harshness of nature, sometimes persecutions and wars, sometimes adverse
economic conditions, impelled companies of people from the Low Countries
to cross the North Sea and try to make homes for themselves in a land
which, despite intervals of distraction, offered greater security and a
better reward than did the place whence they came. England derived much
advantage from the infusion of this industrious, solid and dependable
Flemish stock; though the temporary difficulty of absorption gave rise to
local protests on more than one occasion.

As early as 1108, a great part of Flanders "being drowned by an exudation
or breaking in of the sea, a great number of Flemings came into the
country, beseeching the King to have some void place assigned them,
wherein they might inhabit."* (* Holinshed's Chronicle edition of 1807 2
58.) Again in the reign of Edward I we find Flemish merchants carrying on
a very large and important trade in Boston, and representatives of houses
from Ypres and Ostend acquired property in the town.* (* Pishey Thompson
Collections for a Topographical and Historical Account of Boston and the
Hundred of Skirbeck 1820 page 31.) In the middle of the sixteenth
century, when Flanders was boiling on the fire of the Reformation,
Lincolnshire and Norfolk provided an asylum for crowds of harassed
refugees. In 1569 two persons were deputed to ride from Boston to Norwich
to ascertain what means that city adopted to find employment for them;
and in the same year Mr. William Derby was directed to move Mr. Secretary
Cecil, Queen Elizabeth's great minister, to "know his pleasure whether
certain strangers may be allowed to dwell within the borough without
damage of the Queen's laws."* (*Boston Corporation manuscripts quoted in
Thompson, History and Antiquities of Boston 1856.)

During one of these peaceful and useful Flemish invasions the ancestors
of Matthew Flinders entered Lincolnshire. In the later years of his life