HISTORY OF WELL elms on the summit of a grassy hill, you see a fine sheet of water fed by a copious chalk stream which passes the house and is then conducted to a still larger lake on the garden side, stretching with a double curve from the giant cedars on the lawn to a vanishing point, of which glimpses only are caught through the stems of the Scotch firs and oaks in the distance. The history of Well goes back to Roman times, and has been told fully by the Rev. E. H. R. Tatham, Rector of the neighbouring parish of Claxby, where the site of a Roman camp is still visible, another being at Willoughby, two miles off eastwards in the levels, where the marsh begins.
The name was derived in Saxon times from the strong spring which wells out from the chalk and feeds the lakes on either side the house. The names Burwell and Belleau in the immediate neighbourhood are of similar origin, though the latter is a Norman name. At the time of the Conquest Well and Belleau were both bestowed on Gilbert de Gaunt, the Conqueror's nephew, and were let by him to one Ragener, whose family took the addition "de Welle" and lived here for four centuries. In the thirteenth century we hear of a church at Well, and William de Welle (the third of the name) in 1283 obtained a licence for a market and fair at Alford. His son Adam was summoned to Parliament as a baron in 1299. In the fifteenth century the name was changed from Welle to Welles, and Leo Lord Welles fell at Towton in 1461. The title was now combined with that of Willoughby d'Eresby, and Leo's son, Richard, who took it jure uxoris, he having married the Willoughby heiress, was the Lord Welles who was so basely put to death in 1470 by Edward IV. for complicity in the Lincolnshire rebellion, together with his son-in-law, T. Dymoke, and his son Robert. See Chap. XXXIII.
Leo, who fell at Towton, had married for his second wife, Margaret Duchess of Somerset, and her son John joined Henry VII., and after the battle of Bosworth the king restored to him the Welles estate which had been forfeited after Robert's execution, made him a viscount, and gave him the hand of Cicely, daughter of Edward IV. and sister to his own queen, in marriage. It is interesting to read in Mr. Tatham's paper that "This lady carried the heir-apparent, Prince Arthur, at his baptism at Winchester in 1486." She subsequently married one of the Kyme family of Kyme Tower near Boston. John
