Draining of Fens.--Monastic Works, Morton's Leam.--Diversion of
Ouse.--Local Government, Jurats, Discontent.--Jacobean
polemics.--First Drainage Company.--Rising of Fen-men.--Second
Company, Huguenot Labourers.--Third Company, Earl of Bedford,
Vermuyden.--Old River.--Cromwell.--Fourth Company, Prisoner
Slaves, New River, Denver Sluice.--Later Developments.
The thought of the Fenland Abbeys leads on to the fascinating story of
the draining of the fens. For the monks were the first to reclaim from
the morass such little patches of ground as each Abbey could bank in,
and to discover how very fertile such reclaimed soil is. Their early
chronicles speak with rapture of the hay that could be mown three
times a year, and the amazing fecundity of the corn-land. Thus it was
their interest constantly to be enclosing fresh acres. They
discovered, too, that by judiciously letting in the flood water on to
a field they could get a fresh deposit of silt, and gradually raise
the level of the soil. And the first attempt at drainage work on a
large scale was also due to a monk, Bishop Morton, Abbot of Ely, who
in 1480 cut the twelve mile long "Leam," or channel, which still bears
his name, to divert the River Nene from its long meandering course
through Whittlesea Mere and Outwell, and to bring it straight to
Wisbech.
Thus it came about that the reclamation of the fens went hand in hand
with the prosperity of the Abbeys around them. When these were
prosperous, the whole district prospered; when misfortune befell them,
the fens likewise suffered; and it often took many years for the marks
of the ruin to be effaced. After the wholesale destruction wrought by
the great Danish raid of 870, centuries did not suffice for this. The
story we have just told of the sack of Crowland clearly shows that
the place was then accessible by land. But in the hundred and fifty
years of desolation that followed, such works as the brethren had
effected fell into decay, and the land once more became waterlogged.
Even when William of Malmesbury wrote, in the twelfth century, he
tells us that Crowland could still only be reached by boat. And the
yet more wholesale destruction wrought by Henry the Eighth was
followed by a like period of reversion to waste.
The zeal, however, of these early civilisers was not always according
to knowledge; and at quite an early date a grievous mistake was made,
which caused endless difficulties ever after, and still affects the
whole drainage system of the district. This was the cutting, at some
date between 1215 and 1270, of a leam, not two miles long, from the
Great Ouse at Littleport to the Little Ouse,[241] thereby diverting
the waters of the former into the channel of the latter, and bringing
their united volume into the sea at Lynn. Before that date the Great
Ouse ran from Littleport to Outwell, where it was met by the Nene, and
by a branch of the Little Ouse. The joint river was called the Well
Stream, and poured into the sea at Wisbech.
[Footnote 241: The Little Ouse drains the south-western districts of
Norfolk.]
That this had been the age-long course of the Fenland waters is shown
by the existence of a huge Roman sea wall running round the old coast
line from Lynn to Wisbech, and from Wisbech to Sutton in Lincolnshire.
This wall traces for us the outline of a great tidal estuary running
up to Wisbech, which continued an estuary even to the eighteenth
century. But the diversion of the greater part of its river water to
Lynn proved fatal to it. Such stream as was left, scarcely more than
that of the Nene, could not, at the ebb, scour out the channel through
the sands which the flood-tide continually tended to silt up. Wisbech
became more and more shut off from the sea, and is now ten miles away
from it. And further, the inability to escape quickly enough through
these choking sands drove the river water at Wisbech back upon itself
and forced it to "drown" the neighbouring fens; while at Lynn the same
disastrous effect was produced by the new volume of water being too
great for the narrow bed of the Little Ouse and flooding over the
banks all round. The Marshland, as the Norfolk district protected by
the Roman wall was called, suffered especially from this result of
interfering with Nature.
Nor did it prove possible to undo the mischief. When once a short cut
has been made for a great river, it is no easy matter to turn the
stream back into its old tortuous course; and, when once an estuary
has got thoroughly silted up, it is yet more difficult to restore it
to its old condition. Throughout the Middle Ages constant complaints
were made, and occasional attempts; but these were always brought to
nought by some conflicting interest or other which got the ear of the
Government. The fen problem was early recognised as a matter of
national concern, and, from the time of Edward the First onwards, the
Crown tried to grapple with it, but by hopelessly futile methods.
To begin with, the system of Local Government already established for
the regulation of Romney Marsh in Kent was extended to the Fenland.
