64 AGRICULTURE. 



Christchurch in Canterbury did, about ten years then past, 

 divert the course of a certain water, called Gestling, in 

 which such felons as were condemned to death within the 

 said hundred ought to suffer judgment by drowning ; so 

 that by this turning of that stream, those condemned per- 

 sons could not there be drowned as formerly ; and that 



this was to the prejudice of the King The Sheriff, 



therefore, had command that he should cause the said 

 gutter to be put into the same condition as it was before ; 

 and the said Prior was amerced." 



A fair sample of these documents, which run through 

 hundreds of columns, we take at random from a present- 

 ment of the jurors at a session of Sewers in 13 Eliza- 

 beth : 



"15. That Mil-lane, from Tholomer's drove, and reach- 

 ing from the crest in Mampasse to the pipe in the drove, 

 be made in height 4 feet, and in breadth 8 feet, by the 

 Dean of Ely and Lord Berkley. 



" 16. That the lands between Sorrell Dyke and Belly- 

 mill Dyke do make Sorrell Dyke and Belly-mill Dyke in 

 height 6 feet and breadth 8 feet." 



This presentment, of which we have copied the 15th and 

 16th articles as being among the shortest, runs on to No. 

 120. Somewhat more interesting is a detailed account of 

 the early efforts of Francis and William, Earls of Bedford, 

 to improve the great level, for which they and their parti- 

 cipants received 95,000 acres of land.* 



Being in the neighbourhood of Thorney, we will here 

 allude to a singular statement with reference to that lord- 

 ship which we find in a tract printed in 1629, and entitled 

 "The Drayner Confirmed, and the Obstinate Fenman 

 Confuted :" 



* A work, in two thick quarto volumes, published in 1830, by Mr- 

 Wells, registrar of the Bedford Level Corporation, gives a full account, 

 historical, legal, practical, and statistical, of the drainage of the Great 

 Level of the Fens. The account is as minute as Dugdale's, with less 

 entertaining gossip, but no doubt possesses great local interest. 



