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It is curious that on the Roman road line all the way from the Welland to the Humber so few villages are found, whilst on the roads which skirt the very edge of the fen from Bourne to Heckington and then north again from Sleaford to Lincoln, villages abound.

Sempringham.

A LONG TRUDGE

SEMPRINGHAM

MONK AND NUN

ST. GILBERT

I once walked with an Undergraduate friend on a winter’s day from Uppingham to Boston, about 57 miles, the road led pleasantly at first through Normanton, Exton and Grimsthorpe Parks, in the last of which the mistletoe was at its best; but when we got off the high ground and came to Dunsby and Dowsby the only pleasure was the walking, and as we reached Billingborough and Horbling, about 30 miles on our way, and had still more than twenty to trudge and in a very uninviting country, snow began to fall, and then the pleasure went out of the walking. By the time we reached Boston it was four inches deep. It had been very heavy going for the last fourteen miles, and never were people more glad to come to the end of their journey. Neither of us ever felt any great desire to visit that bit of Lincolnshire again; and yet, under less untoward circumstances, there would have been something to stop for at Billingborough with its lofty spire, its fine gable-crosses, and great west window, and at the still older small cruciform church at Horbling, exhibiting work of every period but Saxon, but most of which, owing to bad foundations, has had to be at different times taken down and rebuilt. It contains a fine fourteenth century monument to the De la Maine family. Even more interesting would it have been to see the remains of the famous priory church at Sempringham, a mile and a half south of Billingborough, for Sempringham was the birthplace of a remarkable Englishman. Gilbert, eldest son of a Norman knight and heir to a large estate, was born in 1083; he was deformed, but possessing both wit and courage he travelled on the Continent. Later in life he was Chaplain to Bishop Alexander of Lincoln, who built Sleaford Castle in 1137, and Rector of Sempringham, and Torrington, near Wragby. Being both wealthy and devoted to the church, he, with the Bishop’s approval, applied in the year 1148 to Pope Eugenius III. for a licence to found a religious house to receive both men and women; this was granted him, and so he became the founder of the only pure English order of monks and nuns, called after him, the Gilbertines. Eugenius III. suffered a good deal at the hands of the Italians, who at that time were led by Arnold of Brescia, the patriotic disciple of Abelard, insomuch that he was constrained to live at Viterbo, Rome not being a safe place for him; but he seems to have thought rather well of the English, for he it was who picked out the monk, Nicolas Breakspeare, from St. Alban’s Abbey and promoted him to be Papal legate at the Court of Denmark, which led eventually to his becoming Pope Adrian IV., the only Englishman who ever reached that dignity. The elevation does not seem to have improved his character, as his abominable cruelty to the above-mentioned Arnold of Brescia indicates. Eugenius, however, is not responsible for this, and at Gilbert’s request he instituted a new order in which monks following the rules of St. Augustine were to live under the same roof with nuns following the rules of St. Benedict. Their distinctive dress was a black cassock with a white hood, and the canons wore beards. What possible good Gilbert thought could come of this new departure it is difficult to guess. Nowadays we have some duplicate public schools where boys and girls are taught together and eat and play together, and it is not unlikely that the girls gain something of stability from this, and that their presence has a useful and far-reaching effect upon the boys, besides that obvious one which is conveyed in the old line