the abbeys at Croyland, Thorney and Peterborough sharing the same fate. Another two hundred years passed and we find that Botolph Town was still only a small place, for it was lumped with Skirbeck in the Doomsday Book. In the three or four centuries following the Conquest, however, it made an enormous advance and reached a comparative greatness such as it is never likely to again attain. The river Witham had by this time become properly banked and was the highway of commerce for a very wide tract of country.

Lincoln was one of the largest towns in the Kingdom and Boston was its port. Between the two lay a dozen great religious houses, such as Barlings, Bardney, Kirkstead, Tattershall, Kyme and Nocton, while at Boston itself each of the principal religious orders established a friary. Powerful barons, too, settled in the neighborhood and their influence with that of the religious brotherhood's, gave the sense of security, without which commerce languishes. By the beginning of the thirteenth century the town was a flourishing port and had friars that were visited by buyers from distant parts of England, and sellers from what we know now as France, Belgium, Holland and Germany. It had too its own woolen manufacturers and was granted a large measure of home rule on compounding with the King by payment of a yearly subsidy. In 1205 its yield to the Royal Exchecquer for customs dues was second only to that of London, the amounts being London œ836, Boston œ780. From about 1200 to about 1450 were the "high and palmy" days of the place. The great merchant houses of Flanders and Germany had branches here, and it was unquestionably one of the chief places where England came into touch with the continent. In its time of prosperity Boston was piously minded. The noble church, which while it stands will ever redeem the town from being commonplace, was begun in 1309. There is mention of a church (probably on the same spot), as early as 1090. The present building has been a slow growth. Generations passed away between the time of laying the first stone to its completion. Trading guilds began to be established. The Guild of St. Mary, the highest in commercial importance, was set on foot in 1260. Their hall remains to this day as the Town Hall in South street. The Corpus Christi Guild, founded in 1335, was commercial at first, but finally became religious. In 1500 a bridge was built. The builder was one May Hake, a Flanders mason, who by agreement was to have "with his man, 4s per diem." One of the items of agreement was "that May Hake be contented of his wages." That bridge was removed after the opening of the present iron bridge, built in 1807.

The seventeenth century was a very notable one for Boston, and by it the town will chiefly be remembered, for it then sent forth the "Pilgrim Fathers," who founded the United States of America. In 1608 a number of Puritans, who with their pastor, the Rev. J. Robinson, had been driven from Boston into Holland through religious