[1] William O'Connor Morris, _Ireland 1798-1898_, p. 195.
FENNEL, _Foeniculum vulgare_ (also known as _F. capillaceum_), a
perennial plant of the natural order Umbelliferae, from 2 to 3 or (when
cultivated) 4 ft. in height, having leaves three or four times pinnate,
with numerous linear or awl-shaped segments, and glaucous compound
umbels of about 15 or 20 rays, with no involucres, and small yellow
flowers, the petals incurved at the tip. The fruit is laterally
compressed, five-ridged, and has a large single resin-canal or "vitta"
under each furrow. The plant appears to be of south European origin, but
is now met with in various parts of Britain and the rest of temperate
Europe, and in the west of Asia. The dried fruits of cultivated plants
from Malta have an aromatic taste and odour, and are used for the
preparation of fennel water, valued for its carminative properties. It
is given in doses of 1 to 2 oz., the active principle being a volatile
oil which is probably the same as oil of anise. The shoots of fennel are
eaten blanched, and the seeds are used for flavouring. The fennel seeds
of commerce are of several sorts. Sweet or Roman fennel seeds are the
produce of a tall perennial plant, with umbels of 25-30 rays, which is
cultivated near Nismes in the south of France; they are elliptical and
arched in form, about 2/5 in. long and a quarter as broad, and are
smooth externally, and of a colour approaching a pale green. Shorter and
straighter fruits are obtained from the annual variety of _F. vulgare_
known as _F. Panmorium_ (_Panmuhuri_) or Indian fennel, and are employed
in India in curries, and for medicinal purposes. Other kinds are the
German or Saxon fruits, brownish-green in colour, and between 1/5 and
1/4 in. in length, and the broader but smaller fruits of the wild or
bitter fennel of the south of France. A variety of fennel, _F. dulce_,
having the stem compressed at the base, and the umbel 6-8 rayed, is
grown in kitchen-gardens for the sake of its leaves.
Giant fennel is the name applied to the plant _Ferula communis_, a
member of the same natural order, and a fine herbaceous plant, native in
the Mediterranean region, where the pith of the stem is used as tinder.
Hog's or sow fennel is the species _Peucedanum officinale_, another
member of the Umbelliferae.
FENNER, DUDLEY (c. 1558-1587), English puritan divine, was born in Kent
and educated at Cambridge University. There he became an adherent of
Thomas Cartwright (1535-1603), and publicly expounded his presbyterian
views, with the result that he was obliged to leave Cambridge without
taking his degree. For some months he seems to have assisted the vicar
of Cranbrook, Kent, but it is doubtful whether he received ordination.
He next followed Cartwright to Antwerp, and, having received ordination
according to rite of the Reformed church, assisted Cartwright for
several years in preaching to the English congregation there. The
leniency shown by Archbishop Grindal to puritans encouraged him to
return to England, and he became curate of Cranbrook in 1583. In the
same year, however, he was one of seventeen Kentish ministers suspended
for refusing to sign an acknowledgment of the queen's supremacy and of
the authority of the Prayer Book and articles. He was imprisoned for a
time, but eventually regained his liberty and spent the remainder of his
life as chaplain in the Reformed church at Middleburgh.
A list of his authentic works is given in Cooper's _Athenae
Cantabrigienses_ (Cambridge, 1858-1861). They rank among the best
expositions of the principles of puritanism.
FENNY STRATFORD, a market town in the Buckingham parliamentary division
of Buckinghamshire, England, 48 m. N.W. by N. of London on a branch of
the London & North-Western railway. Pop. of urban district (1901), 4799.
It lies in an open valley on the west (left) bank of the Ouzel, where
the great north-western road from London, the Roman Watling Street,
crosses the stream, and is 1 m. E. of Bletchley, an important junction
on the main line of the North-Western railway. The church of St Martin
was built (c. 1730) on the site of an older church at the instance of Dr
Browne Willis, an eminent antiquary (d. 1760), buried here; but the
building has been greatly enlarged. A custom instituted by Willis on St
Martin's Day (November 11th) includes a service in the church, the
firing of some small cannon called the "Fenny Poppers," and other
celebrations. The trade of the town is mainly agricultural.
