Chapter XVIII

Boundary of Fens.--Roman Works, Car Dyke, Sea Wall,
Causeway.--Archipelago.--Littleport, Agrarian Riots.--Denver
Sluice.--Roslyn Pit.--Fenland Abbeys, Chatteris, Ramsey,
Peterborough, Thorney, Crowland.

The vast Fenland district of which the Isle of Ely is the core consisted, until the fens were drained, of an archipelago of scattered islets rising out of a morass, through which the rivers from the uplands around stagnated in a complex system of waterways, constantly changing, as one branch or another got silted up and the streams had to make themselves new channels.

The foreshore of the uplands may still be traced on a contour map, and is seen to be deeply indented, with bays running in from the fen and capes running out into it. The southernmost point of the morass was at Fen Ditton on the Cam, two miles below Cambridge. Its western boundary went by, Waterbeach, Cottenham, and Willingham, to Earith; thence through Huntingdonshire to Ramsey and Peterborough; thence, by Deeping, Holbeach, and Spalding, to the Witham, a few miles below Lincoln. Throughout all this length ran a Roman earthwork, the Car Dyke, still existing at many points, evidently thrown up by these mighty civilisers to keep the floods in check. A like Roman embankment, of much larger dimensions, is to be seen on either shore of the great estuary which of old brought the sea-shore as far south as Wisbech. The eastern boundary of the Fenland needs no such defence, as on this side the higher ground sinks much more abruptly to the fen level. It passes from Fen Ditton by Horningsea, Bottisham, Swaffham, and Reach to Burwell. Here a peninsula projects to Soham, followed by a deep inlet to Isleham and Mildenhall. Then it runs north and west to Downham, in Norfolk, and thence due north to the sea by Lynn.

We must not, however, suppose that the whole of this immense tract was always morass. Oscillations in the land level have more than once raised it high enough and long enough for great forests to clothe it; the trees of which, frequently of giant size, are constantly exhumed from the peat which the later depressions have formed over them.[233] The last of these forests seems to have lingered on into Roman times. A Roman roadway may still be traced, running east and west across the whole breadth of the district, from Denver, at the south-western point of the Norfolk uplands, to Stanground, near Peterborough, on the Huntingdonshire mainland. The Fens must have been very different from what they afterwards became for such a road to be in use. But before the collapse of Roman Britain in the fifth century of our era all seems to have gone to fen once more; and the islets in it served as a refuge for the remnant of the British population when the flood of the Anglo-Saxon Conquest burst over the land.[234]

[Footnote 233: See p. 196.]

[Footnote 234: See p. 168.]

These islets number some thirty and more, and vary considerably in size. Far the largest is that on which Ely stands, the southern part of which has been spoken of in Chapter XII. At its extreme northern point, on a subsidiary islet of its own, is the large village of Littleport, chiefly memorable as having been the focus of a most serious agrarian outbreak, which in the year 1816 convulsed the district. Widespread agricultural distress marked the first decades of the nineteenth century. The wholesale enclosure of the common fields and the waste lands brought with it no small suffering to the peasantry; who everywhere lost, by the Enclosure Acts, the advantages which the waste lands had afforded them, receiving in exchange a scanty portion of "town land" in each parish, the rent of which is applied to local charities. And in many instances the policy of the Government placed these "town lands" in the least accessible corner of the parish; for the express purpose of preventing labourers from acquiring allotments in them and thus becoming less dependent on their wages. The draining of the fens, moreover, which was then in full progress, by exterminating the old abundance of fish and wildfowl deprived the marsh-men at once of their chief recreation and their most savoury food. Wages were only nine shillings a week, while wheat was no less than five guineas a quarter. These grievances actually drove the peasantry to arms, not without countenance from sympathisers of a superior class, who felt that the demand of the rioters for wages enough to purchase a stone of flour a week, which was all they asked, could not be called unreasonable.

