Part I- Fens at the Turn of the Century
The
possibility of draining the English Fens had been considered and debated for at
least a generation by 1616, when Ben Jonson satirized the whole idea by having
Merecraft pitch it to a greedy and buffoonish Norfolk gentleman Fitzdotterel as
a surefire, get-rich-quick scheme in The
Devil is an Ass. Merecraft was Jonson’s caricature of a projector, an entrepreneurial and
opportunistic promoter of various projects, and a figure with a somewhat shady
reputation in early modern England. Land drainage was only one of Merecraft’s
many schemes, but it was perhaps the one most closely identified with real
contemporary events. Drainage projects had attracted the interest of the Crown
and its advisers since Queen Elizabeth I’s reign, and in fact Jonson got into
some trouble at court. Although James I did not object to the satire of fens
drainage projects per se, he apparently considered Jonson’s reference to the
“Duke of Drowned-land’ a bit too sensitive and told the author to remove it.
James’s interest in drainage was due in part to the Crown’s being the single
largest owner of land in the Fens, so improving its landholdings there would
help to boost royal revenues at a time when additional income was sorely
needed. But beyond their potential to help refill depleted royal coffers,
drainage projects were part of the broader trends of state-building in 17th
century England. Thy were an expression of changing early modern attitudes
towards proper management and exploitation of the natural environment and the
state’s role in facilitating such.
In the first decade of the 17th century (probably in 1606), while the first of many large-scale drainage proposals were under discussion among local officials in the Fens and in the House of Commons, two anonymous commentators weighed in on opposite sides of the debate.
In the first decade of the 17th century (probably in 1606), while the first of many large-scale drainage proposals were under discussion among local officials in the Fens and in the House of Commons, two anonymous commentators weighed in on opposite sides of the debate.
The first, claiming to write on behalf of the fenland inhabitants, offered a variety of objections to the drainage. There was no precedent, he wrote, for the improvement and enclosure of such a vast area of common waste lands without the commoner's consent. The Fens’ abundant common wastes had long enabled small-hold farmers and even landless cottagers to keep small herds of livestock, which were fed on the plentiful grass that the moist rich soil provided. Even the poorest inhabitants, with no livestock to pasture, could scratch out a living by harvesting the natural produce of the wetlands: catching waterfowl, fish and eels to furnish the tables of wealthier urban consumers, collecting reeds and sedge forth thatching roofs; and digging out peat, which was dried and burned for fuel. Even if the drainage should prove a success an outcome he considered ‘very improbable’ – it would only lessen the yield of grass, diminish the common wastes through enclosure, and deprive nearby market towns of valuable wetland goods. Most husbandmen would be hurt by the scheme, and poor cottagers left without any employment, so that ‘no way else to put bread in their mouths,’ they would be forced to ‘live on alms, beg, or starve.’
In concluding his objections, the author criticized the ‘justices and chief gentlemen of the fen countries,’ whom the king had commissioned to consider the project, and who had pronounced it ‘a work of great commodity to the common weal.’ While acknowledging that they may be ‘wise, discrete gentlemen’ all, the author argued that since none of the commissioners depended on the fens for their very livelihoods, they could not ‘understand the commodities and discommodities of the fens as those who only live by them.’ They misguidedly sought to make the fens more productive and to stamp out the supposed idleness of the fenland inhabitants, yet in reality they threatened to make it impossible for the large majority of fenlanders to earn a living there. Rather than thinking of the ‘common weal’ as they were supposed to, they thought only of the propertied elite who stood to gain by improving and enclosing the wastes on their own estates. Most were large landowners themselves, moreover, and would ‘not speak all they know {about the project} because the drainage may be more beneficial to some of them, than to ten thousand others.’ Because the commissioners were ignorant of how best to exploit the flooded Fens, and may have had a private interest in seeing them drained, they could never provide a sound verdict on the putative merits of such a proposal, either for the great majority of fenlanders or for the commonwealth.