FENRIR, or FENRIS, in Scandinavian mythology, a water-demon in the shape
of a huge wolf. He was the offspring of Loki and the giantess Angurboda,
who bore two other children, Midgard the serpent, and Hel the goddess of
death. Fenrir grew so large that the gods were afraid of him and had him
chained up. But he broke the first two chains. The third, however, was
made of the sound of a cat's footsteps, a man's beard, the roots of a
mountain, a fish's breath and a bird's spittle. This magic bond was too
strong for him until Ragnarok (Judgment Day), when he escaped and
swallowed Odin and was in turn slain by Vidar, the latter's son.
FENS,[1] a district in the east of England, possessing a distinctive
history and peculiar characteristics. It lies west and south of the
Wash, in Lincolnshire, Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk, and
extends over more than 70 m. in length (Lincoln to Cambridge) and some
35 m. in maximum breadth. (Stamford to Brandon in Suffolk), its area
being considerably over half a million acres. Although low and flat, and
seamed by innumerable water-courses, the entire region is not, as the
Roman name of _Metaris Aestuarium_ would imply, a river estuary, but a
bay of the North Sea, silted up, of which the Wash is the last remaining
portion. Hydrographically, the Fens embrace the lower parts of the
drainage-basins of the rivers Witham, Welland, Nene and Great Ouse; and
against these streams, as against the ocean, they are protected by
earthen embankments, 10 to 15 ft. high. As a rule the drainage water is
lifted off the Fens into the rivers by means of steam-pumps, formerly by
windmills.
_General History._--According to fairly credible tradition, the first
systematic attempt to drain the Fens was made by the Romans. They dug a
catchwater drain (as the artificial fenland water-courses are called),
the Caer or Car Dyke, from Lincoln to Ramsey (or, according to Stukeley,
as far as Cambridge), along the western edge of the Fens, to carry off
the precipitation of the higher districts which border the fenland, and
constructed alongside the Welland and on the seashore earthen
embankments, of which some 150 m. survive. Mr S.H. Miller is disposed to
credit the native British inhabitants of the Fens with having executed
certain of these works. The Romans also carried causeways over the
country. After their departure from Britain in the first half of the 5th
century the Fens fell into neglect; and despite the preservation of the
woodlands for the purposes of the chase by the Norman and early
Plantagenet kings, and the unsuccessful attempt which Richard de Rulos,
chamberlain of William the Conqueror, made to drain Deeping Fen, the
fenland region became almost everywhere waterlogged, and relapsed to a
great extent into a state of nature. In addition to this it was ravaged
by serious inundations of the sea, for example, in the years 1178, 1248
(or 1250), 1288, 1322, 1335, 1467, 1571. Yet the fenland was not
altogether a wilderness of reed-grown marsh and watery swamp. At various
spots, more particularly in the north and in the south, there existed
islands of firmer and higher ground, resting generally on the boulder
clays of the Glacial epochs and on the inter-Glacial gravels of the
Palaeolithic age. In these isolated localities members of the monastic
orders (especially at a later date the Cistercians) began to settle
after about the middle of the 7th century. At Medeshampstead (i.e.
Peterborough), Ely, Crowland, Ramsey, Thorney, Spalding, Peakirk,
Swineshead, Tattershall, Kirkstead, Bardney, Sempringham, Bourne and
numerous other places, they made settlements and built churches,
monasteries and abbeys. In spite of the incursions of the predatory
Northmen and Danes in the 9th and 10th centuries, and of the
disturbances consequent upon the establishment of the Camp of Refuge by
Hereward the Wake in the fens of the Isle of Ely in the 11th century,
these scattered outposts continued to shed rays of civilization across
the lonely Fenland down to the dissolution of the monasteries in the
reign of Henry VIII. Then they, too, were partly overtaken by the fate
which befell the rest of the Fens; and it was only in the end of the
18th and the beginning of the 19th century that the complete drainage
and reclamation of the Fen region was finally effected. Attempts on a
considerable scale were indeed made to reclaim them in the 17th century,
and the work as a whole forms one of the most remarkable chapters of the
industrial history of England. Thus, the reclamation of the Witham Fens
was taken up by Sir Anthony Thomas, the earl of Lindsey, Sir William
Killigrew, King Charles I., and others in 1631 and succeeding years; and
that of the Deeping or Welland Fens in 1638 by Sir W. Ayloff, Sir
Anthony Thomas and other "adventurers," after one Thomas Lovell had
ruined himself in a similar attempt in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The
earl of Lindsey received 24,000 acres for his work. Charles I.,
declaring himself the "undertaker" of the Holland Fen, claimed 8000 out
of its 22,000 acres as his share.
