hotli ill cloister and camp in those stirring times, — the details from 
all available sources being filled in with so masterly a hand, — that it 
is needless to repeat what has already been so well told ; nor will 
space allow mo to do more than give, in addition to those already 
quoted, a few condensed extracts from the interesting accounts 
of the Fens, to be found in Dugdale’s ‘ Ilistor}' of Embanking,’ 
and quoted l)y him from the manuscript Life of St. Guthlac, 
William of Malmesbury, the Ilegister of Ramsey Abbey, and other 
ancient sources. It appears, however, that the whole level of 
the Fens, previous to the execution of the great drainage works 
in the middle of the seventeenth century, w'as one vast moras.s, 
with hero and there an “ island,” slightly more elevated than the 
surrounding bog. Tho.so islands were approachable, at 4i’^t, only 
by water, but subsecjuently by artificial causeways. The rivers 
meandered through the boggy soil, slow in current and tortuous in 
course, and were quite unequal to the task of conv’oying the super- 
abundant waters to the sea. In winter the llood-waters from the 
uplands, added to fro([uent incursions from the sea, caused the 
rivmrs and water-courses to overflow and submerge vast tracts of land 
which were comparatively dry in summer; so that, for the greater 
part of the year, the whole country presented the appearance of one 
vast lake. That this state of things continued with very slight 
abatement to the commencement of the great drainage works in 
the si.xteenth century there is very little doubt, but there is singu- 
larly little information upon the subject. Even to the present day 
the low-lying lands are subject to inundations from excessive rain- 
fall, or the breaking of the banks which hold back the water.* 
In Lincolnshire, the proverb, “All the carts that come to Crowland 
are shod with silver,” is even now not forgotten, “Venice and 
Crowland, sic Canibus Catulos,” says Fuller, “may count their 
carts alike ; that being sited in the sea, this in a morasse and fenny 
ground, so that an horse can hardly come to it. But whether this 
place since the draining of the Fens hath acquired more firmness 
than formerly is unknown to me.”t There was also a curious old 
saying, more expressive than polite, wdiich I remember to have heard 
* For a graphic account of one of these eruptions, which occurred in 1796, 
see an article entitled “The Great Drowned,” in the ‘Leisure Hour’ for 1877 
(pp. 487—490). 
t ‘ Worthies of England’ (1662), 4to edition (1811), ii. p. 6. 
