So things dragged on till 1620, when another Company was formed by the King, again doomed to speedy failure.[244] Ten years later again, Charles the First took up his father's idea, and formed a third Company, placing at its head the powerful Earl of Bedford. His first act was to call in a Dutch engineer, Cornelius Vermuyden, acquainted with the drainage methods so successful in Holland, whose fee was an award of no less than 95,000 acres in the lands he might reclaim.

Under the auspices of this expert was dug from Earith to Denver the Old Bedford River already spoken of.[245] But the local opposition was still too strong, fostered as it now was by the powerful influence of Oliver Cromwell; and it was not lessened when the King himself bought up the Company. His action was represented as one more encroachment upon the liberties of England, and a regular part of the Puritan programme was "to break the King's d.y.k.es, to drown his lands, and to destroy his tenants." These drastic measures proved only too effective; and, with the outbreak of the Civil War, this third attempt, like those before it, came to nought.

[Footnote 244: The head of this company was Lord Popham, one of whose cuts is still called Popham's Eau. The last word reminds us that many of his settlers were exiled French Huguenots.]

[Footnote 245: See p. 280.]

When, however, that war was over, and Charles beheaded, Cromwell himself, now Lord Protector of the Realm, came forward as an advocate of the scheme, and formed yet a fourth Company, again under the Earl of Bedford, who had followed his fortunes, and again with Vermuyden for engineer. This time the result was permanent. Cromwell was, as the Fen-men speedily discovered, a far more dangerous personage to bully than they had found his predecessors at the head of the State.

Troopers were quartered upon the malcontents, and a plentiful supply of extra cheap labour was furnished by the penal servitude of Scotch prisoners taken at Dunbar and Dutch sailors captured by Blake in the Channel. This method of making war pay its own expenses was familiar to Cromwell, who had already sold many shiploads of these gallant enemies as slaves, some to toil under the lash for the West Indian planters, some to tug at the oars of Venetian galleys. Happily, as he was the first Christian commander to adopt this all too thrifty procedure, so he was the last, and such atrocious exploitation of fellow Christians and fellow soldiers died with him.

Thus was dug, in 1651, the New Bedford River, and thus was built, somewhat later, Denver Sluice. Vermuyden's plan, which continued for two centuries to be gradually developed on the lines he originally laid down, was to cut a few main water-courses through the district, running at a higher level than the swamps around, with Lynn for their chief outfall, and an infinite number of short straight cuts at right angles to these, whence the water draining from the mora.s.s should be pumped into them. This pumping was originally done by windmills, and a picturesque sight it was to see their white sails dotting the wide expanse. But all are now superseded by the less poetical but more dependable steam pumping stations, whose tall chimneys form a notable object in the Fenland landscape.

The work was very gradual, with many drawbacks. The Denver Sluice, on which the whole plan depended, was, as has been said, destroyed in 1713, and not rebuilt till 1750, when the very towns which had most rejoiced in its fall were the loudest in demanding its replacement.

Other calamities also affected the work, which was not finally completed till towards the end of the nineteenth century. The opposition, too, was unceasing, though it took the form of lawsuits rather than violence. But this, too, died out. The very last of them was an attempt by Wisbech, in 1844, to force the hand of the Bedford Level Corporation (as the old Company of Adventurers is now called) by proposing a rival scheme in Parliament.

Now, however, all is victory. For many years past the reclaimed fen has borne excellent crops; and if, since the agricultural depression of the later nineteenth century decades set in, it can no longer merit so fully as it did the t.i.tle of "the Golden Plain of England,"

yet the widespread cultivation of fruit and flowers (mostly narcissus) has furnished no small compensation, and the district as a whole enjoys a very large share of prosperity. At this moment the vast areas allotted to the great Adventurers are being largely broken up into small holdings, with the happiest results.