The Sheriff was bound to summon twenty-four "jurats" from the
inhabitants of the neighbourhood, to deal with each difficulty as it
arose. But a plan which worked well enough for a district only some
ten miles by fifteen, and with no river to speak of, was wholly
inadequate to deal with the huge area and mighty forces of the
Fenland, even when this was divided (as it still is for drainage
purposes) into three "Levels," "North," "Middle," and "South." The
jurats hated their invidious office, and were themselves hated by the
inhabitants; each man always declaring that they had saddled him with
repairs which ought to have been laid upon some neighbour, and each
man ready to see his own land "drown" rather than put in a single
spadeful of work which, in his view, should have been someone else's
job.
Besides, the drain or the dam or the embankment which was good for one
set of interests was bad for another. We have seen how Cambridge
complained of the erection of Denver Sluice; and like grievances fill
page after page of the Plantagenet Rolls. The men of Lynn complain
that whereas they were of old able to sail straight to Peterborough,
only thirty miles, they now have to go round by Littleport, over fifty
miles, owing to the erection of a dam by the jurats. And, again, that
a new cut has so diverted the waters that they can no longer take
"navigable" (_i.e._ sea-going) vessels to Yaxley and Holme in
Huntingdonshire, "whereby our trade is greatly decayed." Loud and
incessant are the cries from all quarters (except Lynn alone) to
"bring back the waters into their natural outfall" at Wisbech. But
this, as we have said, had become beyond the power of man; and,
despite the well-meant efforts of the unhappy jurats, and of such
philanthropists as Bishop Morton, things kept getting worse decade by
decade; till the suppression of the Abbeys completed the ruin, and the
fens became the dismal tangle of decayed waterways, small and great,
new and old, artificial and natural, usable and unusable, the
unravelling of which occupied the next three centuries.
Feeble efforts were locally made here and there to control the waters;
but, as the historian Carter puts it, the next wet and windy winter
"down comes the bailiff of Bedford (for so the country people call the
overflowing of the river Ouse), attended, like a person of quality,
with many servants (the accession of tributary brooks), and breaks
down all their paper banks as not waterproof, reducing all to their
former condition." He goes on to give a vivid description of the
puzzle-headed conservatism with which the reformers had to contend:
"This accident put the wits of that and succeeding ages upon the
dispute of the feasibility of the design; and let us sum up the
arguments for and against this great undertaking.
"Argument 1. Some objected that God said to the water, 'Hitherto
shalt thou come, and no further.' It is therefore a trespass on
the Divine prerogative, for man to presume to give other bounds
to the water than what God hath appointed.
"Answer 1. The argument holdeth in application to the Ocean,
which is a wild horse, only to be broke, backed, and bridled by
Him who is the Maker thereof; but it is a false and lazy
principle if applied to fresh waters, from which human industry
may and hath rescued many considerable parcels of ground.
"Argument 2. Many have attempted but not effected it. None ever
wrestled with it, but it gave them a foil, if not a fall, to the
bruising, if not breaking, of their backs. Many have burnt their
fingers in these waters, and instead of draining the Fens have
emptied their own pockets.
"Answer 2. Many men's undertaking thereof implies the possibility
of the project; for it is not likely so many wise men should seek
for what is not to be found; the failing is not in the
improbability of the design, but in the undertakers either
wanting heads or hearts to pursue, or pay the people employed
therein.
* * * * *
"Argument 4. An alderman of Cambridge affirmed the Fens to be
like a crust of bread swimming in a dish of water. So that under
eight or ten feet earth it is nothing but mere water. Impossible
therefore the draining thereof, if surrounded by that liquid
element both above and below.
"Answer 4. Interest betrayed his judgment to an evident error,
and his brains seemed rather to swim than the floating earth; for
such as have sounded the depth of that ground find it to be Terra
Firma, and no doubt so solid to the centre as any other earth in
England.
"Argument 5. The river Grant or Cam (call it what you will),
running by Cambridge, will have its stream dried up by the
draining of the Fens. Now, as Cambridge is concerned in its
river, so that whole County, yea, this whole Kingdom, is
concerned in Cambridge. No reason, therefore, that private men's
particular profit should be preferred before an universal good,
or good of an University.
"Answer 5. It is granted the water by Cambridge kindles and keeps
in the fire therein; no hope of sufficient fuel on reasonable
rates, except care be taken for preserving the River navigable;
which may be done and the Fens drained nevertheless. To take away
the thief is no wasting or weakening of the wick of the candle.
Assurances may be given that no damage shall rebound to the
stream of Grant by stopping other superfluous waters.