"Assembling by sound of horn at Littleport, they sacked some of the houses of the most prosperous, levied contributions on others, and then marched on Ely in formidable force, armed with guns, pistols, scythes, etc., and under cover of a waggon, on which they had mounted four punt-guns. These formidable weapons, used for wild-fowl shooting, with barrels eight feet long, whose charge was no less than a pound of gunpowder, projected over the front of the vehicle to clear the way if needful. But though the leading inhabitants of Ely had hastily armed themselves, and been sworn in as special constables they were not prepared to face this artillery, and the town passed without resistance into the power of the mob, who repeated their Littleport doings on a larger scale, though with little bodily hurt to anyone. Unhappily the mob soon got out of hand, and the movement rapidly degenerated into a mere drunken riot, the chief sufferers in which were, as usual, those who had done most for the relief of the poor--the local shopkeepers, who had aided them by credit, and the local clergy, who had organised soup-kitchens for them.

"At the first approach of the military force sent for to suppress them, the rioters retreated in good order, still under cover of their armed waggon, to Littleport, where, however, only a handful made any sort of stand when the soldiers actually arrived."[235] The rest dispersed in panic, and not a blow was struck in defence of those, some eighty in number, who were selected to be made an example of. A special commission was held for the trial of these unhappy men. "In spite of strong testimony to character, five were hanged, and five more transported for life, the rest undergoing various terms of imprisonment; all to the accompaniment of ecclesiastical rejoicings, the Bishop entering the cathedral in solemn procession, to the strains of the triumphal anthem, "Why do the heathen rage?", with his Sword of State borne before him (by his butler!), and escorted by fifty of the principal inhabitants, carrying white wands. No fewer than three hundred of these wand-bearers guarded the execution of the five rioters; yet the sympathy for them was so strong that the bishop could not get a cart to carry them to the gallows under five guineas for the trip."

[Footnote 235: From my _History of Cambridgeshire_.]

Such was the last serious exercise of the Bishop's long-descended secular jurisdiction over the Isle. From the Girvian Princes to the Abbesses of Ely, from the Abbesses to the Abbots, from the Abbots to the Bishops that Palatinate jurisdiction had been handed on for twelve hundred years;--and this was its sordid close. It died none too soon.

Littleport is now quite a thriving and prosperous place, with a shirt-factory employing over 300 hands and a most effective system of agriculture in the reclaimed fens around. It has a fine Early English church, and a grand tower, through the basement of which goes the footway of the street. Until the nineteenth century the place was so inaccessible by land that the Cambridgeshire annalist Carter (1752) tells us that "it is as rare to see a coach at Littleport as a ship at Newmarket."

From Littleport the road pursues its level way for seven miles across the fen, till, after crossing the small islet of Hilgay, it strikes the Norfolk uplands at their south-western corner, hard by Denver Sluice; the present boundary of the North Sea tide, which once ran up almost to Cambridge. This magnificent Sluice is the keystone of the whole drainage scheme of the fenland. Here the New and the Old Bedford Rivers, whose start we saw at Earith (p. 280), once more rejoin the Ouse, having conveyed in twenty-two miles the waters which by the old channel would have taken thirty-three. This, of course, gives them a better fall, and renders them less liable to silt themselves up.

Practically the New River does all the work, very little water being in the Old except what the tide brings up. It is a striking sight to be on the Sluice at high water and gaze at the sea waves ridging up this old river with force that seems illimitable. And yet not enough pass in, before the ebb calls them back, ever (or hardly ever) to reach Earith, as a glance at the channel there instantly shows. Still more striking is it to be on the Sluice when the spring tides are on, and see the sea on the north of the Sluice standing fifteen or twenty feet higher than the fresh waters on the south. One realises what widespread disaster would ensue if the Sluice were to give way. Small wonder that during the Fenian dynamite scare of 1867 the place was watched day and night by a guard of soldiers. The Sluice itself is a massive dam of stonework; having a big lock with two sets of gates, one against the stream of the river, the other against the tideway of the sea, which reaches this point by a broad cut from the important seaport of King's Lynn.

