He will find a complete history of the drainage of the English fens in Sir William Dugdale's
"History of Embanking and Draining of divers Fens and Marshes, both in Foreign Parts and in this Kingdom, and of the Improvement thereby: adorned with sundry Maps, &c. London, 1662, fol. A New Edition, with three Indices to the principal Matters, Names, and Places, by Charles Nelson Cole, Esq.: London, 1772, fol."
Mr. Samuel Wells published, in 1830, in 2 vols. 8vo., a complete history of the Bedford Level, accompanied by a map; and I may add that the late Mr. Grainger, C.E., read a series of papers on the draining of the Haarlem Lake to the Society of Arts in Edinburgh, which, I believe, were never published, but which may, perhaps, be accessible to E. G. R.
Henry Stephens.
Nattochiis and Calchanti (Vol. ix., pp. 36. 84.).—The former of these words being sometimes spelt natthocouks in the same deed, shows the ignorance or carelessness of the scribe, the reading being clearly corrupt; I would suggest cottagiis, cottages, and by "ganis" I should understand not granis, as F.S.A. supposes, but gardinis, gardens. The line will then run thus:
"Cum omnibus gardinis et cottagiis adjacentibus."
It will be seen that this differs from the solution proposed by Mr. Thrupp (p. 84.).
With respect to the latter word, calchanti, I regret that I cannot offer a satisfactory solution. Possibly the word intended may have been calcanthi, copperas, vitriol, or the water of copper or brass; but I find in the Index Alter of Ainsworth, the word—
"Calecantum. A kind of earth like salt, of a binding nature. Puto pro Chalcanthum, Vitriol, L."
Will this tally with the circumstances of the case? I presume that the words liquor, mineral, &c., following calchanti in the grant, are contractions for the genitive plural of those words; the subject of the grant being the tithes of all those substances.