Nothing could really put a stop to this business; not even Sir Robert Walpole’s Excise Bill of 1733, nor the formation of a corps of elite ‘Riding Officers’ in 1698, who could be joined by the dragoons if need be.

As the historian Roy Porter said, ‘smuggling gave moonlighting employment along the coastal strips.’ The fact is that the Humber provided one of the most hospitable and defensible areas for this kind of ‘moonless’ nightwork.

Another villain close to the Humber was undoubtedly Dean Fletcher and his very foul deed at Thornton Abbey, not far from Barton. In the late fourteenth century, the Abbot, Thomas de Gretham, was enjoying a liaison with his student, Heloise. In a complex plot involving the Abbot, a tough called ‘The Green Devil’ locally, and a stolen deed of land ownership, we have a tale of awful punishment, being inflicted on the Abbot by Fletcher (for ‘lax living’ according to one source) and the victim reputedly immured in the abbey.

In the 1830s, workmen found a secret room, where there was a skeleton on the floor, which turned to dust when touched. It was wearing a monk’s habit. It most likely was the Abbot. But there are other candidates for the identity of the remains. A 1935 report talks of a certain Walter Munton who was also an ‘evil liver.’ As with most of Britain in the last decades of the fourteenth century, there was anarchy around. The ‘Green Devil’, whoever he was, was keen on robbery and pillage in the area: he had his own gang of followers and they were apparently feared by all in and around Barton.