Of all the patents granted during this time, that which seems to have most attracted the attention of the dramatists was one for draining the Fens of Lincolnshire. Similar projects had frequently been attempted during the sixteenth century. In the list of patents before 1597, catalogued by Hulme, seven deal with water drainage in some form or other. The low lands on the east coast of England are exposed to inundation.[78] During the Roman occupation large embankments had been built, and during the Middle Ages these had been kept up partly through a commission appointed by the Crown, and partly through the efforts of the monasteries at Ramsey and Crowland. After the dissolution of these monasteries it became necessary to take up anew the work of reclaiming the fen-land. An abortive attempt by the Earl of Lincoln had already been made when the Statute 43 Eliz. c. 10. 11. was passed in the year 1601. This made legal the action of projectors in the recovery of marsh land. Many difficulties, however, such as lack of funds and opposition on the part of the inhabitants and neighbors of the fens, still stood in their way. In 1605 Sir John Popham and Sir Thomas Fleming headed a company which undertook to drain the Great Level of the Cambridgeshire fens, consisting of more than 300,000 acres, at their own cost, on the understanding that 130,000 acres of the reclaimed land should fall to their share. The project was a complete failure. Another statute granting a patent for draining the fens is found in the seventh year of Jac. I. c. 20, and the attempt was renewed from time to time throughout the reigns of James and Charles I. It was not, however, until the Restoration that these efforts were finally crowned with success.
When the remonstrance was made to James in 1621, the object of the petitioners was gained, as we have seen, by throwing all the blame upon the patentees and projectors. Similarly, the dramatists often prefer to make their attack, not by assailing the institution of monopolies, but by ridicule of the offending subjects.[79] Two agents are regularly distinguished. There is the patentee, sometimes also called the projector, whose part it is to supply the funds for the establishment of the monopoly, and, if possible, the necessary influence at Court; and the actual projector or inventor, who undertakes to furnish his patron with various projects of his own device.
Jonson’s is probably the earliest dramatic representation of the projector. Merecraft is a swindler, pure and simple, whose schemes are directed not so much against the people whom he aims to plunder by the establishment of a monopoly as against the adventurer who furnishes the funds for putting the project into operation:
... Wee poore Gentlemen, that want acres, Must for our needs, turne fooles vp and plough Ladies.
Both Fitzdottrel and Lady Tailbush are drawn into these schemes so far as to part with their money. Merecraft himself pretends that he possesses sufficient influence at Court. He flatters Fitzdottrel, who is persuaded by the mere display of projects in a buckram bag, by demanding of him ‘his count’nance, t’appeare in’t to great men’ (2. 1. 39). Lady Tailbush is not so easily fooled, and Merecraft has some difficulty in persuading her of the power of his friends at Court (Act 4. Sc. 1).
Merecraft’s chief project, the recovery of the drowned lands, is also satirized by Randolph:
I have a rare device to set Dutch windmills Upon Newmarket Heath, and Salisbury Plain, To drain the fens.[80]
and in Holland’s Leaguer, Act 1. Sc. 5 (cited by Gifford):
Our projector Will undertake the making of bay salt, For a penny a bushel, to serve all the state; Another dreams of building waterworkes, Drying of fenns and marshes, like the Dutchmen.
In the later drama the figure of the projector appears several times, but it lacks the timeliness of Jonson’s satire, and the conception must have been largely derived from literary sources. Jonson’s influence is often apparent. In Brome’s Court Beggar the patentee is Mendicant, a country gentleman who has left his rustic life and sold his property, in order to raise his state by court-suits. The projects which he presents at court are the invention of three projectors. Like Merecraft, they promise to make Mendicant a lord, and succeed only in reducing him to poverty. The character of the Court Beggar is given in these words: ‘He is a Knight that hanckers about the court ambitious to make himselfe a Lord by begging. His braine is all Projects, and his soule nothing but Court-suits. He has begun more Knavish suits at Court, then ever the Kings Taylor honestly finish’d, but never thriv’d by any: so that now hee’s almost fallen from a Palace Begger to a Spittle one’.