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Outside is a broken churchyard cross, and the slender chancel buttresses are seen to have each a niche for a figure. The magnificent great “Dos-D’Âne” coping-stones on the churchyard wall, both here and at Great Hale, are a pleasure to see.

There was a church at Heckington before the Conquest, and a second was built about 1100. The income of this, as well as of that of Hale Magna, was given in 1208 by Simon de Gant and his wife Alice to support the church of St. Lazarus outside the walls of Jerusalem, and this endowment was confirmed by King John. The rector of Hale Magna in his parish magazine points out that the enormous amount of land which was constantly passing to the churches and monasteries in the Middle Ages became a distinct danger, and that an Act was passed to prevent it, called the Statute of Mortmain, under which licence had to be obtained from the Crown.

Consequently we find that in the fourth year of Edward II. (1310) inquisition was taken on a certain Sunday before Ranulph de Ry, Sheriff of Lincoln, at Ancaster “to inquire whether or not it be to the damage of the King or others if the King permit Wm. son of Wm. le Clerk of St. Botolph (Boston) to grant a messuage and 50 acres of land in Hekyngton and Hale to a certain chaplain and his successors to celebrate Divine service every day in the parish church of Hekyngton for the health of the souls of the said Wm. his father, mother and heirs, &c., for ever,” etc. The jury found that it would not be to the damage or prejudice of the king to allow the grant. They also reported that Henry de Beaumont was the “Mesne,” or middle, tenant between the king and William Clerk of Boston for twenty-eight acres, and between the king and Ralph de Howell for the other twenty-two acres, he holding from the king “by the service of a third part of a pound of pepper,” and subletting to the others, for so many marks a year. The land apparently being valued at about 1s. 8d. an acre. From other sources we find that land thereabouts varied in value from 4d. to 8s. an acre yearly rent.