This present erection was built 1752. Its earlier predecessor was set up 1651 by the Dutch engineer Vermuyden, the maker of the Bedford Rivers, to whose genius the whole present scheme of drainage owes its existence. He carried through his plan in face of most determined opposition, especially from the towns of Lynn and Cambridge, who complained that "whereas of old ships from Newcastle were wont to make eighteen voyages in the year to Cambridge with sea coal, now, since the blocking of the stream at Denver and the diversion of its waters at Earith, they can make but ten or twelve, whereby the price of fuel hath increased by half." When this first sluice was "blown up" by the tide in 1713 there were loud rejoicings. The consequences, however, proved so serious, that the next generation was fain to see it replaced.

Lynn is the point to which the road we have been following ultimately leads. On leaving Ely by this road, the first turn to the right will bring us down to the famous Roslyn (or Roswell) Pit, beloved of geologists and botanists. It is a large water-filled excavation by the side of the railway, nurturing various rare water plants, and presenting the wonderful spectacle of chalk lying _above_ boulder-clay, a phenomenon now attributed to ice action.[236]

[Footnote 236: See Hughes' _Geography of Cambridgeshire_.]

The western declivity of the Island plunges down to the fen at Mepal, on the New Bedford River. After crossing this, the road leads straight across the fen to Chatteris, and is called Ireton's Way; the causeway on which it runs having been made by that great Puritan general, for strategic purposes, during the Civil War. Chatteris was the first of the wonderful chain of Abbeys which swept round the Fenland from Ely into Lincolnshire. The others are Ramsey and Peterborough on the last verge of the mainland; with Thorney and Crowland, rising, like Chatteris, on islands in the morass.[237] Of these, Chatteris and Thorney alone are in Cambridgeshire; though Peterborough is within half a mile of the county boundary. The former, a nunnery, was founded by the Lady Alwyn, foster-mother to Edgar the Peacemaker. It was never a large House, and no remains of it survive; but Chatteris is now the seat of another Benedictine community, exiled from France in 1901. The place possesses some curious wells of warm water, not of any great depth, as such usually are, but penetrating only some ten or twelve feet into the fen deposits. Local chemical decomposition is supposed to account for the phenomenon. The fen hereabouts is rich in geological and archaeological remains. And within sight of his mother's convent, only six miles away across the fen, her son (also an Alwyn), the Alderman or Earl of the district, founded, on the projecting cape of the Huntingdonshire mainland, the much larger abbey of Ramsey, whose abbot was one of the higher or "mitred" class, privileged to give the "Minor" Orders (_i.e._ those beneath the grade of Deacon).

[Footnote 237: The history of the Houses outside our county we only touch upon where connected with spots inside.]

Thorney was of earlier date; coeval, indeed, with Peterborough. Of its foundation a graphic description is given by the chronicler. After telling how King Wulfhere of Mercia (whose wife was sister to St. Etheldreda), endowed Peterborough and its abbot Sexwulf with broad possessions, he continues:

"Then said the King: 'This gift is little, but it is my will they
hold it so royally and so freely that neither geld nor fee be
taken from it....And thus free will I make this Minster, that it
be under Rome alone: and my will it is that all we who may not go
to Rome visit St. Peter here.'

"While thus he spake, the Abbot prayed of him that he would give
him whatsoever he should ask. And the King granted him. Then said
the Abbot: 'Here have I God-fearing monks, who would fain live as
anchorites (_i.e._, hermits), knew they but where. And here is an
island which is called Ancarig[238] (Thorney). And my boon is
that we might there build a Minster, to the glory of St. Mary, so
that they who would lead the life of peace and rest may dwell
therein.'

"Then the King answered and said: 'Beloved Sexwulf, lo! not only
that which thou hast asked, but all else on our Lord's behalf I
thus approve and grant.' ... And King Wulfhere first confirmed it
by word, and after subscribed it with his fingers on the Cross
of Christ" (_i.e._ he signed his name with a cross, on which he
laid his finger, saying, "I deliver this as my act and deed," as
we do with the seal on a deed at present. Seals did not come in
till the Norman Conquest). Amongst the witnesses to his signature
we find "Wilfrid the Priest, who was afterwards Bishop," _i.e._
the great St. Wilfrid of Ripon.

