SPILSBY CHURCH Eresby, the younger brothers being Antony, Bishop of Durham, and Thomas, who was consecrated Bishop of St. David's at Lincoln in 1280. Lord Bec died in 1302, in which year Sir William of Willoughby (near Alford), who had married his daughter and heiress Alice, obtained a charter for a market at Spilsby every Monday. Their son Robert was the first Baron Willoughby De Eresby, who died in 1316. His son John fought at Crecy 1346, and in 1348 founded the College of the Holy Trinity at Spilsby, and the chantry which, when he and his successors in the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries with their huge altar tombs filled up the chancel of the old church, even blocking up the entire chancel arch with the stone screen of the Bertie monument, became eventually the chancel of the parish church. For the old church consisted of a nave and chancel into which the west door opened direct; it had probably a narrow north aisle, and certainly a large south aisle was added with the Trinity chapel at the east end of it. This aisle and chapel are now the nave and chancel of the church, which was restored in Ancaster stone in 1879, and a new south aisle added, the tower alone remaining of green-sand with lofty hard-stone pinnacles. In this the bells have just been re-hung, in December, 1913. John, second Baron Willoughby (1348), also the third (1372), who fought at Poictiers, and the fourth, with his second wife, Lady Neville, at his side (1380), have huge altar tombs with effigies in armour; he died 1389. A brass commemorates his third wife (1391), and another fine one, said to be Lincolnshire work, the fifth baron and his first wife (1410). Both these ladies being of the family of Lord Zouch. The gap between the fifth and the tenth Lord Willoughby is accounted for thus:—
The sixth Lord was created Earl of Vendome and Beaumont and died 1451. His second wife was Maud Stanhope, co-heiress of Lord Cromwell of Tattershall. The seventh and eighth, best known by their other title of Lord Welles, were both put to death for heading the Lincolnshire rebellion against Edward IV., the father by an act of bad faith on the king's part, who had taken him, together with Dymoke the Champion, out of the Sanctuary in Westminster; and the son because, in revenge, joining Sir Thomas de la Launde, he had fought the Yorkists and been defeated at the battle of Loose-coatfield near Stamford, 1470. The ninth lord was William, who
