Trimk Drainage. 
23 
who agreed to it. When to this incquital)le proceiUire was added 
the uselessness of the drainers' new works, the popuhition rose 
in riots to repossess the lands and rifjhts of which they had 
been deprived. The same arbitrary mode of proceeding marked 
the different schemes for dcalinj^ with common-rights and other 
privileges or possessions of the inhabitants of the Great Level, 
and a long series of disturbance and opposition were the results. 
The Fen-men saw that drainage was sure to be followed by in- 
closure, and tliat this would be accompanied by an unjust appro- 
priation, seeing tliat in those times the weak could not make 
good liis cause against a powerful claimant ; besides which, the 
true aim of the drainers, and of the autlioritics who backed them, 
too plainly showed itself in their exorbitant demands for recom- 
pense for pitiful designs of improvement. King James I., 
at tlie beginning of his reign, took a great interest in the 
Fen Drainage, and by his own letters and reiterated instructions 
from the Lords of the Privy Council, directed to the Commis- 
sioners of Sewers, encouraged some of the best designs which 
arose during that century. For the first time the Fens were to 
some extent " levelled," the soil bored into in all parts to ascer- 
tain its nature, a survey of the Avhole surface made, and the 
actual condition of the lands discovered. But what is specially 
to our purpose at the present time is the circumstance that the 
Privy Council directed the Commissioners, now for the first 
time, to endeavour to satisfy " all such persons as, having no 
respect to the general good likely to come by the draining, 
should oppose it, or use means to others so to do," or otherwise 
to enjoin tiiem to attend 7i public council at Huntingdon. At this 
council the Commissioners, " after long debate, and all objections 
heard," unanimously declared the undertaking feasible and also 
higlily praiseworthy. A bill consequently introduced into parlia- 
ment appointed (among other good things) a corporation to have 
a portion of the recovered lands, and employ the profits in the 
" perpetual maintenance of the draining, and satisfaction for 
drowning." The commons were to be " stinted " by the lords 
of the manors, and greatest part of the freeholders and copyhold 
commoners, so that the poor should not be jostled out by the 
Avealthy. Provision was made also for the cottagers upon the 
lord of tlie manor's waste, not having right of common : because 
they had been suffered to take benefit of the wastes, they were 
to be provided for when those wastes were reclaimed by the said 
lords. It is undoubtedly owing to the absence of such a righteous 
and generous provision as this that much of the Fen inhabitants' 
hostility to general drainage, and commoners' repugnance to in- 
closures, may be attributed. Still this excellent project was unsuc- 
cessful in parliament in consequence of one, though a most im- 
