An unfair arrangement was made by Charles I. by which the Dutchman Vermuyden, the famous engineer who afterwards constructed the “Bedford Level,” undertook to drain the land, some of which lies from three to eight feet below high water-mark, he receiving one-third of all the land he rescued, the king one-third, the people and owners only the other third between them. This gave rise to the most savage riots; and the Dutch settlement at _Sandtoft_, where it is said that the village is still largely Dutch, was the scene of endless skirmishes, sieges, and attacks. A good insight into the lawlessness of the time is obtained from a book called “The M.S.S. in a Red Box,” published by John Lane. The ancestors of Thomas Mowbray Duke of Norfolk, whose banishment with Bolingbroke in lieu of trial by combat, is described in the opening scenes of Shakespeare’s “Richard II.,” had a castle in Norman times near _Owston_, between Haxey and East-Ferry on the Trent: so that both the would-be combatants were Lincolnshire men. Bolingbroke in the play is banished “till twice five summers have enriched our fields,” and Mowbray’s sentence is pronounced by the king in these words:— “Norfolk, for thee remains a heavier doom, Which I with some unwillingness pronounce: The fly-slow hours shall not determinate The dateless limit of thy dear exile. The hopeless word of never to return Breathe I against thee, upon pain of life.” _Richard II._, I. 3. Norfolk was banished in 1398, and died in Venice in the following year, and in Act IV., Scene 1 of the play, when Bolingbroke announces that he shall be “repealed”:— “and, though mine enemy, restored again to all his lands and signories.” The Bishop of Carlisle answers:— “That honourable day shall ne’er be seen. Many a time hath banished Norfolk fought For Jesu Christ; in glorious Christian field, Streaming the ensign of the Christian cross Against black Pagans, Turks and Saracens; And, toil’d with works of war, retired himself To Italy; and there at Venice gave His body to that pleasant country’s earth,[8] And his pure soul unto his Captain Christ, Under whose colours he had fought so long.” [Sidenote: THE WESLEY FAMILY] In the church of _Belton_ is a fine effigy of a knight in chain armour, an hour-glass-stand on a pillar near the pulpit, as at Leasingham, and a monument to Sir Richard de Belwood. _Temple Belwood_, in the centre of the island, was a preceptory of the Knights Templars. _Epworth_ is the chief town, and is famous as the birthplace of John Wesley. His father, Samuel, was the rector of S. Ormsby when he published his heroic poem in ten books on the Life of Christ, which caused him to be hailed by Nahum Tate, the Laureate of the day, as a sun new risen, before whom he and others would naturally and contentedly fade to insignificance.