The pro-drainage respondent to these objections refuted them point by point, accusing the objector and his fellows of obstinately opposing ‘a work that is for the general good of themselves &the common weal.’ There was no precedent for improving and enclosing so much common waste all at once, he observed, because such a bold and ambitious drainage scheme had never been attempted before. Far from being ‘very improbable’, the proposed project was held by knowledgeable men ‘to be both possible &profitable.’ Yet if it should prove otherwise, only the investors stood to lose anything by it, since they alone bore the costs and would gain no reward unless it was successful. Draining the Fens would increase both the quantity and quality of the pastureland for everyone: although some commons would be enclosed to pay for the project, the remainder would be much richer and more product than before. The notion drier soil would yield less grass than waterlogged soil was dismissed as ‘ a very ridiculous observation, so that ‘if the poorer sort make no benefit it is through their own laziness & idleness that they get no stock about them.’*
With respect to the diverse natural produce of the flooded fenlands, the pro-drainage author accused his opponent of being ‘merely ignorant’ of the true situation. Once they had been drained and improved, the Fens would not only support more livestock than ever before, they would also yield marketable crops on newly arable land, fetching a much greater profit per acre than wetland goods ever could.**Any assertion to the contrary was ‘a gross and palpable error.,’ based on a ludicrous overvaluation of eels, reeds, and peat turfs. As for the poor fenlanders who claimed to make a living from harvesting such things, he noted that ‘for one half & more a year, they live merely idle, and have no means to set them on work . . the beggarly life that the poor idle wretches do lead, do manifest of what commodity it is to them.’ Nor would the drained fens be destitute of these same wetland resources; in fact, they should be easier to harvest when they are concentrated around drainage ditches and receptacles. The improved, navigable rivers and superior value of market crops, meanwhile, would allow the entire region to prosper through increased trade, exporting their various commodities to new urban markets and importing goods ‘from such places as they never dealt in before.’
*[By 1600 the traditional ecology and economy of the Fens were under mounting strain. A cooling climate and rising seas made the Fens ever more flood-prone; the dissolution of the monasteries had created upheaval and confusion, while bringing new, non-native landowners to the region; a rising population and in-migration were putting unprecedented pressure on the available common wastes (there were growing numbers cottagers, squatters and ‘master-less men’ who took advantage of the common wastes even though many did not have customary use rights there); and broader market forces were creating an insatiable demand for food, especially grains that could only be grown on well-drain arable land. The complicated customary systems of intercommoning between fenland communities were breaking down, as scarcity prompted neighboring villages to challenge one another’s use rights within a shared fen. Larger landowners sought to enclose and improve portions of the common waste for their own profit but were vehemently resisted by commoners who feared an reduction of the waste in an already precarious situation would ruin them. And as the floods grew more persistent and problematic, local commissions of sewers quarreled endlessly with one another over who is responsible for repairing damaged works that were proving ever more inadequate.
In the events
the Fens were drained, the land shrunk and the water in the ditches had to be
pumped into the canals, at first with windmills, then by enormous electric
pumps. The draining was not accomplished without controversy, riots, stationing
of troops, prisoners from the Scottish
War brought in as ‘scabs’, delays, cost overruns, and the systematic
interventions of the highest levels of government, ‘State building’ as the
author puts it. Irrigation under these circumstances requires constant
management and repair. Today it is generally supposed that it would be better to
have more Fens. In some cases, in one case anyway, they have had to pump water
to reclaim the fens, which, never-the-less, do come alive- nesting birds in
great numbers returning to it, etc. ..
how all this came down is too much to tell, it’s a good fight between common
law and government prerogative, among many other matters.]
**[Cereals ,
coleseed , rapeseed which produced oil useful in dyes for the Cloth industry;
hemp to supply the navy with a vital source of linen cloth and cordage.