A larger work than these, however, was the drainage of the fens of the
Nene and the Great Ouse, comprehending the wide tract known as the
Bedford level. This district took name from the agreement of Francis,
earl of Bedford, the principal land-holder, and thirteen other
adventurers, with Charles I. in 1634, to drain the level, on condition
of receiving 95,000 acres of the reclaimed land. A partial attempt at
drainage had been made (1478-1490) by John Morton, when bishop of Ely,
who constructed Morton's Leam, from Peterborough to the sea, to carry
the waters of the Nene, but this also proved a failure. An act was
passed, moreover, in 1602 for effecting its reclamation; and Lord
Chief-Justice Popham (whose name is preserved in Popham's Eau, S.E. of
Wisbech) and a company of Londoners began the work in 1605; but the
first effectual attempt was that of 1634. The work was largely directed
by the Dutch engineer Cornelius Vermuyden, who had begun work in the
Fens in 1621, and was knighted in 1628.
Three years after the agreement of the earl of Bedford and his partners
with the king, after an outlay of L100,000 on the part of the company,
the contract was annulled, on the fraudulent plea that the works were
insufficient; and an offer was made by King Charles to undertake its
completion on condition of receiving 57,000 acres in addition to the
amount originally agreed on. This unjust attempt was frustrated by the
breaking out of the civil war; and no further attempt at drainage was
made until 1649, when the parliament reinstated the earl of Bedford's
successor in his father's rights. After an additional outlay of
L300,000, the adventurers received 95,000 acres of reclaimed land,
according to the contract, which, however, fell far short of repaying
the expense of the undertaking. In 1664 a royal charter was obtained to
incorporate the company, which still exists, and carries on the concern
under a governor, 6 bailiffs, 20 conservators, and a commonalty, each of
whom must possess 100 acres of land in the level, and has a voice in the
election of officers. The conservators must each possess not less than
280 acres, the governor and bailiffs each 400 acres. The original
adventurers had allotments of land according to their interest of the
original 95,000 acres; but Charles II., on granting the charter, took
care to secure to the crown a lot of 12,000 acres out of the 95,000,
which, however, is held under the directors, whereas the allotments are
not held in common, though subject to the laws of the corporation. The
level was divided in 1697 into three parts, called the North, Middle,
and South Levels--the second being separated from the others by the
Nene and Old Bedford rivers.
These attempts failed owing to the determined opposition of the native
fenmen ("stilt-walkers"), whom the drainage and appropriation of the
unenclosed fenlands would deprive of valuable and long-enjoyed rights of
commonage, turbary (turf-cutting), fishing, fowling, &c. Oliver Cromwell
is said to have put himself at their head and succeeded in stopping all
the operations. When he became Protector, however, he sanctioned
Vermuyden's plans, and Scottish prisoners taken at Dunbar, and Dutch
prisoners taken by Blake in his victory over Van Tromp, were employed as
the workers. Vermuyden's system, however, was exclusively Dutch; and
while perfectly suited to Holland it did not meet all the necessities of
East Anglia. He confined his attention almost exclusively to the inland
draining and embankments, and did not provide sufficient outlet for the
waters themselves into the sea.
Holland and other Fens on the west side of the Witham were finally
drained in 1767, although not without much rioting and lawlessness; and
a striking account of the wonderful improvements effected by a
generation later is recorded in Arthur Young's _General View of the
Agriculture of the County of Lincoln_ (London, 1799). The East, West and
Wildmore Fens on the east side of the Witham were drained in 1801-1807
by John Rennie, who carried off the precipitation which fell on the
higher grounds by catchwater drains, on the principle of the Roman Car
Dyke, and improved the outfall of the river, so that it might the more
easily discharge the Fen water which flowed or was pumped into it. The
Welland or Deeping Fens were drained in 1794, 1801, 1824, 1837 and other
years. Almost the only portion of the original wild Fens now remaining
is Wicken Fen, which lies east of the river Cam and south-east of the
Isle of Ely.
[Illustration: Map of the Fens.]
