L 



64 DRAINAGE OF THE GREAT LEVEL PART I. 



draining according to the Act." He concluded thus, 

 " I presume to say no more of the work, lest I should 

 be accounted vain-glorious ; although I might truly 

 affirm that the present or former age have done nothing 

 like it for the general good of the nation. I humbly 

 desire that God may have the glory, for his blessing 

 and bringing to perfection my poor endeavours, at the 

 vast charge of the Earl of Bedford and his participants." 1 



A public thanksgiving took place to celebrate the 

 completion of the undertaking; and on the 27th of 

 March, 1653, the Lords Commissioners of Adjudication 

 of the Reclaimed Lands, accompanied by their officers 

 and suite, the Company of Adventurers, headed by 

 the Earl of Bedford, the magistrates, and leading 

 men of the district, with a vast concourse of other 

 persons, attended public worship in the cathedral of 

 Ely, when the Rev. Hugh Peters, chaplain to the Lord- 

 General Cromwell, preached a sermon on the occasion. 



Vermuy den's perseverance had thus far triumphed. 

 He had stood by his scheme when all others held aloof 

 from it. Amidst the engrossing excitement of the civil 

 war, the one dominating idea which possessed him was 

 the drainage of the Great Level. While the nation 

 was divided into two hostile camps, and the deadly 

 struggle was proceeding between the Royalists and 

 Parliamentarians, Yermuy den's sole concern was how 

 to raise the funds wherewith to pay his peaceful army 

 of Dutch labourers in the Fens. To carry on the works 

 he sold every acre of the lands he had reclaimed ; he 

 first sold the allotment of lands won by him from the 

 Thames at Dagenham in 1621 ; then he sold his interest 

 in his lands at Sedgemoor and Malvern Chase ; and in 

 1654 we find him conveying the remainder of his lands 

 in Hatfield Level. He was also under the necessity of 

 selling all the lands apportioned to him in the Bedford 



Wells's ' History of the Bedford Level,' vol. i., 275. 