Sentimentally, and even to a certain extent economically, we may regret the Fenland of old, with its vanished wealth of picturesque life; its reeds which made such splendid thatch, its marsh flowers, its b.u.t.terflies, its shoals of fish, its endless skeins of wild-fowl, its clever "decoys" where these were taken in such exhaustless numbers that a single one (in 1750) sent up to London 3000 couples a week and let for 500 a year. But with these have also vanished the incessant fever and ague and rheumatism which were an ever-present torment in the old Fen life, and the incessant opium-eating in which the Fen-Folk were fain to find relief. Taking things altogether, the gain has outweighed the loss in the draining of the Fens.

CHAPTER XX

Coveney.--Manea.--Doddington.--March, Angel Roof.--Whittlesea.--Old Course of Ouse, Well Stream.--Upwell, Outwell.--Emneth.--Elm.--The Marshland.--West Walton.--Walsoken.--Walpole.--Cross Keys.--Leverington.--Tydd.--Wisbech, Church, Trade, Castle, Catholic Prisoners, Clarkson.--The Wash.--King John.

In close contiguity to the Island of Ely, on the west, is a tiny satellite, which supports the little village of Coveney. Here the church has some remarkable modern woodwork from Oberammergau, the gift of Mr. Athelstan Riley. The pulpit is also remarkable, dating from 1703 and being of Danish work. More remote are Manea and Stonea, both, happily for themselves, now on a railway line, but otherwise unspeakably inaccessible. It is strange at Manea to see the towers of Ely a short five miles away, and to know that twenty miles of bad road will scarcely get you there. Both names seem to have the same signification, Stone Island; which (as they are eminently unstony, being merely low elevations of gravel) may perhaps refer to the selenite crystals with which the ground here teems. Manea Station is one of the few inland places where the curvature of the earth can be clearly seen. The line (towards March) is perfectly straight and perfectly level, and along it you may observe the trains rising into sight over the horizon like ships at sea.

March stands on a much larger island, seven miles in length. At its southern extremity is Doddington, where the fine Early English church was once the richest in England. It was the Mother Church of a wide district, including its whole island and the fens for miles around. As these were drained so did the value of the benefice increase, till it became worth over 7,000 per annum. Parliament then stepped in, and divided the parish (and income) into seven Rectories, three of these being in the town of March, a modern growth around its important railway junction at the furthest northern point of the island. A fourth is Old March, a quiet "village-hamlet" (as Cardinal Wolsey calls it) two miles south of its larger offspring. The church here is most exceptionally beautiful. It is a Perpendicular structure, with a fine crocketed spire and flint patterns in the outer walls of the clerestory. The roof is beyond all magnificent, with "an innumerable company of Angels" along its vista of double hammer-beams. A bra.s.s commemorates William Dredeman, the donor of this crowning glory, who died in 1503; and there is another to Catharine Hansard, 1517, on which the Annunciation is depicted. The church is dedicated to St.

Wendreda, a purely local saint.[246] The Parish account-books here give a striking picture of the mutations of the Reformation period.

There are payments "for pluckynge doun emags [images] in ye Chyrch and for drynkynge thereat" (1547); "for breckyng down the Altar and carrying forth ye stons" (1550); "for makyng the Hy Alter" (1553); "for pulling doun ye hy alter" (1558); and "for a comunion tabull"

(1559).

[Footnote 246: See p. 275.]

March is the half-way house between Ely and Peterborough, and between it and the last-named lies Whittlesea, also on a good-sized island of its own, which extends nearly to the Northamptonshire mainland. It is a pleasant little town, with a picturesque market place, where the ancient Market House still rises in the centre. And its church almost rivals that of March, with a still more glorious spire. In 1335 Whittlesea was the scene of a most unedifying conflict between the Abbeys of Ramsey and Ely. To begin with, the Abbot of Ramsey and his monks raided the lands at Whittlesea belonging to Ely, drove away sixteen horses, and (by firing the sedge) burned twenty others, besides ten oxen, eighty cows, and one hundred swine, along with much gra.s.s, reeds, and other property. In retaliation for this outrage the Prior of Ely (and he, too, the saintly Prior Crauden) organised a regular military expedition, and came, at the head of the whole Abbey musters, "with banners flying as in war," to Ramsey itself, where, as that House complains, he "hewed down our woods, depastured our gra.s.s, and drove off our cattle." Both parties appealed to the King; but the discreditable transaction seems to have ended in a compromise. That such wild work should be possible at all in England reminds us that at this date the country had not yet recovered from the confusions attendant on the fall and murder of Edward the Second eight years before.