[Footnote 238: This name has probably nothing to do with "anchorite," but is of Celtic derivation.]

Thorney, however, was long in rising to abbatial dignity, and remained the abode of anchorites, so humble and so sequestered that in the great Danish raid of 870, when Ely and every other Religious House throughout the Fenland was destroyed, the plunderers did not take the trouble to seek it out, and it became a haven of refuge for the survivors of the sack of Crowland. The story is graphically told in the "Chronicle of Crowland"; in its present form probably a thirteenth century work, but obviously compiled from earlier sources.

After describing vividly the utter overthrow, at a great battle in Kesteven (West Lincolnshire), of the local forces hastily called out to meet the Danish host, he tells how a few poor fugitives got them to the Church of Crowland, and interrupted the Midnight Service with their crushing tidings.

"At this news all was confusion. And the Abbot, keeping with
himself the oldest of the monks and a few of the children (of the
Abbey School), bade all those in their prime to take along with
them the sacred relics of the monastery (namely the holy body of
St. Guthlac, his scourge, and his psalter) and the other chief
treasures, and thus to flee into the neighbouring fens. With
sorrow of heart did they his bidding, and, having laden a boat
with the aforesaid relics and the charters of the Kings, they
cast into the cloister well the frontal of the High Altar (which
was covered with plates of gold) along with ten chalices ... and
other vessels. But the end of the frontal, so long was it, always
showed above the water; whereupon they drew it out and left it
with the Abbot; for ever could they see the flames of the towns
in Kesteven draw nigher and nigher, and feared lest the Heathen
should on a sudden burst in upon them. So took they boat, and
came unto the wood of Ancarig on the southern march of their
islet. And here abode they with Brother Toretus, an anchorite,
and other brethren, then dwelling there, four days, thirty in
all, of whom ten were priests. But the Abbot, and two old men
with him, hid the aforesaid frontal outside the church, to the
North; and afterwards he and all the rest clad in their sacred
vestments, met in Choir, and kept the Hours of Divine Service
according to their Rule. And the whole of the Psalms of David
went they through from end to end. After this sang they High
Mass, the Abbot himself being Celebrant....

"Now, when the Mass was drawing to an end, and the Abbot and his
deacon and subdeacon and the taper-bearers had already
communicated in the Holy Mysteries, came the Heathen bursting
into the church. And upon the very Altar, by the cruel hand of
King Oscytel, was the venerable Abbot himself sacrificed, a true
martyr and victim of Christ. All they who stood round and
ministered with him were beheaded by the savages; and the aged
men and children, as they fled from the Choir, were taken and
questioned under the bitterest tortures, to make them show the
treasures of the church. Dom[239] Asker, the Prior, was slain in
the vestry, and Dom Lethwyn, Sub-prior, in the refectory. Behind
him there followed close Brother Turgar, a ten year child,
shapely, and of a fair countenance; who, when he saw his superior
slain, besought earnestly that he too might be slain with him.
But Earl Sidroc the Younger, touched with pity for the lad,
stripped him of his cowl, and gave him a Danish cloak, bidding
him follow everywhere his steps.... And thus, out of all who
abode in the Monastery, old and young, he alone was saved; coming
and going amongst the Danes throughout all his sojourn amongst
them, even as one of themselves, through this Earl's favour and
protection.

[Footnote 239: _Dominus_ is thus abbreviated amongst
Benedictines.]

"Now when all the monks had been done to death by the torturers,
and no whit of the Abbey treasures shown thereby, the Danes, with
spades and ploughshares, brake open right and left all the
sepulchres of the Saints round about that of St. Guthlac. On the
right was that of St. Cissa, priest and anchorite, and of St.
Bettelin, a man of God, erst an attendant on St. Guthlac, and of
Dom Siward (the Abbot) of blessed memory. And on the left was
that of St. Egbert, St. Guthlac's scribe and confessor, and of
St. Tatwin, the pilot who guided St. Guthlac to Crowland.... All
these did the savages burst open, looking to find treasure
therein. And finding none, they were filled with indignation; and
piling up all these holy bodies on a heap, in piteous wise, they
set fire to them, and, on the third day after their coming, that
is to say, on the 7th of the Kalends of October (September 25),
they utterly consumed them, church and monastery and all.

