the work of
the Romans,--and I know no reason for doubting it,--Torksey, standing at
the junction of the artificial river with the Trent, must have been an
important station even before the Saxon times. These are Stukeley's
words relative to the commercial use of the Foss-Dyke: "By this means
the corn of Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire,
Northamptonshire, Rutland, and Lincolnshire, came in;--from the Trent,
that of Nottinghamshire; all easily conveyed northward to the utmost
limits of the Roman power there, by the river Ouse, which is navigable
to the imperial city of York. This city (York) was built and placed
there, in that spot, on the very account of the corn-boats coming
thither, and the emperors there resided, on that account; and the great
morass on the river Foss was the haven, or bason, where these corn-boats
unladed. The very name of the Foss at York, and Foss-dyke between
Lincoln and the Trent, are memorials of its being an artificial work,
even as the great Foss road, equally the work of the spade, though in a
different manner." (Stukeley's Palaeographia Britannica: Stamford, 1746:
No. 2, page 39.)

In the superb edition of Dugdale's Monasticon Anglicanum, edited by Sir
Henry Ellis and others (1825), occurs the following note, also
evidencing the extent of ancient Torksey:--"Mr. T. Sympson, who
collected for a history of Lincoln, in a letter preserved in one of
Cole's manuscript volumes in the British Museum, dated January 20, 1741,
says, 'Yesterday, in Atwater's Memorandums, I met with a composition
between the prior of St. Leonard's in Torksey and the nuns of the Fosse,
by which it appears there were then three parishes in Torksey: viz. All
Saints, St. Mary's, and St Peter's." (Vol. iv. page 292.)

At what date this "composition" took place between the prior and nuns,
we are not told: of course, it must have been before the dissolution of
the religious houses. Leland's account of Torksey, which is as follows,
applies to a period immediately succeeding that event.

"The olde buildinges of Torkesey wer on the south of the new toune,
[that is, at the junction of the Trent with the Fosse] but ther now is
litle seene of olde buildinges, more than a chapelle, wher men say was
the paroch chirch of olde Torkesey; and on Trent side the Yerth so
balkith up that it shewith that there be likelihod hath beene sum
waulle, and by it is a hill of yerth cast up: they caulle it the Wynde
Mille Hille, but I