Boston occupies a unique place in English social history. Founded by a Norman baron shortly after the Conquest of 1066, it rapidly grew to become the most successful and busiest English port outside London. The story of the town's birth and growth are vividly brought to life in this book. The great wealth brought to Boston by the wool trade in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries led to the building of the largest parish church in the country, the beautiful St. Botolph's, known today simply as the Boston Stump. During the seventeenth century the town was a hotbed of militant Puritanism, and consequently a firm supporter of the Parliamentary cause in the English Civil War. In search of religious freedom, more than 200 of its inhabitants emigrated to America in the 1620s and 1630s to found the new city of Boston, Massachusetts; and some of those who later became famous as the Pilgrim Fathers were imprisoned in the town's medieval Guildhall, which survives. The growth of the port in the late eighteenth century left a legacy of fine Georgian buildings, many of which are accompanied by illustrations within this book's pages. Boston's story is brought right up to date, celebrating the complete history of this fabulous Lincolnshire town in a volume that will delight locals and visitors alike.