The lived reality of the fens was not bleak for most; throughout the Middle Ages the fenlanders had developed a number of ways to live and even prosper within their watery world. Though the floodwaters could be unpredictable in any given year, they were reasonably dependable over time and could usually be relied on to follow a certain pattern, arriving the autumn and receding in most areas by late spring. Nor, for all the trouble they sometimes caused, were they without benefit: while most of the land could not grow grain, the receding floods left riverine silt deposits that promoted the growth of abundant grass on meadows spanning hundreds of thousands of acres. Fenland agriculture was thus based primarily on livestock grazing, and in a good year the region even supported stock from neighboring uplands, whose owners could then put their drier, arable lands to more profitable use. Those fenland areas too wet for grazing yielded other valuable goods, including foodstuffs, building materials, and fuel . . .the traditional fenland economy did not exist in spite of the recurring floods, but because of them. The key to managing and profiting from the Fens was to regulate and control the floods, rendering them stable and predictable as possible, rather than eliminating them altogether. Specialized administrative bodies called ‘commissions of sewers’ were created for this purpose in the Middle Ages.]
Part II- Fens During the Commonwealth
The ‘Adventurers” (investors in drainage projects) might well be expected to insist that their project was legal, just and good for the Commonwealth. But in doing so they tapped into a rising intellectual current in England that saw the improvement and enclosure of waste land as the greatest possible benefit, a sound investment for landowners and a sure means to increase the nation’s wealth and population. Such views were part of a wider enthusiasm for utopian reforms of all kinds that was especially prevalent during the turbulent years of the Interregnum. Among the most zealous, imaginative, and prolific reform advocates were Samuel Hartlib and his extensive network of correspondents. Born in Elbing to a prominent Baltic merchant and his English wife, Hartlib emigrated to England in 1628 and remained there until his death. He was widely known among the educated social elite, in England and elsewhere, as an ‘intelligencer’ – one who collected, connected, and circulated valuable information. He was inspired by the philosophy of Francis Bacon and believed that valuable practical knowledge ought to be shared as widely as possible. Throughout his life, Hartlib exchanged letters with hundreds of correspondents all across Europe and served as a central node of a prolific communication and publishing network known today as the ‘Hartlib Circle.
The Hartlib Circle was most active and influential during the Interregnum, when so many among England’s political and intellectual elite believed that a new age of the world was at hand and that the opportunity to transform the nation into a true, godly Commonwealth was at last within reach. Hartlib was on good terms with key figures in the Interregnum state, including John Thurloe and Oliver Cromwell himself, as well as many members of Parliament. Given the strong interest of the Hartlib Circle in agricultural innovations and improvement schemes of all kinds, it was no wonder that some of their most important treatises fixed on fen drainage and the improvement of waste lands generally as a means to enhance the nation’s prosperity.
In 1651 Robert Child published a letter commending the great improvements recently made in the great fen of Lincolnshire which, he was informed, recovered nearly 380,000 areas- such sweeping improvements as these, he wrote, were the best and godliest way for England to prosper because they increased the size and productivity of the nation through peaceful means, rather than conquest. After initial skepticism Walter Blith published a treatise in 1652 extolling the advantages of regaining drowned lands. No respecter of blind tradition when it came to agricultural practice, Blith believed that English farming could be vastly improved through any number of ingenious innovations, and he criticized English farmers for holding the entire Commonwealth back through their ‘sloth, prejudice and ill husbandry.’ He had an especially negative view of the Fens and their inhabitants and argued that age-old fenland practices such as intercommoning and unrestrained grazing of livestock had damaged the land and prevented more enterprising farmers from improving it. Both practices he viewed as ignorant, ill-considered, and irrational.- their conservative outlook, low standards, general laziness, and defeatist attitude had obviously discouraged innovation, serving only to ‘weary the minds, and weaken the hands of others that would endeavor it.’