"But on the fourth day off they went, with countless droves of
beasts and pack-horses, to Medehampstead (Peterborough). And
there, dashing at the outer precinct of the Monastery, with its
barred gates, they assailed the walls on every side with arrows
and machines. At the second assault the Heathen brake in, and, in
the very breach, Tubba, the brother of Earl Hubba, fell
grievously wounded by a stone cast. By the hands of his guards he
was borne into the tent of Hubba his brother, and despaired even
of life. Then did Hubba's rage boil over, and he was altogether
wild against the monks, so that he slew with his own hand every
soul clad in the religious habit; the rest sprang upon the rest;
not one in the whole Monastery was saved; both the venerable
Abbot Hedda, and all his monks, and all the lay-brethren were
massacred; and Brother Turgar was warned by his master, Earl
Sidroc, never anywhere to cross the path of Earl Hubba. Every
altar was uprooted, every monument broken in pieces, the great
library of holy books burnt, the plenteous store of monastic
papers scattered to the winds; the precious relics of the holy
virgins Kineburgh, Kinswith, and Tibba,[240] trodden under foot;
the walls utterly overthrown; the buildings burnt up, church and
all, blazing with a bright flame for five whole days after.

[Footnote 240: Kineburgh and Kinswith were sisters of Wulfhere,
the first Christian King of Mercia. Tibba is usually identified
with St. Ebba of Coldingham.]

"Then on the fourth day the Host drew together, with spoil beyond
tale from all the country round, and set off towards Huntingdon.
The two Sidroc Earls, at the crossing of the rivers, ever came
last, to guard the rear of the whole army. Now all their host had
passed over the river Nene safely; but, as they were themselves
crossing, they had the bad luck to lose two carts, laden with
untold wealth and plenishing, which sank in a deep eddy of the
stream to the left of the stone bridge, so that horses and all
were drowned before they could be got out. And while the whole
household of Earl Sidroc the younger was busied in drawing out
these same carts, and in transferring the spoil to other waggons
and carriages, Brother Turgar slipped away and fled to the
neighbouring forest. All night did he walk, and with the earliest
dawn came into Crowland. There he found his fellow monks, who had
got back from Thorney the day before, and were hard at work
putting out the fires, which still had the mastery in many of the
ruins of the Monastery.

"And when they saw him safe and sound they were somewhat
comforted; but on hearing from him where their Abbot and the
other Superiors and Brethren lay slain, and how all the
sepulchres of the Saints were broken down, and all the monuments,
and all the holy books and all the sacred bodies burnt up, all
were stricken with grief unspeakable; and long was the
lamentation and mourning that was made. Satiated at length with
weeping, they turned again to putting out the conflagration. And
when they raised the ruins of the church roof about the High
Altar, they found the body of their venerable father and abbot,
Theodore, beheaded, stripped, half burnt, and bruised, and
crushed into the earth by the fallen timbers. This was on the
eighth day after his murder, and a little away from the spot
where he was slaughtered. And the other ministers, who fell with
him, found they in like manner crushed into the ground by the
weight of the beams--all save Wulfric the taper-bearer.

"But not all at once. For the bodies of some of the Brethren were
not found till half a year after their martyrdom, and not in the
places where they were slain. For Dom Paulinus and Dom Herbert,
very old men, and decrepit, whose hands were cut off and
themselves tortured to death in the Choir, were found, after a
diligent search, not there but in the Chapterhouse. In like
manner Dom Grimketyl and Dom Egmund, both some hundred years old,
who had been thrust through with swords in the Cloister, were
found in the Parlour. And the rest too, both children and old
men, were sought for in divers places, even as Brother Turgar
told just how each had been slain; and at last were all found,
with many a doleful plaint and many a tear, save Wulfric only.
And Dom Brickstan, once the Precentor of the monastery, a most
skilful musician and poet, who was amongst the survivors, wrote
on the ashes of Crowland that Lament which is so well known and
begins thus:

'Desolate how dost thou sit, who late wast Queen among Houses
Church so noble of old; erst so beloved of God.'

