till the water reached half up the church.
Steeking was wholly carried away, and a
loaded waggon at that place was torn in
two by the raging water.

The history of the drainage of the
country now surveyed by our winged
commissioner is a romance in itself. In James
the First's time, a local jury decided against
further draining; but in 1626 the king
granted leave to Cornelius Vermuyden, a
Zealander, who offered for a third part of all
he could reclaim to retrieve seventy
thousand acres in Axholm alone. The Van
Peenens, Valkenburghs and Veenattis, rich
merchants of Dort and Amsterdam,
encouraged the adventure of their countryman,
and his skilled Dutch and Flemish
workmen soon got near the end of their
work. The fen men became furious at the
improvements. They complained of unjust
distribution of the new lands, and of wilful
injury done to the old. Openly countenanced
by Portington, a turbulent justice
of the peace, they frequently fell on the
foreigners, broke down their new embankments,
and burnt their obnoxious implements.
The resolute Dutchman, who had
checked the Thames at Dagenham, and
had drained Windsor and Sedgemoor, was
not, however, to be baffled by the stilt
walkers of the fens. Vermuyden collected
round him French Protestants from
Picardy and Walloons from Flanders,
refugees whose fathers had fled from the
Duke of Alva, and settled in eastern
England, along the edge of the fens, especially
at Wisbeach, Whittlesea, Thorney, and
Spalding. Slowly he carried the waters of
the Sole into new deep channels for ever to
be tributary to the Trent. The waters of
the capricious Don were also forced
henceforward to flow directly into the Ouse, near
Goole. Farmers had no longer need to
ferry from Axholm to Sandtoft, not again
would a boat with coffin and mourners
be lost when rowing from Thorney to
Hatfield. Nor, on the other hand, would
future time ever see the glorious sight that
Prince Henry beheld, when five hundred
deer were driven before his one hundred
boats, from Hatfield to Thorney Mere.
Unfortunately for the industrious Dutchman,
one single error in his first plan rendered his
whole life miserable. Vermuyden forced the
Don at first through its northern channel
alone into the river Aire. This cutting
proved insufficient, and fresh lands were
flooded. The people of the northern Don
henceforward became the chief enemies of
the improvement, and on some of Vermuyden's
men killing one of the rioters, it led
to fifty successive attacks on the works, till
at last a royal proclamation read in Axholm
by the sheriff, escorted by fifty horsemen,
mingled with threats of fire and vengeance,
led to some transient quietude.
Vermuyden, though proud, resolute, and
sometimes driven to retaliations by the
stupid boors who did not know their own
good, succeeded at last; in 1629, he was
knighted by Charles the First, and took a
grant from the crown of Hatfield Chase for
the sum of sixteen thousand and eighty
pounds, and an annual rent of one hundred
and ninety-five pounds three shillings and
fivepence-halfpenny, and one red rose.

The Dutch and German settlers were now
allowed to build chapels in their villages.
Still the conservative fen men remained
turbulent and complaining. Their houses
and farms were flooded, they said, their
corn was washed away, their cattle were
drowned, and the old rights of common
cancelled. Unfortunately for Vermuyden,
he had now either lost his temper or
grown too arrogant and despotic. He
threatened petitioners against him with the
gallows, which indeed many of them richly
deserved. He threw many offenders against
his Dutchmen into York gaol. He ruthlessly
stopped the old freeholders' privileges
of cutting moor turf, till he had at
last to restore many old rights, owing to
the interference of Lord Wentworth,
president of the North. Eventually
Vermuyden washed his hands of ungrateful
Lincolnshire altogether, and sold all his
property there. In 1642, when the Royalists
were threatening the fens, Cromwell's
party broke the dykes, pulled up the
floodgates, and again laid Hatfield under water.
The tide had turned, and henceforward all
(except during short gleams of success)
went ill with Sir Cornelius. He became
involved in a spider's web of law-suits and
found his way into prison. The Dutch
speculators who had lost by the "Dutch
Canal," also took legal proceedings against
him. But indomitable as ever, in 1629 he
commenced the great Bedford Level for
the Earl of Bedford. The clamour against
the brave, resolute, industrious Dutchman
then grew louder than ever. The street
ballads sung against the drainers contained
such verses as the following:

"Behold the great design, which they do now determine,
Will make our bodies pine, a prey to crows and vermine;
For they do meane all fens to drain and waters
   over-master,
All will be dry, and we must die, 'cause Essex calves
   want pasture.