Cessy Dymock, a Lincolnshire farmer, inventor and projector promoted various agricultural improvement schemes. His grand objective was to optimize the efficient use and exploitation of every acre in England though he concentrated on the drained Fens because they represented a unique tabula rasa- a newly created landscape ready to be surveyed, divided, enclosed, tilled and planted with novel crops. Dymock’s idealized vision of the improved and reorganized Fens is a neat geographical pattern of fields, drainage ditches, and navigation canals, weaving together a network of orderly and hierarchically arranged farmsteads, intended to achieve optimum efficiency through rational, mathematical organization. He believed a farm arranged by his plan , ‘merely in contrivance, with or besides any other improvement, shall make 100 acres, to all intents and purposes useful and profitable as 150 acres can be.’ If comprehensively adopted, Dymock’s geometrical plan promised almost miraculous returns: ‘the most perfect, right, and ample use of every foot of ground enclosed entire.” Besides being more profitable, moreover, his rationally organized estate would also be more pleasurable for its inhabitants: ’You may at all times with ease view and take account of your business, and yet be as neat and sweet as in a burgemaster’s house in Holland.’ The circular layout in particular was not only more efficient but had an undeniable aesthetic appeal for Dymock, even with respect to the manor house itself, ‘which I would also build round, which form I suppose to be of most beauty, and least cost to him that will give his mind to consider it rightly’. For Dymock, the rational, mathematical organization of one’s farm was literally its own reward.
The lived reality of the fens was not bleak for most; throughout the Middle Ages the fenlanders had developed a number of ways to live and even prosper within their watery world. Though the floodwaters could be unpredictable in any given year, they were reasonably dependable over time and could usually be relied on to follow a certain pattern, arriving the autumn and receding in most areas by late spring. Nor, for all the trouble they sometimes caused, were they without benefit: while most of the land could not grow grain, the receding floods left riverine silt deposits that promoted the growth of abundant grass on meadows spanning hundreds of thousands of acres. Fenland agriculture was thus based primarily on livestock grazing, and in a good year the region even supported stock from neighboring uplands, whose owners could then put their drier, arable lands to more profitable use. Those fenland areas too wet for grazing yielded other valuable goods, including foodstuffs, building materials, and fuel . . .the traditional fenland economy did not exist in spite of the recurring floods, but because of them. The key to managing and profiting from the Fens was to regulate and control the floods, rendering them stable and predictable as possible, rather than eliminating them altogether. Specialized administrative bodies called ‘commissions of sewers’ were created for this purpose in the Middle Ages.]
Part II- Fens During the Commonwealth
The ‘Adventurers” (investors in drainage projects) might well be expected to insist that their project was legal, just and good for the Commonwealth. But in doing so they tapped into a rising intellectual current in England that saw the improvement and enclosure of waste land as the greatest possible benefit, a sound investment for landowners and a sure means to increase the nation’s wealth and population. Such views were part of a wider enthusiasm for utopian reforms of all kinds that was especially prevalent during the turbulent years of the Interregnum. Among the most zealous, imaginative, and prolific reform advocates were Samuel Hartlib and his extensive network of correspondents. Born in Elbing to a prominent Baltic merchant and his English wife, Hartlib emigrated to England in 1628 and remained there until his death. He was widely known among the educated social elite, in England and elsewhere, as an ‘intelligencer’ – one who collected, connected, and circulated valuable information. He was inspired by the philosophy of Francis Bacon and believed that valuable practical knowledge ought to be shared as widely as possible. Throughout his life, Hartlib exchanged letters with hundreds of correspondents all across Europe and served as a central node of a prolific communication and publishing network known today as the ‘Hartlib Circle.
The Hartlib Circle was most active and influential during the Interregnum, when so many among England’s political and intellectual elite believed that a new age of the world was at hand and that the opportunity to transform the nation into a true, godly Commonwealth was at last within reach. Hartlib was on good terms with key figures in the Interregnum state, including John Thurloe and Oliver Cromwell himself, as well as many members of Parliament. Given the strong interest of the Hartlib Circle in agricultural innovations and improvement schemes of all kinds, it was no wonder that some of their most important treatises fixed on fen drainage and the improvement of waste lands generally as a means to enhance the nation’s prosperity.
