It was the custom to repeat the legend either at the beginning or the end of each succeeding list that-- “There is and tyme out of mynd hath been within the Towne of Northwich 112 four leads and one odde lead and noe more; and four leads called the Running Wich-house. Soe the totall is 113 four leads and one odde lead.” This formula was evidently only a fable. The discrepancy between the figures and the statement was pointed out by a scribe in 1630, who, having cast up the number of leads tabulated in the list of 1589, appended the following note: “These leads answere but unto 308 leads whereas there is 453 leads yearly walled for ut pateat ante: soe that there wanted 145 leads to make up the full accoumpt for 308 leads and 145 leads make but just 453.” There are about 450 leads accounted for in the next list, which was drawn up in 1593, but the clerk persisted in the assumption that what had been “time out of mynd” could suffer no change, and he formally declared, despite his own figures to the contrary, that “the totall some is 113 four leads and one odde lead, which stand in the Towne rowe as is before written and declared.” On folio 61 of one of the Harleian MSS., following the list of Northwich salt-owners for the years 1636–38, are undated lists of salt-owners of Middlewich and Nantwich. The clerk admits the incompleteness of the list of twenty-two owners in Middlewich, but he explains that the names he gives are “as manie as I can learne for the p’sent,” and he adds, “But the number of their sev’all and respective howses and leads I cannot learne.” Only five owners appear in the returns for Nantwich, and the meagre particulars that the clerk has been able to acquire respecting the other salt districts of Cheshire are contained in the following note: “There is another Wiche where there is a great store of Salt made in Cheshire And w^{ch} is of greate Antiquitie called Fulwich, also Durtwich, and my Lo: Brereton is an owner of sev’all wich-houses theire. But whoe are owners of the rest I cannot learne.” Nantwich was long famous among the Wiches for its production of the finest and best white salt. The Welsh named it Hellath Wen, and the _London Magazine_, in 1750, translated the words as the “White Salt Town,” but there is no reference to the quality or colour of its output in the present name, which is derived from the Welsh word “nant,” a vale, and the Saxon “wyche.” That its salt was good, plentiful, and of considerable commercial value would seem to be shown by the fact that under the Saxons the supplies were in the hands of the princes and nobles, and William the Conqueror had not been in England more than a year before he divided the salt production of Nantwich between himself and Earl Edwin, who owned some salt-houses in the district.