THE SE\''ENTEENTH CENTURY 35 



feet of deposit. The country had thus become one vast 

 deep fen, ' 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.' 



The first drainage work of comparatively modern times 

 "was the cut from Peterborough to Denver, Avliich, under 

 the name of Moreton's leam, commemorates the famous 

 Bishop of Peterborough, The whole district was surveyed 

 at the close of the reign of Elizabeth, but it was not till 

 1606 that the first local Act was passed to reclaim the ring 

 of Waldersea and Coldliam. In 16-30 the Earl of Bedford 

 with thirteen gentlemen adventurers undertook to drain 

 the southern fens. Though the Bedford level was the 

 most completely executed work, the appliances could not 

 cope with the rainfall of a wet season. Windmills were 

 used to raise the waters of the interior districts to the 

 level of the main river ; Hartlib speaks of a ' Holland mill 

 for dreyning set up at Ely, and kept by a certaine French- 

 man.' But these clumsily constructed mills were inade- 

 quate. The work was partly done by Scotch prisoners 

 taken at the battle of Dunbar, or by the Dutch prisoners 

 of Admiral Blake. Other parts of the fens were in the 

 same way partially reclaimed ; others remained untouched 

 till the present century. In some parts the works were 

 never completed, or fell into decay, or were carried out 

 by persons whom Blith characterises as ' mountebank 

 engineers, idle practitioners, and slothful, impatient 

 slubberers.' In many districts the mills and embank- 

 ments were destroyed by the fenmen. The following 

 stanzas are quoted from the doggerel poem of some fen 

 Tyrtffius : — 



Come, brethren of the water, and let us all assemble, 



To treat upon this matter which makes us quake and tremble ; 



D 2 



