58 DIJAIXACJE OF THE GREAT LEVEL PART I. 



Fen men ; and he went from meeting to meeting, stirring 

 up the public discontent, and giving it a suitable direc- 

 tion. " From that instant," says Mr. Forster, 1 " the 

 scheme became thoroughly hopeless. With such desperate 

 determination he followed up his purpose so actively 

 traversed the district, and inflamed the people every- 

 where so passionately described the greedy claims of 

 royalty, the gross exactions of the commission, nay, the 

 questionable character of the improvement itself, even 

 could it have gone on unaccompanied by incidents of 

 tyranny, to the small proprietors insisting that their 

 poor claims would be merely scorned in the new distri- 

 bution of the property reclaimed, to the labouring 

 peasants that all the profit and amusement they had 

 derived from commoning in those extensive wastes were 

 about to be snatched for ever from them, that, before 

 his almost individual energy, King, commissioners, noble- 

 men-projectors, all were forced to retire, and the great 

 project, even in the state it then was, fell to the ground." 

 The success of the Cambridge Fen men in resisting 

 the reclamation of the wastes, encouraged those in the 

 more northern districts to take even more summary 

 measures to get rid of the drainers, and restore the lands 

 to their former state. The Earl of Lindsey had succeeded 

 at great cost in enclosing and draining about 35,000 

 acres of the Lindsey Level, and induced numerous farmers 

 and labourers to settle down upon the land, to plough 

 and sow it. They erected dwellings and farm-buildings, 

 and were busily at work, when the Fen men suddenly 

 broke in upon them, destroyed their buildings, killed 

 their cattle, and let in the waters again upon the land. 

 So, too, in the West and Wildmore Fen district, between 

 Tattershall and Boston in Lincolnshire, where consider- 

 able progress had been made by a body of " adventurers" 

 in reclaiming the wastes. After many years' labour and 



1 Lives <>!' Eminent British Statesmen (Ljinlner's 'Cabinet Cydopaxliu,' 

 vol. vi. p. (JO). 



