320 



Farming of Lincolnshire. 



room here to notice anything- more than the more important cir- 

 cumstances connected with that work. Commissioners were 

 appointed to view and repair the banks and ditches of this tract 

 as early as the first year of the reign of Edward III. In the 6th 

 of Henry VI. a public statute was enacted, prescribing a form 

 for the guidance of all Commissioners of Sewers according to 

 the laws and customs of Romney Marsh in Kent, and the few 

 drainage works in this district were for a long period maintained 

 by various commissioners acting under that law, which gave 

 them powers, not only to make ordinances for the conservation 

 of the banks and marshes, but also to impress ditch-makers and 

 other labourers upon competent wages in cases of urgent neces- 

 sity. Notwithstanding these regulations, this district^ prior to 

 the reign of Charles I., was for the most part covered with 

 water. No less than 60,000 acres were continually overflowed, 

 so that, even in summer, the water was 3 or 4 feet deep. Boats 

 laden with ^' corn and plaster" passed over the land between 

 the Idle and the Trent — men rowing also with lesser boats to 

 look swans over all parts of it, betwixt Lammas and Michael- 

 mas." These extensive wastes, instead of yielding profit to the 

 state, nourished beggars and idle persons;" and the King had 

 a chase of red deer ('^ Hatfield Chase") through a large part 

 of this fen, which much annoyed and oppressed the residue. 

 King Charles I. was lord of the Isle of Axholme, Hatfield Chase, 

 Dikes-Marsh, and the lordships of Wroot and Finningley ; and^ 

 to increase his revenue by reclaiming this great quantity of 

 drowned and boggy ground into good meadow, arable, and pasture, 

 contracted with Cornelius Vermuyden (a Dutch engineer) for 

 the drainage of the level. The inundation was chiefly owing to 

 the situation of the land, which was lower than the high tides of the 

 Trent, and was intersected by the rivers Idle, Thorne, and Don, 

 and the sewer called Bycar's Dyke ; but the upland waters were 

 also compelled to overflow by the impediments of silt contracted in 

 these channels by the daily tides. The drainage was performed 

 in the space of five years, at a charge of 55,825/., the fresh waters 

 which usually overflowed the whole flat being conveyed into the 

 Trent through Snow sewer and Althorpe river, by sluices which 

 issued out the drain-water at every ebb, and kept back the tides 

 at their flow. A proportion of land was allotted to the King ; and 

 Vermuyden, together with his participants in the work, received 

 a third part of the lands (^. e. 24,500 acres) as a recompense ; 

 a corporation or company of adventurers being established for 

 the perpetual maintenance of the works by charges upon 

 their lands. According to the drainers, great advantages 

 accrued from this undertaking (which preceded the drainage of 

 the Great Bedford Level) ; a great part of Haxey Carr was 



