MORE ENCLOSURE 123 



and vulgar men V It became one of the boasts of England 

 that she had a large number of yeomen farming their own land. 

 During the Civil War, however, it became important to land- 

 owners to protect their properties in the interest of children 

 and descendants from forfeiture for treason. The judges lent 

 their aid, and the system of strict family settlements was 

 devised, under which the great bulk of the estates in England 

 are now held. This system favoured the accumulation ofi 

 lands in a few hands and the aggregation of great estates, and 

 was largely responsible for the disappearance of the small 

 freeholder. 



In reviewing the progress of agriculture in the seventeenth 

 century, the drainage of the fen country of Lincolnshire and 

 the adjoining counties must not be forgotten. It had been for 

 centuries the scene of drainage operations on a more or less 

 extended scale, few of which, however, met with success ; but 

 in the seventeenth century the growing value of land caused a 

 serious revival of these efforts. Attempts made under Eliza- 

 beth and James I had only succeeded in rescuing a certain 

 amount of land for pasture, 2 but in the reign of Charles I 

 the scheme of Cornelius Vermuyden was more successful. 

 His system, however, was defective, and in the reign of 

 Charles II the Bedford Level was in a lamentable state and 

 in danger of reverting to its primitive condition. Many of the 

 works too were destroyed by the ' stiltwalkers ', and in 1 793 

 Maxwell states that out of 44,000 acres of fen land in Hunting- 

 donshire only 8,000 or 10,000 were productive 3 ; and in 1794 

 Stone tells us that the commons round the Isle of Axholme 

 were chiefly covered with water. 4 Still to Vermuyden and 

 his contemporaries must be assigned the credit of the first 

 comprehensive scheme for rescuing these fertile lands from 

 the waters that covered them. 



1 Hasbach, op. cit. p. 44. 



2 Cunningham, Industry and Commerce, \. 187. 

 s General View oj Hunts. , p. 8. 



General View of Lincoln, p. 29. 



