124 
Agriculture and iJie House of Russell. 
family mlglit send one son to the Temple and another to a 
counting-house in the City, but the sons of a duke were all lords, 
and a lord could not make his bread either at the Bar or on 
'Change." To this fourth Earl it was, therefore, by no means 
a matter of indifference whether an enterprise involving enor- 
mous expenditure turned out a success or a failure ; but, not- 
withstanding all the risks attendant upon the undertaking, he 
was mainly instrumental in setting on foot, and in bringing to 
an advanced state of completion, a stupendous task, demanding 
the clearest foresight as well as the highest courage. 
Amongst the estates which came into the possession of John, 
first Earl of Bedford, in the time of Edward VI., was the Bene- 
dictine Abbey of Thorney, Cambridgeshire, which had been a 
religious house since the days of Alfred the Great. In Tanner's 
Notitia Moiiastica, published at the end of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, the annual value of this property was appraised at 1-5, 240?, 
But when Francis, the fourth Earl — not long released from the 
Tower, to which he had been sent for having fought with 
Eliot and his stout compeers for the Petition of Right — suc- 
ceeded to the title in 1627, he found the 18,000 acres composing 
the domain a mere waste, the hillock on which the Abbey had 
been built being the only portion not submerged by water. It 
seems that at a much earlier period a very different state of 
things prevailed, for Henry of Huntingdon, writing in the twelfth 
century, described the surrounding country as " very pleasant 
and agreeable to the eye, watered by many rivers which run 
through, diversified with many large and small lakes, and adorned 
with many woods and islands ; " and "William of Malmesbury, a 
contemporary chronicler, described the lordship as abounding in 
lofty trees, fruitful vines, and productive orchards, and havii\g 
no waste land in any part. But in 1236, in consequence of a 
raging wind which lasted for eight or nine days, the sea rose to 
an unusual height, broke through its banks at Wisbech and 
other places, and caused great havoc, attended with the loss of 
many people and cattle. Seventeen years later a similar irrup- 
tion occurred, and though the breaches in the banks were 
repaired, under an order from the King, the work was inadequate 
to prevent further mischief, and the land gradually became 
reduced to the state of a stagnant and pestilent morass, the water 
being in some parts from ten to twenty feet deep. 
The natural desire to reclaim this land induced the fourth 
Earl to embark in a still wider undertaking, including the 
whole of what was formerly called the Great Level, now known 
(in commemoration of his great achievement) as the Bedford 
Level, and embracing a tract whose length extends from Toynton 
