Sir William Meryng was the next owner, and in 1564 it passed from the Meryngs to John Elwes, who in 1588 conveyed it to W. Meekley, whose successor sold it to Gervase Bellamy, of Luneham. He died in 1626, and his heirs were his two daughters, _Mary_, who married Gervase Sibthorp of Luneham, ancestor of the Sibthorps of Canwick, and _Abigail_, whose husband, Charles Hall, became owner of Kettlethorpe. His son, Thomas, married for his second wife the widow of Vincent Amcotts, of Harrington, who had died in 1686, and their son left the property to his nephew Charles Amcotts, of Amcotts, in the Isle of Axholme. He, in 1762, purchased from Lord Abingdon the manor of Stow, once the property of the Bishops of Lincoln. He enclosed the lordship, and, dying in 1777, his two sisters inherited. The husband of the survivor of these sisters, Wharton Emerson, of Retford, had assumed the name of Amcotts, and in 1797 was created a baronet. He died in 1807, and his daughter Elizabeth married Sir John Ingilby, and their son, known as Sir William Ingilby Amcotts, held both the Amcotts and Ingilby baronetcies inherited from his grandfather Sir Wharton Amcotts, and from his father Sir John Ingilby. He died in 1854 and the baronetcies died with him, but the estate passed to his sister Augusta, wife of Robert Cracroft of Hackthorn, who took the name of Amcotts. His son, Weston Cracroft Amcotts, was Member of Parliament for Mid-Lincolnshire 1866-1874. He it was who reconstructed the hall which Sir William Ingilby Amcotts had allowed to get into disrepair, and rebuilt the tower of West Keal church, which had fallen. He died in 1883, and was succeeded by his eldest surviving son Edward Weston Cracroft of Hackthorn. For most of my facts about Kettlethorpe and Doddington I am indebted to the exhaustive papers by Rev. Canon Cole, Prebendary of Lincoln, contributed to the Lincoln Architectural Society’s Journal, to whom also I owe valuable information about the brass at Norton Disney, which we visited together, and also a pleasant and profitable hour in the minster. CHAPTER XV HERMITAGES AND HOSPITALS SPITAL-ON-THE-STREET A little lonely hermitage it was, Down in a dale, hard by a Forest’s side, Far from resort of people that did pass In travel to and froe: a little wyde There was a holy chappell edifyde, Wherein the hermite duly went to say His holy things each morne and eventyde. SPENSER, _Faerie Queene_. I. I. 34.