_The Fen Rivers._--The preservation of the Fens depends in an intimate
and essential manner upon the preservation of the rivers, and especially
of their banks. The Witham, known originally as the Grant Avon, also
called the Lindis by Leyland (_Itinerary_, vol. vii. p. 41), and in Jean
Ingelow's _High Tide on the Lincolnshire Coast_, is some 80 m. long, and
drains an area of 1079 sq. m. It owes its present condition to
engineering works carried out in the years 1762-1764, 1865, 1881, and
especially in 1880-1884. In 1500 the river was dammed immediately above
Boston by a large sluice, the effect of which was not only to hinder
free navigation up to Lincoln (to which city sea-going vessels used to
penetrate in the 14th and 15th centuries), but also to choke the channel
below Boston with sedimentary matter. The sluice, or rather a new
structure made in 1764-1766, remains; but the river below Boston has
been materially improved (1880-1884), first by the construction of a new
outfall, 3 m. in length, whereby the channel was not only straightened,
but its current carried directly into deep water, without having to
battle against the often shifting sandbanks of the Wash; and secondly,
by the deepening and regulation of the river-bed up to Boston. The
Welland, which is about 70 m. long, and drains an area of 760 sq. m.,
was made to assume its present shape and direction in 1620, 1638, 1650,
1794, and 1835 and following years. The most radical alteration took
place in 1794, when a new outfall was made from the confluence of the
Glen (30 m. long) to the Wash, a distance of nearly 3 m. The Nene, 90 m.
long, and draining an area of some 1077 sq. m., was first regulated by
Bishop Morton, and it was further improved in 1631, 1721, and
especially, under plans by Rennie and Telford, in 1827-1830 and 1832.
The work done from 1721 onward consisted in straightening the lower
reaches of the stream and in directing and deepening the outfall. The
Ouse (q.v.) or Great Ouse, the largest of the fenland rivers, seems to
have been deflected, at some unknown period, from a former channel
connecting via the Old Croft river with the Nene, into the Little Ouse
below Littleport; and the courses of the two streams are now linked
together by an elaborate network of artificial drains, the results of
the great engineering works carried out in the Bedford Level in the 17th
century. The old channel, starting from Earith, and known as the Old
West river, carries only a small stream until, at a point above Ely, it
joins the Cam. The salient features of the plan executed by
Vermuyden[2] for the earl of Bedford in the years 1632-1653 were as
follows: taking the division of the area made in 1697-1698 into (i.) the
North Level, between the river Welland and the river Nene; (ii.) the
Middle Level, between the Nene and the Old Bedford river (which was made
at this time, i.e. 1630); and (iii.) the South Level, from the Old
Bedford river to the south-eastern border of the fenland. In the North
Level the Welland was embanked, the New South Eau, Peakirk Drain, and
Shire Drain made, and the existing main drains deepened and regulated.
In the Middle Level the Nene was embanked from Peterborough to Guyhirn,
also the Ouse from Earith to Over, both places at the south-west edge of
the fenland; the New Bedford river was made from Earith to Denver, and
the north side of the Old Bedford river and the south side of the New
Bedford river were embanked, a long narrow "wash," or overflow basin,
being left between them; several large feeding-drains were dug,
including the Forty Foot or Vermuyden's Drain, the Sixteen Foot river,
Bevill's river, and the Twenty Foot river; and a new outfall was made
for the Nene, and Denver sluice (to dam the old circuitous Ouse)
constructed. In the South Level Sam's Cut was dug and the rivers were
embanked. Since that period the mouth of the Ouse has been straightened
above and below King's Lynn (1795-1821), a new straight cut made between
Ely and Littleport, the North Level Main Drain and the Middle Level
Drain constructed, and the meres of Ramsey, Whittlesey (1851-1852),
&c., drained and brought under cultivation. A considerable barge traffic
is maintained on the Ouse below St Ives, on the Cam up to Cambridge, the
Lark and Little Ouse, and the network of navigable cuts between the New
Bedford river and Peterborough. The Nene, though locked up to
Northampton, and connected from that point with the Grand Junction
canal, is practically unused above Wansford, and traffic is small except
below Wisbech.
The effect of the drainage schemes has been to lower the level of the
fenlands generally by some 18 in., owing to the shrinkage of the peat
consequent upon the extraction of so much of its contained water; and
this again has tended, on the one hand, to diminish the speed and
erosive power of the fenland rivers, and, on the other, to choke up
their respective outfalls with the sedimentary matters which they
themselves sluggishly roll seawards.
