y each
occupant 3s. 6d. per week; (3) in case of there being any surplus, to pay
them so much more as the trustees should think fit. A clause was added,
empowering the Charity Commissioners, from time to time, to order any
part of the income to be applied to special purposes, as they might think
desirable.

We may add that while residing at Hastings, Mr. George Whelpton secured
two acres of land, at Eastbourne, from the Duke of Devonshire, the owner
of the whole town, as he is also of Buxton; and at a cost of about 20,000
pounds, erected and endowed the church and vicarage of St. Saviour's,
which was held by his youngest son, Henry Robert, who graduated at St.
John's College, Cambridge, and was afterwards made Canon of Chichester.
This benefice is private property, and is now held by his son, Henry
Urling Whelpton, of Pembroke College, Cambridge.

The head of the Whelpton family may now be considered to be the Rev.
George Whelpton, at one time residing in France, but now of Trinity
House, Abington, Berks. The original George Whelpton died in 1903.

For these details the present writer is indebted to several members of
the Whelpton family, with some of whom he was a fellow pupil at the
Horncastle Grammar School.

THE DRILL HALL.

The present building is not the first structure erected in connection
with the Volunteers, any more than the present Volunteers themselves are
the first institution of the kind formed in Horncastle. In the early
years of the 19th century, when there was a general feeling abroad that
one great project, nurtured in the ambitious mind of the first Napoleon,
was an invasion of England, volunteers were organized throughout the
country, with a view to self-defence. As an instance of this, in the
town of Pontefract a corps was formed, of which the Earl of Mexborough
was Colonel Commandant, and George Pyemont, Esq., of Tanshelf House,
Pontefract (grandfather of the present writer), was Major; {145} the
records of which are preserved, among other public documents, in
Pontefract Castle.

[Picture: Conging Street during the flood, Dec. 31, 1900]

Similarly, a corps was raised in Horncastle at the same period, of which
we have somewhat curious evidence in the following. There exists a small
pamphlet, which the writer has recently (July, 1908) perused, entitled
"An address delivered to the Horncastle Volunteers, on Feb. 26, 1804, by
their chaplain, in consequence of the resignation