294 On the Agi'icultural Improvements of Lincolnshire. 
its embankments were neglected, being mostly below high-water 
mark. In early times the island was a strong post: thus it was 
occupied by a Lord Mowbray, under Henry II., but was taken by 
the men of Lincolnshire, who attacked it in boats. It was a refuge 
for some of the barons after the battle of Evesham. In the time 
of Charles I. the waters were drawn off by a colony of Dutchmen 
under Vermuyden ; but during the civil war, the Parliamentarian 
committee of Lincolnshire, fearing an attack from the Yorkshire 
Royalists, cut the dyke, and again interposed the sea between the 
two hostile counties. This great level is now generally well 
drained by a system of canals and side-vents, but the farmers of 
Axholme have not forgotten that their forefathers attended Don- 
caster market in boats. Having mentioned these farmers, I 
ought not to omit what Young says of their condition : — 
" As to property, I know nothing more singular than its great divi- 
sion in the Isle of Axhohne. In most of the towns there, for it is not 
quite general, there is much resemblance of some rich parts of France 
and Flanders. The inhabitants are collected in villages and hamlets, 
and almost every house you see (except very poor cottages on the 
borders of commons) is inhabited by a fiirmer, the proprietor of his 
farm of from 4 or 5, or even fcNver, to 20, 40, and more acres, scattered 
about the open fields, and cultivated witli all those minutiae of care and 
anxiety by the hands of the family which are found abroad in the coun- 
tries mentioned. They are very poor respecting money, but very happy 
respecting their mode of existence. . . . They have, generally speaking, 
no fallows, but an endless succession of corn, potatoes, hemp, flax, 
beans, &c. They do nearly all their work themselves, and are passion- 
ately fond of buying a bit of laud." 
Such are some of the great Lincolnshire drainages, most im- 
perfectly described. I will only add that the example might well 
be followed elsewhere. In the Bridgewater Level during last May, 
many thousand acres of young corn were deeply flooded ; and 
nightly struggles took place, with discharge of fire-arms, between 
the labourers on one side of a dyke endeavouring to cut it through 
for the discharge of the waters, and those of the opposite district 
resisting the inundation. Whatever may have been already done, 
more might evidently be effected if those who possess the course 
of the water to the Bristol Channel could be brought into con- 
cert with their less fortunate neighbours. There are numberless 
districts also, throughout England, where the ditches are now 
stagnant throughout the winter, and all improvement of the land 
thus prevented — the remedy lying in some inexpensive cutting of 
a paltry brook, on which neighbouring landowners, however, can- 
not agree: whence these sound lands are drowned for half the 
year, though Deeping Fen is kept dry and firm by its steam- 
engines. We ought to act at last on the declaration of King 
