Agriculture and the House of Riissetl. 
125 
in Lincolnshire to Milton in Cambridgeshire — about sixty miles 
■ — whilst its breadth reaches from Peterborough in Northampton- 
shire to Brandon in Suffolk — nearly forty miles. Wiffen, in his 
Memoirs of the House cf Russell, states thfit the matter had pre- 
viously engaged the attentioii of James I., who declared that he 
would no longer suffer the land to be abandoned to the waters. 
Plans were accordingly made, estimates formed, and commissions 
issued in favour of such as miofht be willing to commence a general drainage ; 
but disputes arisinrr, the King himself, for 120,000 acres of the waste, 
became the undertaker of the great work, and invited over from the Low 
Countries Sir (Cornelius Yermuyden to carry his project into efl'ect. 
Vermuyden obtained for himself and the foreign adventurers whom he 
persuaded to embark with him in the speculation a grant of this allotment 
from the Crown. But meanwhile a strong jealousy of foreign intervention 
became rooted in the minds of the people of those parts, who, in their 
aversion to the Flemish engineer, earnestly solicited the Earl of Bedford, 
for the good of the whole country, to becooie the head and patron of the 
princely undertak-ing. Their request was seconded by a court of the com- 
missioners of sewers held at Lynn. Vermuyden's contract was abandoned, 
and the Earl assented to their call. By a contract entered into on a commission 
issued by the Crown, and enrolled in the Court of Chancery, September ], 
1630, the Earl was to have 95,000 acres of the inundated land as his return 
for the expense and hazard consequent upon the drainage. He associated 
with him fourteen other gentlemen, whom his spirited example allured to 
take inferior shares, and the work was pursued with extraordinary zeal and 
perseverance. In 1637 the Earl had expended on the task the immense 
sum of 100,000/. The execution of the work being at first adjudged 
defective, his grant was restricted to -10,000 acres; but he stUl persisted in 
his project with an assiduity suited to his singularly energetic mind, un- 
depressed by the many serious obstacles that impeded its accomplishment. 
The orioinal grant being renewed at a session held at Ely on March 2, 1653, 
it was decreed that the magnificent undertaking was completely achieved — 
a triumph altogether unexampled in the history of British agriculture. 
In the words of the historian of the Bedford Level, " a more 
striking instance of self-devotion to the wishes of the people, 
and the real benefit of the State, appears not upon the records 
of history ; " ' and no one will deny that, considering the nature 
of the entei-prise and the risks attendant upon it, the Earl and 
his coadjutors richly deserved all that they got, especially as we 
learn from Mr. Pusey's paper in this Journal on the agricultural 
improvements of Lincolnshire that, " though the body of stag- 
nant water was greatly reduced, still it was not subdued, so that 
the fen land was worth little, even when George III. came to the 
throne." ^ So late as the year 1800 it was stated that more than 
300,000 acres in Lincolnshire suffered, on an average, a loss 
of 300,000L a year for want of efficient drainage,' and it was 
> Wells, Histonj of the Bedford Level, Vol. I. p. 106. 
' Journal R.A.S.E , 1st Series. Vol. IV. (184.S), p. 290. 
* Mr. Albert Pell favours me with the following valuable note : " The effect 
of the Bedford Level adventurers" work was only to render the land ' summer 
