340 History of the English Landed Intei^est. 



forward, the Earl of Bedford and thirteen gentleman adven- 

 turers continued in 1630. The Bedford level was drained in 

 Hartlib's time, and Scotch prisoners taken at the Battle of 

 Dunbar in 1650, as well as Dutch sailors captured by Admiral 

 Blake in 1653, were set on to labour at the work.^ 



Indeed, it needs but a cursory study of agricultural books to 

 see that not only was the irrigation, drainage, and floating of 

 land a constant subject of attention, but advanced minds were 

 looking on all sides to discover how they could transform the 

 inundated flats of Cambridgeshire and the sea-drowned fore- 

 shores of the Eastern Counties into fertile land. Even the fre- 

 quency of water mills was deprecated, and Blith advocated the 

 substitution of wind engines so that the swamping of other- 

 wise fertile plots through the back poundage of streams might 

 be avoided.^ His scheme for the reclamation of the fen dis- 

 trict has since been adopted. It was a daring idea, compre- 

 hending the drainage of a tract of country seventy miles long 

 by thirty broad, comprising 680,000 acres of primeval fen. 

 Nature's drainage, consisting of the rivers Cam, Ouse, Nene, 

 "Welland, Glen, and Witham had become choked and foul. 

 Twice daily the tides drove back the fresh water, so that these 

 streams added their quota to the already inundated country.'^ 

 In 1635 at Skirbeck Sluice, near Boston, a smith's forge and 

 tools were found buried under sixteen feet of deposit. Blith's 

 methods included the pumping sj'stem by wind engines, which 

 now raises the water from the lower dykes into the banked 

 up arteries of the higher level. Once reclaimed, he determined 

 that the land should be fruitful, and recommended the system 

 of " denshiring." The hassocks of coarse water grasses were 

 to be shaved off, the turf pared and burned, and the plain 

 ploughed, ridged, and cultivated for oats. The great works 

 thus undertaken and vigorously pushed forward were however 

 a failure, and the east fen became once more a shaking bog, 

 while even the west fens in 1793 were so wet that their "gos- 

 samers, rowty fogs, mildews and rank grass," to which Harri- 



' Protliero. Pioneent of KiiciUsh Farmivrj. 

 ^ Blith, Eiu/lfsh Improver l7))proved, 1652. 

 ^ Prothero, Piunters of Eiujl. Farming. 



