Marshland indeed must not be thought singular, among the several districts of this flat and stoneless country, for the largeness, stateliness, and elegance of its churches. The case is much the same in the adjoining district of _Holland_ in Lincolnshire, and in most of the northern parts of Cambridgeshire. In no part of England are to be seen larger or handsomer country churches. They are mostly built with good freestone, and yet there is no freestone, or any other stones here to be found, but what have been brought from a great distance. Where the stones used in building these churches were procured, seems to be unknown to the men of this generation. They must have been brought a very great way, and conveyed by water carriage, as the expence would otherwise have been enormous and unsupportable. Some, indeed, will tell us, that the masons and carpenters worked then for a _penny a day_, and that other labour was in the same proportion; but they seem to forget that their penny was worth a great deal more than ours. Money, in this country, has greatly sunk in its value since that time. A penny would then, probably, go as far as 2s. or half a crown of our money; so that, at any rate, the expence of the erection of these churches must have been very great, and such as the present inhabitants, with all their boasted wealth and resources, would hardly (or rather, not at all) be equal to. With sumptuous seats and magnificent palaces it does not appear that this country did ever much abound. Its strength might be too much exhausted in building churches, to admit of undertaking any other very expensive edifices. The Castle of Wisbeach seems to be almost the only exception; which, though situated a few yards out of the limits of Marshland, it may not be altogether improper to give here a short sketch of its history, as well as that of Wisbeach itself. Of that town little is known before the conquest. Sometime previous to that event, and in the early part of the same century (the 11th) it is said to have been given to the Convent of Ely (along with other large and important possessions in the different counties of Cambridge, Norfolk and Suffolk) by _Oswy_ and _Leoflede_, the parents of _Alwyn_, afterwards bishop of Elmham, upon his admission into the said convent. As the property of a convent, or monastery, it may be presumed to have been of old a very _religious_ town; which character it seems still in no small degree to retain, though in a different way.