_The Wash._--From this it will be plain that the Wash (q.v.) is being
silted up by riverine detritus. The formation of new dry land, known at
first as "marsh," goes on, however, but slowly. During the centuries
since the Romans are believed to have constructed the sea-banks which
shut out the ocean, it is computed that an area of not more than 60,000
to 70,000 acres has been won from the Wash, embanked, drained and
brought more or less under cultivation. The greatest gain has been at
the direct head of the bay, between the Welland and the Great Ouse,
where the average annual accretion is estimated at 10 to 11 lineal feet.
On the Lincolnshire coast, farther north, the average annual gain has
been not quite 2 ft.; whilst on the opposite Norfolk coast it has been
little more than 6 in. annually. On the whole, some 35,000 acres were
enclosed in the 17th century, about 19,000 acres during the 18th, and
about 10,000 acres during the 19th century.
The first comprehensive scheme for regulating the outfall channels and
controlling the currents of the Fen rivers seems to be that proposed by
Nathaniel Kinderley in 1751. His idea[3] was to link the Nene with the
Ouse by means of a new cut to be made through the marshland, and guide
the united stream through a further new cut "under Wotten and Wolverton
through the Marshes till over against Inglesthorp or Snetsham, and there
discharge itself immediately into the Deeps of Lyn Channel." In a
similar way the Witham, "when it has received the Welland from
Spalding," was to be carried "to some convenient place over against
Wrangle or Friskney, where it may be discharged into Boston Deeps." This
scheme was still further improved upon by Sir John Rennie, who, in a
report which he drew up in 1839, recommended that the outfalls of all
four rivers should be directed by means of fascined channels into one
common outfall, and that the land lying between them should be enclosed
as rapidly as it consolidated. By this means he estimated that 150,000
acres would be won to cultivation. But beyond one or two abortive or
half-hearted attempts, e.g. by the Lincolnshire Estuary Company in 1851,
and in 1876 and subsequent years by the Norfolk Estuary Company, no
serious effort has ever been made to execute either of these schemes.
_Climate._--The annual mean temperature, as observed at Boston, in the
period 1864-1885, is 48.7 deg. F.; January, 36.5 deg.; July, 62.8 deg.;
and as observed at Wisbech, for the period 1861-1875, 49.1 deg. The
average mean rainfall for the seventy-one years 1830-1900, at Boston,
was 22.9 in.; at Wisbech for the fifteen years 1860-1875, 24.2 in., and
for the fifteen years 1866-1880, 26.7 in.; and at Maxey near
Peterborough, 21.7 for the nineteen years 1882-1900. Previous to the
drainage of the Fens, ague, rheumatism, and other ailments incidental to
a damp climate were widely prevalent, but at the present day the Fen
country is as healthy as the rest of England; indeed, there is reason to
believe that it is conducive to longevity.
_Historical Notes._--The earliest inhabitants of this region of whom we
have record were the British tribes of the Iceni confederation; the
Romans, who subdued them, called them Coriceni or Coritani. In Saxon
times the inhabitants of the Fens were known (e.g. to Bede) as Gyrvii,
and are described as traversing the country on stilts. Macaulay, writing
of the year 1689, gives to them the name of Breedlings, and describes
them as "a half-savage population ... who led an amphibious life,
sometimes wading, sometimes rowing, from one islet of firm ground to
another." In the end of the 18th century those who dwelt in the remoter
parts were scarcely more civilized, being known to their neighbours by
the expressive term of "Slodgers." These rude fen-dwellers have in all
ages been animated by a tenacious love of liberty. Boadicea, queen of
the Iceni, the worthy foe of the Romans; Hereward the Saxon, who defied
William the Conqueror; Cromwell and his Ironsides, are representative of
the fenman's spirit at its best. The fen peasantry showed a stubborn
defence of their rights, not only when they resisted the encroachments
and selfish appropriations of the "adventurers" in the 17th century, in
the Bedford Level, in Deeping Fen, and in the Witham Fens, and again in
the 18th century, when Holland Fen was finally enclosed, but also in the
Peasants' Rising of 1381, and in the Pilgrimage of Grace in the reign of
Henry VIII. So long as the Fens were unenclosed and thickly studded with
immense "forests" of reeds, and innumerable marshy pools and "rows"
(channels connecting the pools), they abounded in wild fowl, being
regularly frequented by various species of wild duck and geese,
garganies, polchards, shovelers, teals, widgeons, peewits, terns,
grebes, coots, water-hens, water-rails, red-shanks, lapwings, god-wits,
whimbrels, cranes, bitterns, herons, swans, ruffs and reeves. Vast
numbers of these were taken in decoys[4] and sent to the London markets.