Till the latter part of the nineteenth century Whittlesea gave its name to a famous mere, lying to the south of the town, and on the very border of the fens. It was a sheet of shallow water a couple of miles in length and breadth, and furnished a splendid field for angling, skating, and boat-sailing. Its shallowness made it none the less dangerous; for the bottom was fathomless ooze, so soft that the punting poles used here had to be furnished with a round board at their extremities, and demanded special skill, for if you once let this board get underneath the mud, it was much more likely to pull you in than you to pull it out.

Other islets of the fen archipelago are Murrow, between Thorney and Wisbech, Westry near March, and Welney, on the Old Bedford river to the north of Manea. The name of the last reminds us that by it ran the old Well Stream, long robbed of its waters by their diversion to Lynn in the thirteenth century. To this day, however, its course may be traced on the map by the meandering boundary between Cambridgeshire and Norfolk across the fen. Following this line northwards we shortly come to the outskirts of the firm ground on which Wisbech stands, an _artificial_ island dating from Roman times and owing its existence to the great Roman sea wall around the Wash.

Through this island ran the great Well Stream, giving their names to the villages (or rather the village, for they form a continuous row of houses) of Upwell and Outwell. This is the longest village in England, stretching on either side of the road for nearly five unbroken miles.

It contains over 5,000 inhabitants, and lies partly in Cambridgeshire partly in Norfolk. The churches are in the latter county, and are grand specimens of the splendid series of churches which glorify the Marshland, as this district by the Wash has for ages been named. Both are of Perpendicular date, with a tower somewhat older. That of Upwell has an elaborate turret for the Sanctus bell. The canopy over the pulpit is still more elaborate. The roof has a series of angels, but far less numerous and effective than those at March. At Outwell there is a fine Decorated door, like that of Barrington.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Elm Church._]

Emneth, on the further road to Wisbech, also has an angel roof, of specially interesting character. Each figure is holding some symbol of the Faith; one the Host, another a candlestick, another a Gospel-book.

At Elm, hard by, may be seen a still more interesting development of church architecture. The tower is Early English, enriched on its internal face with exquisite shafting, and opening into the nave by an Early English arch. But both shafting and arch must have been insertions in much older work, for between the two may be seen the high-pitched string-course and the rude little window of the original Saxon church. The nave is also Early English (clerestory and all, which is rare hereabouts), while the chancel is Decorated, with its roof higher than that of the nave.

Here at a farm house called Needham Hall (from a famous historic mansion formerly on the site) is shown an old table formed of one solid piece of oak, on which Oliver Cromwell is said to have once slept. When he arrived here at the head of his command during the Civil War, he chose this rude couch in preference to the best bed in the house, that he might fare no better than his men, who were bivouacking in the yard and outhouses.

The churches along the Roman sea-wall on either side of the old Well Stream estuary are also of rare magnificence. To the east, in Norfolk, we find a series of villages deriving their names from the wall itself,--Walsoken, West Walton, Walpole St. Peter, and Walpole St.

Andrew. In every one of these the church is a joy; above all at West Walton, with its bell-tower (fifty yards to the south of the main building) uplifted on four graceful arches enriched with dog-tooth moulding. Octangular b.u.t.tresses support the angles, which are ornamented with blank lancet arches. The next floor has on each side an arcade of three lancets, and the storey above a window of two lights beneath an arch of two mouldings, forming a splay of four banded pillars. No more perfect gem of composition exists; and the Perpendicular parapet which now crowns it very inadequately takes the place of the spire which seems to have been purposed by the original builder. The church itself displays similar features of Early English grace. The nave pillars have Purbeck marble shafts, with beautifully foliated capitals, and the clerestory is pierced with seventeen small archlets, alternately blind and light.

