VI MURDER. 71 



he was hastening in the fulness of his 

 heart, had married in his absence. 



Neither can I omit, in the first year of 

 my residence at Ely, the execution of a 

 man for murder, under the most cold- 

 blooded circumstances, on the spot marked 

 by the crime; and, as if to show what 

 little progress knowledge had made in this 

 part of our island, his body was gibbet- 

 ted in sight of the turnpike road the 

 last of such inhuman exhibitions. Some 

 two or three years afterwards the late 

 Sir Robert Peel, having to post that 

 road on his way to a mansion he had 

 hired near Downham, in Norfolk, had the 

 disgusting object removed. 



It is still within the memory of man 

 that the Fens, in this district in par- 

 ticular, were under water three parts 

 of the year; that many of the inhabit- 

 ants lived chiefly by fowling and fish- 

 ing ; and it was not till after the en- 

 ergies and judgment of the Bedford 



