116 FROM JAMES I. TO THE RESTORATION 



noysome turfe and hassocks ; such are the inconveniences of the 

 Drownings." Eight great principal rivers — the Great Ouse, the 

 Cam, the Nene, the Welland, the Glen, the Milden-hall or Lark, the 

 Brandon or Lesser Ouse, and the Stoke or Wissey ^ — carry the 

 upland waters through this wide stretch of flat country towards the 

 sea. Whenever the rains fell, the rivers rose above their banks, 

 and, especially if the wind was blowing from the east or south, 

 flooded the country for miles around. It was only in the map that 

 they reached the ocean at all. Two causes principally contributed 

 to make the country a brackish swamp. The outfaUs of the rivers 

 had become silted up so that their mouths were choked by many 

 feet of alluvial deposit. ^ Twdce every day the tides rushed up the 

 chaimels for a considerable distance, forcing back the fresh water, 

 and converting the whole country into one vast shallow bay. 

 Efforts had been made by the Romans to reclaim these flat levels, 

 and their " causey " is stiU in existence. In the palmy days of the 

 great monasteries of Crowland, Thorney, Ely, and Ramsey, isolated 

 districts were occupied, and highly cultivated. WiUiam of Malmes- 

 bury, writing in the reign of Henry II. (1143), describes the district 

 round Thorney as " a very Paradise in pleasure and dehght ; it 

 resembles heaven itself — it abounds in lofty trees, neither is any 

 waste place in it ; for in some parts there are apple trees, in other 

 vines which either spread upon the ground or run along poles." 

 Such a description apphes only to the islands on which the great 

 monasteries were situated. The rest of the country had become, 

 at some imknowTi period of history, an unproductive bog, affording 

 little benefit to the realm other than fish and fowl, and "overmuch 

 harbour to a rude and almost barbarous sort of lazy and beggarly 

 people." 



No important effort was made to reclaim the district till the time 

 of John Morton, Bishop of Ely, afterwards a Cardinal and Arch- 

 bishop of Canterbury, in the reign of Henry VII. As a grower of 

 strawberries he is enshrined in hterature ; but in the history of 



^ Sir Jonas Moore, History of the Great Level of the Fennes (1685), p. 9 ; 

 Wells, History of the Bedford Level (1830), vol. i. p. 6 ; Vermuyden, Discourse 

 touching the Drayning of the Great Fennes (1642), p. 4. 



2 Andrewes Bm-rell, in his Briefe Relation Discovering Plainely the True 

 Causes why the Great Levell of Fenes . . . have been drowned (1642), says that, 

 when working for the Earl of Bedford in 1635 in deepening " Wisbeach 

 River,"' he " discovered a stony bottonie upon which there was fomid lying 

 at severall distances seven boates, which for many yeares had laine buried 

 eight foot under the bottome of the river." 



