The outcome of these vigorous polemics was that King James the First threw himself whole-heartedly into the idea of a general drainage scheme; and under his auspices a Company of "Adventurers" or "Undertakers" was formed to carry out the business. This, however, was regarded by the Fen-men as an unmitigated piece of tyranny; the Opposition in Parliament made violent protests; "Libellers" wrote inflammatory broadsides inciting the Fen-men to rise;[242] and the Fen-men, who wanted little inciting, did rise in no small numbers. Nocturnal raids destroyed every work begun by the Company's labourers; the labourers themselves were intimidated; and before long progress became impossible. The Company became bankrupt, and the thousands of reclaimed acres which were to have been divided amongst the "Adventurers" never actualised.
THE OLD FENLAND
(Northern District)
THE OLD FENLAND
(Southern District)
The Crown, however, did not lose sight of the scheme. A special Commission of enquiry was formed, which sent in a most pessimistic Report, representing Wisbech as demanding that the "upland men" should contribute to the scouring of the outfall there, inasmuch as it drained their lands, to which the upland men retorted that Wisbech might mind its own business and bear its own burdens. "Hence the country about Crowland and Thorney, formerly good ground, hath become mere Lerna,[243]—which doth not only cause overflowing in the upland country, to their infinite loss, but the Islanders themselves are in like danger, as for their cattle and their own safety; out of fear whereof they oftentimes, upon the swelling of the waters, ring their bells backward, as in other places when the town is on fire."
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 dykes, 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.
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.