The property, being forfeited to the Crown, was bestowed in 1487, by King Henry VII., on his mother Margaret, Countess of Richmond. King Henry VIII. granted it, in 1520, to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, upon his marriage with Mary, the King’s sister. In default of heirs, it again reverted to the King. In 1551 King Edward VI. granted the castle and manor to Edward Fines, Lord Clinton, who was created Earl of Lincoln in 1572. His great-grandson, Theophilus, fourth Earl, in 1649 petitioned Parliament for compensation for the damage done to Tattershall Castle during the civil war. Tradition has assigned the dismantling and unroofing of the castle to the time just after the battle of Winceby, near Horncastle, in 1643, and W. A. Nicholson[92] has recorded several inscriptions on its walls, of the years 1642, 1644, 1645, and 1648, showing that it probably was not in good keeping about that period. It continued in the possession of the male line of the Earls of Lincoln till the year 1692, when Bridget (only daughter and heiress of Hugh Boscawen by Margaret his wife, fifth daughter and eventually co-heiress of Theophilus Clinton, Earl of Lincoln) married Hugh Fortescue of Wear Gifford, North Devon (one of the most charming manor houses imaginable), an ancestor of the present noble proprietor, the Earl Fortescue. We may now turn our attention to the past and present state of this once magnificent residence. It was built, as mentioned above, by Ralph, the third Baron Cromwell, of whom William of Worcester speaks as follows in his _Itinerary_: “The Lord Treasurer expended in building the principal and other towers of his Castle of Tattershall above four thousand marks; his household there consisted of above a hundred persons, and his suite when he rode to London commonly of one hundred and twenty horsemen, and his annual expenditure was about five thousand pounds.” The date of the castle’s erection can be told, within a very few years, by the heraldry which is its most prevalent ornament. There is the coat of arms of Tattershall (chequy _or_ and _gu._, a chief _erm._), which might be used by any lord of Tattershall since heraldry began; of Driby (_arg._ 3 cinquefoils _gu._, a canton _gu._), which would date from the reign of King Henry III.; those of Bernak (_erm._ a fesse _gu._) and of Cromwell (_arg._ a chief _gu._ over all a bend _az._), from the reign of King Richard II. (the first shield in the fireplace on the ground floor, i.e. _gu._ 10 annulets _or_, has been supposed to be an early shield of the Cromwell family), but the shields of Cromwell and Tattershall impaling Deincourt (_az._ a fesse dancetté between 10 billets _or_) show that not until after Lord Cromwell’s marriage with Margaret Deincourt could the castle have been thus decorated, and, as there were no children of that marriage, there could be no such union of arms after their deaths. Also, the very frequent repetition of the Purse (with its double bags and the