"Argument 6. The Fens preserved in their present property afford
great plenty and variety of fish and fowl, which have therein
their seminaries and nurseries; the which will be destroyed on
the draining thereof, so that none will be had but at excessive
prices.
"Answer 6. A large first makes recompense for the shorter second
course of any man's table. And who will not prefer a tame sheep
before a wild duck? a good fat ox before a well-grown eel?
"Argument 7. The Fens afford plenty of sedge, turf, and reed; the
want whereof will be found if their nature be altered.
"Answer 7. These commodities are inconsiderable to balance the
profit of good grass and grain, which those grounds, if drained,
will produce. He cannot complain of wrong, who hath a suit of
buckram taken from him, and one of velvet given instead thereof.
Besides, provision may be made that a sufficiency of such
ware-trash may still be preserved.
"Argument 8. Many thousands of poor people are maintained by
fishing and fowling in the Fens, which will all be at a loss for
a livelihood if their farms be burnt; that is, if the Fens be
drained.
"Answer 8. It is confessed that many who love idleness live (and
only live) by that employment. But such, if the Fens were
drained, would quit their idleness, and betake themselves to more
lucrative manufactures.
"Argument 9. Grant that the Fens be drained with great
difficulty, they will quickly revert to their old condition, like
to the Pontine Marshes in Italy.
"Answer 9. If a patient, perfectly cured, will be careless of his
healthe, none will pity his relapse. Moderate cost, with constant
care, will easily preserve what is drained; the Low Countries
affording many proofs thereof.
"Argument 10. Grant them drained and so continuing; as now the
great fishes prey upon the less, so then wealthy men would devour
the poorer sort of people; injurious partage would follow upon
the inclosures, and rich men (to make room for themselves) would
jostle the poor people out of their Commons.
"Answer 10. Oppression is not essential either to draining or
enclosing, though too often a concomitant of both. Order may be
taken by Commissioners of quality, impowered for that purpose,
that such a proportion of Commons may be allotted to the poor
that all private persons may be pleased and advance accrue hereby
to the Commonwealth."
The outcome of these vigorous polemics was that King James the First
threw himself whole-heartedly into the idea of a general drainage
scheme; and under his auspices a Company of "Adventurers" or
"Undertakers" was formed to carry out the business. This, however, was
regarded by the Fen-men as an unmitigated piece of tyranny; the
Opposition in Parliament made violent protests; "Libellers" wrote
inflammatory broadsides inciting the Fen-men to rise;[242] and the
Fen-men, who wanted little inciting, did rise in no small numbers.
Nocturnal raids destroyed every work begun by the Company's labourers;
the labourers themselves were intimidated; and before long progress
became impossible. The Company became bankrupt, and the thousands of
reclaimed acres which were to have been divided amongst the
"Adventurers" never actualised.
[Footnote 242: A specimen of one of the "libels" is given by Dugdale:
"Come brethren of the water, and let us all assemble
To treat upon this matter, which makes us quake and tremble;
For we shall rue, if it be true the Fens be undertaken,
And where we feed in rush and reed, _they_ feed both beet and bacon.
"Away with boats and rudders, away with boots and scatches [skates],
No need of one nor t'other; men now make better matches.
Stilt-makers all and tanners complain of this disaster;
For they would make each muddy lake for Essex calves a pasture.
"Wherefore let us intreat our ancient Winter Nurses
To show their power so great, and help to drain _their purses_,
And send us good old Captain Flood to lead us out to battle,
Then Twopenny Jack, with scales on back, shall drive out all their cattle."
["Jack" here simply means a pike, the average price of which at this
time would seem to have been twopence. The "Winter Nurses" are the
rivers feeding the Fen.]]
[Illustration: THE OLD FENLAND
(Northern District)]
[Illustration: THE OLD FENLAND
(Southern District)]
The Crown, however, did not lose sight of the scheme. A special
Commission of enquiry was formed, which sent in a most pessimistic
Report, representing Wisbech as demanding that the "upland men" should
contribute to the scouring of the outfall there, inasmuch as it
drained their lands, to which the upland men retorted that Wisbech
might mind its own business and bear its own burdens. "Hence the
country about Crowland and Thorney, formerly good ground, hath become
mere Lerna,[243]--which doth not only cause overflowing in the upland
country, to their infinite loss, but the Islanders themselves are in
like danger, as for their cattle and their own safety; out of fear
whereof they oftentimes, upon the swelling of the waters, ring their
bells backward, as in other places when the town is on fire."
[Footnote 243: The Lernaean swamp was the legendary home of the famous
Hydra overcome by Hercules.]