(Quomodo sola sedes, dudum regina domorum,
Nobilis ecclesia, et nuper amica Dei).

"Now when the Monastery, after long and hard work, was cleared,
so far as was then possible, from filth and ashes, they took
counsel on choosing them a Pastor; and when the election was
held, the venerable Father Godric, though much against his will,
was made Abbot. To him came that venerable old man Toretus, the
Prior of Thorney, and his Sub-prior, Dom Tissa, both anchorites
of the utmost sanctity. And devoutly they prayed him that he
would deign to take with him certain Brethren and come to
Peterborough, and give, of his charity, Christian burial to the
bodies of their Abbot and the other Brethren, which yet remained
unburied and exposed to beasts and birds. The Abbot gave heed
unto their prayer, and with many of the brethren (amongst them
Brother Turgar) came unto Peterborough, where all the Brethren of
Thorney met him. And with much labour the bodies of all the monks
of that Monastery were got together, 84 by tale, and buried in
one wide grave in the midst of the Abbey cemetery, over against
what was once the East End of the Church. This was on St.
Cecilia's day (November 22).

"And over the body of the Abbot, as he lay amid his children, he
placed a three-sided stone, three feet high and three long and
one broad, bearing carved likenesses of the Abbot, and his monks
standing around him. And this stone, in memory of the ruined
Abbey, bade he thenceforward to be called Medehampstead. And once
in every year, while he lived, did he visit it; and, pitching his
tent above the stone, said Mass for two days with instant
devotion for the souls of those there buried.

"Through the midst of that cemetery there ran the King's highway
(_Via Regia_); and this stone was on the right thereof, as one
comes up from the aforesaid stone bridge towards Holland (S.E.
Lincolnshire); and on the left stood a stone cross bearing a
carven image of the Saviour; which our Abbot Godric then set
there, to the intent that travellers who passed by might be
mindful of that holy Abbey, and pray to the Lord for the souls of
the Faithful who lay in that cemetery."

The Abbot of Thorney was also "mitred," and the House ranked as second only to Ely in the county. William of Malmesbury (A.D. 1135) describes it as "a little paradise, delightsome as heaven itself may be deemed, fen-circled, yet rich in loftiest trees, where water-meadows delight the eye with rich green, where streamlets glide unchecked through each field. Scarce a spot of ground lies there waste; here are orchards, there vineyards. Nature vies with culture, and what is unknown to the one is produced by the other. And what of the glorious buildings, whose very size it is a wonder that the ground can support amid such marshes? A vast solitude is here the monks' lot, that they may the more closely cling to things above. If a woman is there seen, she is counted a monster, but strangers, if men, are greeted as angels unawares. Yet there none speaketh, save for the moment; all is holy silence.... Truly I may call that island a hostel of chastity, a tavern of honesty, a gymnasium of divine philosophy. From its dense thickets it is called Thorney."

At the draining of the Fens, in the seventeenth century, Thorney was assigned to the Earls (now Dukes) of Bedford, who, during the nineteenth century alone, have expended on their Thorney estates nearly L2,000,000. Yet the Thorney property does not even pay its way. The noble owners have, however, their reward in the genuine success which has crowned the experiment from a philanthropic point of view. Thanks to their efforts, Thorney is again, as in the old days of the Benedictines, a smiling, well-wooded oasis amid the dreary Fenland; where the welfare of the tenantry is, as of old, the chief object of the landlord, and where, in consequence, pauperism, drunkenness, and crime are alike practically unknown. The remains of the Abbey Church are still used for parochial worship, but only 117 of its original 290 feet of length have survived Henry the Eighth's demolitions.