Walsoken, now practically a suburb of Wisbech, has a Perpendicular sh.e.l.l around a Norman nave, which is (next to Norwich Cathedral) the best example of the style in all Norfolk. The chancel arch is a deservedly famous specimen of Transition work. It springs from six banded pillars, and has a soffit exquisitely worked with zig-zags and cusps. The screens of the chapels which formerly occupied the east end of either aisle are rich Perpendicular woodwork. The roof is also Perpendicular, with angels on the transome beams.

Walpole St. Peter's is even more remarkable; for there is actually an ancient right of way through it, _underneath the Altar_. The thirteenth century chancel, with its five large Decorated windows on either side, ascends by no fewer than eleven steps from the nave to make room for this unique pa.s.sage way. The five windows of the nave are of the earliest and best Perpendicular, and its eastern gable is crowned with three beautifully proportioned pinnacles. In this parish is the hamlet of Cross Keys, the name of which is sometimes supposed to be connected with St. Peter. But it is much more probably the _quay_ at the starting point of the ancient low-tide pa.s.sage across the sands of the estuary which led to Sutton Crosses on the Lincolnshire side, five miles away, and which played, as we shall shortly tell, so notable a part in English history. From Walpole the sea-wall sweeps round by Terrington to Lynn. But here we are far in Norfolk. We must not, however, forget that we owe one of our Cambridge Colleges to Terrington, for Dr. Gonville, while Vicar here, founded in 1347 his "College of the Annunciation," the embryo of Caius College.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Walpole St. Peter._]

On the Cambridgeshire side of the Well Stream we also find churches fully equal to those on the Norfolk bank. Leverington is one specially to be noted, with its beautiful steeple, an Early English tower surmounted by a Decorated spire so exquisitely proportioned that it seems absolutely to melt away into the sky. There is also a fine Decorated porch with a stone-roofed parvis chamber of original and singular beauty. The chancel is also Decorated, while the grand nave is Perpendicular. The font, too, is Perpendicular, an octagonal structure of oolite, with richly ornamented niches on every face, each containing the head of a saint in high relief. The east window of the north aisle retains much of its ancient gla.s.s, proving it to be a "Jesse" window, tracing the descent of Christ from that patriarch through David.

Tydd St. Giles lies at the northernmost extremity of the Isle of Ely, where the "Shire Drain" divides the village from its sister parish of Tydd St. Mary in Lincolnshire. Here, too, the church is remarkable, having its tower fifty feet beyond the East End, a unique position. Like Leverington, it has a specially fine octagonal font, richly traceried, and carved with emblems of the Pa.s.sion and with the arms of the See of Ely. In the floor of the nave is a thirteenth century gravestone, bearing a floriated cross, and the legend (in Old English characters): "Orate.pro.anima.dni John.Fysner, cujus.aie.deus.ppiciet.Amen." (Pray for the soul of Mr. John Fysner, on whose soul may G.o.d be merciful.)

On one of the pillars is a more interesting inscription in rude capital letters, much worn. It is in French, and would seem to be of the early fourteenth century, when that language was becoming very fashionable in England, as our current legal phraseology still shows.

It runs thus:--

CEST . PILER . CVME NCAT . RICARD . LE . PRE STRE . PRIMER . PRE YEZ . PVR . LVI

_i.e._ in modern French: "Ce pilier commenca Ricard le Pretre premierement. Priez pour lui"; and in English "This pillar Richard the Priest first began. Pray for him."

After having told of so much loveliness all around, it is disappointing to be obliged to confess that at Wisbech itself, the metropolis of the northern Fenland, the church is comparatively commonplace. Not that it is otherwise than a fine structure, and, like Great Yarmouth, splendidly wide, having a double nave and a double chancel; but it is hopelessly outcla.s.sed by those in the neighbouring villages. The best feature is the tower, which is richly ornamented with sacred and heraldic devices of the later Perpendicular period.

And in the nave is a fine fifteenth century bra.s.s. Otherwise there is little to say about it; and, indeed, little to say about Wisbech at all. It is a picturesque old place, with that somewhat pathetic picturesqueness of an ancient seaport town which the sea has deserted.