So things dragged on till 1620, when another Company was formed by the
King, again doomed to speedy failure.[244] Ten years later again,
Charles the First took up his father's idea, and formed a third
Company, placing at its head the powerful Earl of Bedford. His first
act was to call in a Dutch engineer, Cornelius Vermuyden, acquainted
with the drainage methods so successful in Holland, whose fee was an
award of no less than 95,000 acres in the lands he might reclaim.
Under the auspices of this expert was dug from Earith to Denver the
Old Bedford River already spoken of.[245] But the local opposition was
still too strong, fostered as it now was by the powerful influence of
Oliver Cromwell; and it was not lessened when the King himself bought
up the Company. His action was represented as one more encroachment
upon the liberties of England, and a regular part of the Puritan
programme was "to break the King's dykes, to drown his lands, and to
destroy his tenants." These drastic measures proved only too
effective; and, with the outbreak of the Civil War, this third
attempt, like those before it, came to nought.
[Footnote 244: The head of this company was Lord Popham, one of whose
cuts is still called Popham's Eau. The last word reminds us that many
of his settlers were exiled French Huguenots.]
[Footnote 245: See p. 280.]
When, however, that war was over, and Charles beheaded, Cromwell
himself, now Lord Protector of the Realm, came forward as an advocate
of the scheme, and formed yet a fourth Company, again under the Earl
of Bedford, who had followed his fortunes, and again with Vermuyden
for engineer. This time the result was permanent. Cromwell was, as the
Fen-men speedily discovered, a far more dangerous personage to bully
than they had found his predecessors at the head of the State.
Troopers were quartered upon the malcontents, and a plentiful supply
of extra cheap labour was furnished by the penal servitude of Scotch
prisoners taken at Dunbar and Dutch sailors captured by Blake in the
Channel. This method of making war pay its own expenses was familiar
to Cromwell, who had already sold many shiploads of these gallant
enemies as slaves, some to toil under the lash for the West Indian
planters, some to tug at the oars of Venetian galleys. Happily, as he
was the first Christian commander to adopt this all too thrifty
procedure, so he was the last, and such atrocious exploitation of
fellow Christians and fellow soldiers died with him.
Thus was dug, in 1651, the New Bedford River, and thus was built,
somewhat later, Denver Sluice. Vermuyden's plan, which continued for
two centuries to be gradually developed on the lines he originally
laid down, was to cut a few main water-courses through the district,
running at a higher level than the swamps around, with Lynn for their
chief outfall, and an infinite number of short straight cuts at right
angles to these, whence the water draining from the morass should be
pumped into them. This pumping was originally done by windmills, and a
picturesque sight it was to see their white sails dotting the wide
expanse. But all are now superseded by the less poetical but more
dependable steam pumping stations, whose tall chimneys form a notable
object in the Fenland landscape.
The work was very gradual, with many drawbacks. The Denver Sluice, on
which the whole plan depended, was, as has been said, destroyed in
1713, and not rebuilt till 1750, when the very towns which had most
rejoiced in its fall were the loudest in demanding its replacement.
Other calamities also affected the work, which was not finally
completed till towards the end of the nineteenth century. The
opposition, too, was unceasing, though it took the form of lawsuits
rather than violence. But this, too, died out. The very last of them
was an attempt by Wisbech, in 1844, to force the hand of the Bedford
Level Corporation (as the old Company of Adventurers is now called) by
proposing a rival scheme in Parliament.
Now, however, all is victory. For many years past the reclaimed fen
has borne excellent crops; and if, since the agricultural depression
of the later nineteenth century decades set in, it can no longer
merit so fully as it did the title of "the Golden Plain of England,"
yet the widespread cultivation of fruit and flowers (mostly narcissus)
has furnished no small compensation, and the district as a whole
enjoys a very large share of prosperity. At this moment the vast areas
allotted to the great Adventurers are being largely broken up into
small holdings, with the happiest results.
Sentimentally, and even to a certain extent economically, we may
regret the Fenland of old, with its vanished wealth of picturesque
life; its reeds which made such splendid thatch, its marsh flowers,
its butterflies, its shoals of fish, its endless skeins of wild-fowl,
its clever "decoys" where these were taken in such exhaustless numbers
that a single one (in 1750) sent up to London 3000 couples a week and
let for L500 a year. But with these have also vanished the incessant
fever and ague and rheumatism which were an ever-present torment in
the old Fen life, and the incessant opium-eating in which the Fen-Folk
were fain to find relief. Taking things altogether, the gain has
outweighed the loss in the draining of the Fens.