the beginning of the era of the motor car, characteristics of the clergy, and frequent comment on items of archaeological and antiquarian interest.

The clergy of England, like the laity, were subjected to a series of poll-taxes within a short space of time. This volume prints the surviving assessments made of the clergy of the diocese of Lincoln in the years 1377, 1379 and 1381. Most of the material relates to the old county of Lincoln (now Lincolnshire and South Humberside) but there are also surveys of Leicestershire, Rutland, most of Bedfordshire, and parts of Huntingdonshire and Hertfordshire. These poll-tax assessments represent what was virtually a census of the clerical population whose members were listed parish by parish. The documents show us not only that the number of clergy was very great, but that most were without benefices, and that they tended to gather in areas of high prosperity. Monks and nuns are also listed so that we can see how many members each monastery had. Publication of this material offers the opportunity to make a reassessment of the clergy and, hence the church of late medieval England. An extensive introduction describes the gathering of these taxes and the value and limitations of the documents themselves.

The sixty inventories printed in this volume have been selected from the 590 that survive for the thirteen parishes of the City and County of Lincoln between 1661 and 1714. The parishes chosen are those in which urban occupations and residences rather than agricultural predominate. Probate inventories were drawn up to protect the heirs to an estate and to facilitate the distribution of bequests. This selection, together with a comprehensive introduction which includes a survey of the City of Lincoln and chapters on a wide range of occupations - butchers, farmers, gardeners, millers, bakers, goldsmiths etc., as well as a glossary of terms and an index of people and place names, makes fascinating reading, both for the serious scholar and for the armchair social historian. There is much here to study and to dip into. Adapted from the Introduction and the Boydell and Brewer website blurb. There is no blurb on the dust jacket.