Wisbech, however, is not by any means a "dead city." It has 10,000 inhabitants, and keen local ambitions, which have developed an excellent museum and other up-to-date munic.i.p.al equipment. Modern energy and science have, moreover, made so effective a waterway through the ten miles of silted-up estuary that vessels of 3,000 tons can now, at high tide, reach the wharf. Such, however, are almost unknown visitants. Last year (1909) the vessels clearing from the port numbered 209, of 36,000 tons in all. Two of these are registered at Wisbech itself, as are also twelve sea-fishing boats. A characteristic photograph of Wisbech's shipping is given by Mrs. Hughes in the "Geography of Cambridgeshire" (p. 118). Other photographs (pp. 47, 48) show the great height to which the tide rises in the river, there being a difference of over twenty feet between high and low water mark. The Nene still has its outfall here, and flows through the town in a fine sweep locally called the Brink.

It is hard to believe that this Brink is not the Beach whence the name of the town is vulgarly supposed to be derived. But you must not suggest this to a Wisbech man. The single vowel is an integral part of local faith and local pride, and to insert the "a" is to show yourself a hopeless outsider. With it the name would come from _Ouse-beach_ (like Land-beach and Water-beach near Cambridge). Without it the derivation is _Ouse-beck_. This last syllable is a Scandinavian word, well known throughout the north of England, and there signifying a running brook. Throughout the Fenland it is frequently used for a drain. But can the mighty Well Stream of the Ouse, at its tidal outfall here, have ever suggested either drain or brook to the men of old who named the place? And can these have been Scandinavians?

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Leverington._]

The chief oversea trade of Wisbech is in timber from Norway; and it also does a large traffic in fruit, flowers, and vegetables, which are extensively grown hereabouts. In this neighbourhood, moreover, may be seen a much rarer cultivated crop, nothing less primitive than the woad with which the ancient Britons dyed their bodies; though it is a mistake to suppose that this dye took the place of clothing, for as far back as history traces them they were quite fairly civilised, and used woad only for tattooing, like sailors.[247] It is now used for dyeing cloth. "An old woad mill, built of turf blocks arranged in the ancient herring-bone pattern, with a timber and reed-thatched roof, can still be seen at the village of Parson's Drove, about six miles from Wisbech. The plant (_Isatis tinctoria_) grows about six feet high, and has a blue-green leaf and bright yellow flower; the people still call it by its old name, _w[-a]d_. The young plants are delicate, and the crop requires much care. It is weeded by men and women clad in hardened skirts and leathern knee-caps, who creep along the ground and take out the weeds with a curious little handspade which fits into the palm. The plant is picked by hand. The leaves are crushed to a pulp in the mill by rude conical crushing wheels dragged round by horses, and are then worked by hand into large b.a.l.l.s and laid on "fleaks" of twined hazel, or on planks, in special sheds, for three months to dry. After this, the b.a.l.l.s are thrown together, mixed with water and allowed to ferment in a dark house for five or six weeks.

The woad is then rammed into casks and is ready to be sold to cloth manufacturers."[248]

[Footnote 247: See my _Roman Britain_, p. 47.]

[Footnote 248: Hughes' _Geography of Cambs._, p. 97, where there is an interesting photograph of this Woad Mill.]

Wisbech plays but little part in history. Its position at the convergence of the two great Roman sea-walls, east and west of the estuary, makes it pretty certain that they must have had a station here; but, if so, it has wholly pa.s.sed out of memory. Wisbech Castle is said to have been built by William the Conqueror, and certainly existed in the time of King John. It pa.s.sed into the possession of the Bishops of Ely, and was rebuilt by two famous holders of the See, Bishop Morton, the designer and excavator of Morton's Leam,[249] and Bishop Alc.o.c.k, the Founder of Jesus College, Cambridge.[250] Both these prelates were singularly thoroughgoing reformers. The former went into minute details about the dress of his clergy, forbidding them to wear gaudy attire (such as "lirrip.o.o.ps" or gowns open in front like a present-day M.A. gown), and charging them straitly to cut their hair "so that all men may see their ears." And the latter was an indefatigable pulpiteer; one of his University sermons is recorded to have lasted three mortal hours on end.

[Footnote 249: See p. 398.]

[Footnote 250: See p. 146.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Bell Tower, Tydd St. Giles._]