In 1651 Robert Child published a letter commending the great improvements recently made in the great fen of Lincolnshire which, he was informed, recovered nearly 380,000 areas- such sweeping improvements as these, he wrote, were the best and godliest way for England to prosper because they increased the size and productivity of the nation through peaceful means, rather than conquest. After initial skepticism Walter Blith published a treatise in 1652 extolling the advantages of regaining drowned lands. No respecter of blind tradition when it came to agricultural practice, Blith believed that English farming could be vastly improved through any number of ingenious innovations, and he criticized English farmers for holding the entire Commonwealth back through their ‘sloth, prejudice and ill husbandry.’ He had an especially negative view of the Fens and their inhabitants and argued that age-old fenland practices such as intercommoning and unrestrained grazing of livestock had damaged the land and prevented more enterprising farmers from improving it. Both practices he viewed as ignorant, ill-considered, and irrational.- their conservative outlook, low standards, general laziness, and defeatist attitude had obviously discouraged innovation, serving only to ‘weary the minds, and weaken the hands of others that would endeavor it.’
Cessy Dymock, a Lincolnshire farmer, inventor and projector promoted various agricultural improvement schemes. His grand objective was to optimize the efficient use and exploitation of every acre in England though he concentrated on the drained Fens because they represented a unique tabula rasa- a newly created landscape ready to be surveyed, divided, enclosed, tilled and planted with novel crops. Dymock’s idealized vision of the improved and reorganized Fens is a neat geographical pattern of fields, drainage ditches, and navigation canals, weaving together a network of orderly and hierarchically arranged farmsteads, intended to achieve optimum efficiency through rational, mathematical organization. He believed a farm arranged by his plan , ‘merely in contrivance, with or besides any other improvement, shall make 100 acres, to all intents and purposes useful and profitable as 150 acres can be.’ If comprehensively adopted, Dymock’s geometrical plan promised almost miraculous returns: ‘the most perfect, right, and ample use of every foot of ground enclosed entire.” Besides being more profitable, moreover, his rationally organized estate would also be more pleasurable for its inhabitants: ’You may at all times with ease view and take account of your business, and yet be as neat and sweet as in a burgemaster’s house in Holland.’ The circular layout in particular was not only more efficient but had an undeniable aesthetic appeal for Dymock, even with respect to the manor house itself, ‘which I would also build round, which form I suppose to be of most beauty, and least cost to him that will give his mind to consider it rightly’. For Dymock, the rational, mathematical organization of one’s farm was literally its own reward.
The Hartlib Circle was also keen to improve agriculture in Ireland and the New World. Like the Fens on a larger scale, they viewed Ireland as a great tabula rasa on which their theories for manuring and improving the land could be tested, not only making Ireland more productive, rational and civilized, but also laying the ground for further improvements in England. Beyond Ireland ,Hartlib also supported a project to create a godly Protestant settlement in North America. Both imperial projects were founded on the Hartlib Circle’s view of the natural world as a disorderly, irrational place and their belief in the capacity for human reason and hard work to reform and improve it, ideas that also governed their understanding of the Fens.
Besides recouping a healthy return on their financial investments, the supporters of fen drainage projects and England’s other imperial adventures seem to have shared some larger goals in common: transforming the natural environment to make it more productive, overcoming the resistance of backward, ignorant natives to turn them into rational, governable, and civilized English subjects; and doing all this in the name of promoting English trade and economic growth. Whether undertaken at home or abroad, such projects were all linked to the same utopian, reformist, and imperial worldview, propagated by Samuel Hartlib’s network of would-be improvers and projectors. Fen drainage can thus be understood ideologically as an early modern instance of “internal colonialism.’
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