118 FROM JAMES I. TO THE RESTORATION 



Vennuyden reported the completion of the work to the Council, 

 saying that " wheat and other grains, besides unnumerable quantities 

 of sheep, cattle, and other stock were raised, where never had been 

 any before." The Bedford Level was the largest work undertaken. 

 It was also the most complete, though even here for a time there 

 were failures. Other marshes were attacked by improvers, with 

 more or less success. From various causes, however, the water 

 often regained its hold on the country. In some cases the work 

 was only partially finished ; in others, it was so inadequately 

 executed by persons whom Blith calls " mountebank engineers, 

 idle practitioners, and slothful impatient slubberers," that it broke 

 down under the rainfall of the first wet season ; in others, the wind- 

 mills, which were used to raise the water of the interior districts 

 to the levels of the main rivers, could not cope with a flood ; in 

 others, the works were destroyed by the fenmen, and were not 

 really restored till the beginning of the nineteenth century. 



The marshes were to fenmen what wastes and commons were to 

 dwellers on their verge. Catching pike and plucking geese were 

 more attractive than feeding bullocks or shearing sheep. Any 

 change from desultory industries to the settled labour of agriculture 

 was in itself distasteful to the commoners, and little, if any, com- 

 pensation was made for their rights or claims to pasture, turf- 

 cutting, fishing, or fowling. All over the fen districts there were, 

 on the one side, outbursts of popular indignation, and, on the 

 other, complaints of the " riotous letts and disturbances of lewd 

 persons." The commoners were called to arms by some Tyrtaeus 

 of the fens, whose doggerel verses have been preserved by Dugdale 

 in his History of Imbanking and Draining : 



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 it, if't be true, the Fens be undertaken, 



And where we feed in fen and reed, they'll feed both beef and bacon. 



Behold the great design, which they do now determine, 



Will make our bodies pine, a prey to crows and vermin ; 



For they do mean all fens to drain and waters overmaster ; 



All will be dry and we must die, 'cause Essex calves want pasture. 



The feathered fowls have wings to fly to other nations, 



But we have no such things to help our transportations ; 



We must give place (oh grievous case !) to horned beasts and cattle, 



Except that we can all agree to drive them out by battle. 