At the same time equally vast quantities of tame geese were reared in
the Fens, and driven by road[5] to London to be killed at Michaelmas.
Their down, feathers and quills (for pens) were also a considerable
source of profit. The Fen waters, too, abounded in fresh-water fish,
especially pike, perch, bream, tench, rud, dace, roach, eels and
sticklebacks. The Witham, on whose banks so many monasteries stood, was
particularly famous for its pike; as were certain of the monastic waters
in the southern part of the Fens for their eels. The soil of the
reclaimed Fens is of exceptional fertility, being almost everywhere rich
in humus, which is capable not only of producing very heavy crops of
wheat and other corn, but also of fattening live-stock with peculiar
ease. Lincolnshire oxen were famous in Elizabeth's time, and are
specially singled out by Arthur Young,[6] the breed being the shorthorn.
Of the crops peculiar to the region it must suffice to mention the old
British dye-plant woad, which is still grown on a small scale in two or
three parishes immediately south of Boston; hemp, which was extensively
grown in the 18th century, but is not now planted; and peppermint, which
is occasionally grown, e.g. at Deeping and Wisbech. In the second half
of the 19th century the Fen country acquired a certain celebrity in the
world of sport from the encouragement it gave to speed skating. Whenever
practicable, championship and other racing meetings are held, chiefly at
Littleport and Spalding. The little village of Welney, between Ely and
Wisbech, has produced some of the most notable of the typical Fen
skaters, e.g. "Turkey" Smart and "Fish" Smart.
Apart from fragmentary ruins of the former monastic buildings of
Crowland, Kirkstead and other places, the Fen country of Lincolnshire
(division of Holland) is especially remarkable for the size and beauty
of its parish churches, mostly built of Barnack rag from
Northamptonshire. Moreover, in the possession of such buildings as Ely
cathedral and the parish church of King's Lynn, other parts of the Fens
must be considered only less rich in ecclesiastical architecture. Using
these fine opportunities, the Fen folk have long cultivated the science
of campanology.
_Dialect._--Owing to the comparative remoteness of their geographical
situation, and the relatively late period at which the Fens were
definitely enclosed, the Fenmen have preserved several dialectal
features of a distinctive character, not the least interesting being
their close kinship with the classical English of the present day.
Professor E.E. Freeman (_Longman's Magazine_, 1875) reminded modern
Englishmen that it was a native of the Fens, "a Bourne man, who gave the
English language its present shape." This was Robert Manning, or Robert
of Brunne, who in or about 1303 wrote _The Handlynge Synne_. Tennyson's
dialect poems, _The Northern Farmer_, &c., do not reproduce the pure Fen
dialect, but rather the dialect of the Wold district of mid
Lincolnshire.
AUTHORITIES.--Sir William Dugdale, _History of Imbanking and Draining_
(2nd ed., London, 1772); W. Elstobb, _A Historical Account of the
Great Level_ (Lynn, 1793); W. Chapman, _Facts and Remarks relative to
the Witham and the Welland_ (Boston, 1800); S. Wells, _History and
Drainage of the Great Level of the Fens_ (2 vols., London, 1828 and
1830); P. Thompson, _History of Boston_ (Boston, 1856); Baldwin
Latham, _Papers on the Drainage of the Fens_, read before the Society
of Engineers, 3rd November 1862; N. and A. Goodman, _Handbook of Fen
Skating_ (London, 1882); Moore, _Associated Architectural Societies'
Reports and Papers_ (1893); _Fenland Notes and Queries_, and
_Lincolnshire Notes and Queries, passim_; W.H. Wheeler, _A History of
the Fens of South Lincolnshire_, pp. 223 et seq. (2nd ed., Boston,
1897). Various phases of Fen life, mostly of the past, are described
in Charles Kingsley's _Hereward the Wake_ (Cambridge, 1866); Baring
Gould's _Cheap-Jack Zita_ (London, 1893); Manville Fenn's _Dick o' the
Fens_ (London, 1887); and J.T. Bealby's _A Daughter of the Fen_
(London, 1896). (J. T. Be.)