Walter de Gaunt (A.D. 1115) granted to the Abbot of Bardney eight fisheries on the Witham, and a fishery on the Witham at Dogdyke (Dock-dike) was granted to the Abbot of Kirkstead by Philip de Kyme (A.D. 1162), which were privileges, in those times, of considerable value. (Reliquiœ galenœ, Introd., p. xxiii.). Records in the Archives of Lincoln state that when Henry VII. visited Lincoln, in 1486, keeping his Easter there, and “humbly and christenly did wesh the feet of 30 poore menne with his noble hands,” he was entertained at a banquet, to which the Mayor contributed “12 grete pykes, 12 grete tenches, and 12 salmons”; {76a} and on a second visit, after his victory at Stoke field, the Corporation presented him with “2 fatte oxen, 20 fatte muttons, 12 fatte capons, and 6 grete fatte pykes.” “Pike have been taken in the Fens,” says Mr. Skertchly, in his “Fenland” (p. 398), “from 20lbs. to 24lbs. The largest known was taken when Whittlesea Mere was drained. It weighed 100lbs., and was given to the late naturalist, Frank Buckland.” There are fine pike in the lake at Sturton Hall, where permission to fish may generally be obtained; and the present would seem to be an opportunity for placing on record that when, early in this century, the lake, of some eight acres in extent, was first formed by damming the stream which ran through the Park, it was stocked with pike and other fish from the moat which then enclosed the residence of the present writer, Langton Rectory. I find among my notes on Witham pike fishing, that in 1890 one angler {76b} took, in two hours, five fish, weighing altogether 31lbs.; the largest scaling over a stone (14lbs.), measured 35½ inches in length and 19 inches in girth. A few days later he landed fishes of 7lbs. and 5lbs., while another angler, about the same date, secured a pike of 16lbs. But a Horncastle fisherman, {76c} in the same week, captured one of 18lbs. in the Witham near Tattershall. One of our greatest anglers states that his largest pike, taken in the Witham, was 16¼lbs.; that he has landed 23 pike in one day, of all sizes, and 20 the next day, making 43 fish in two days. In the closing week of the season 1898–1899, a season below the average, a pike was taken in the Witham, near Tattershall, weighing 22lbs.