[103b] “Naturalist,” 1895, p. 274.
[103c] The late Mr. W. H. Wheeler, one of our ablest engineers, held the opinion that there was a time when the Witham, by a somewhat similar process, instead of passing through “the Lincoln Gap,” if it then existed, found its way through a low tract of country northward into the Trent, and so passed out into the Humber. See “Lincolnshire Notes and Queries,” vol. i., pp. 53, 54, and 213. It would almost seem that the poet Drayton had an idea of something of this kind, when he says of the Witham—
“Leaving her former course in which she first set forth,
Which seemed to have been directly to the north,
She runs her silver front into the muddy fen
. . . coming down,
. . . to lively Botolph’s town.”Polyolbion, song xxv.
It may here be added that the antiquary, Stukely, who at one time lived at Boston was of opinion, that the Witham, at one period, diverged from its present channel a little below Tattershall, about Dogdyke, to the east, and through various channels, which are now drains, found its way to Wainfleet and there debouched into the sea. And an old map of Richard of Cirencester, in the 14th century, confirms this.
[105a] “Naturalist,” 1895, pp. 230, 231.
[105b] This “celt,” as they are called, has been exhibited by the writer at more than one scientific meeting. It is still in the possession of Mr. Daft, who would doubtless be glad to show it to any one wishing to see it.—N.B.—the term “celt” is not connected with the name Celtic or Keltic, but is frem a Latin word celtis, or celtes; meaning a chisel, and used in the Vulgate, Job xix., 24, the classic word is cœlum.
[106a] Gov. Geolog. Survey, “Country round Lincoln,” p. 161, now in the possession of Mr. Fox, land surveyor, of Coningby.
[106b] S. B. J. Skertchly, “Fenland,” p. 344.
[107] A representation of Chaucer on horseback, in a MS. on vellum, of the Canterbury Tales, in the possession of the Duke of Sutherland, and reproduced as a frontispiece to “Illustrations of the lives of Gower and Chaucer,” by H. J. Todd, F.S.A., 1810, shows the anelace hanging from a button on the breast of his surcoat. It was usually worn at the girdle, except in the case of ecclesiastics. M. Paris mentions Petrus de Rivallis as “gestans anelacium ad lumbare, quod clericum non decebat.” The present writer possesses what he believes is an anelace, which was found among the ruins of a cottage on the Kirkstead Abbey estate some 25 years ago. He exhibited it at a meeting in London of the Archæological Institute, in November, 1882, where it was described as a “beautiful knife handle, decorated with nielli of Italian character.” It is of blue enamel, beautifully chased with an elegant filigree pattern in silver. It has also been pronounced by an authority to be Byzantine work. As being found near the ruins of Kirkstead Abbey, we might well imagine it to have hung at the girdle, or from the breast, of some sporting ecclesiastic; and to have belonged to the jewelled blade,
Wherewith some lordly abbot, in the chase,
Gave to the deer “embossed” his coup de grace.