Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely

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 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.

Thus was dug, in 1651, the New Bedford River, and thus was built, somewhat later, Denver Sluice. Vermuyden's plan, which continued for two centuries to be gradually developed on the lines he originally laid down, was to cut a few main water-courses through the district, running at a higher level than the swamps around, with Lynn for their chief outfall, and an infinite number of short straight cuts at right angles to these, whence the water draining from the morass should be pumped into them. This pumping was originally done by windmills, and a picturesque sight it was to see their white sails dotting the wide expanse. But all are now superseded by the less poetical but more dependable steam pumping stations, whose tall chimneys form a notable object in the Fenland landscape.

The work was very gradual, with many drawbacks. The Denver Sluice, on which the whole plan depended, was, as has been said, destroyed in 1713, and not rebuilt till 1750, when the very towns which had most rejoiced in its fall were the loudest in demanding its replacement. Other calamities also affected the work, which was not finally completed till towards the end of the nineteenth century. The opposition, too, was unceasing, though it took the form of lawsuits rather than violence. But this, too, died out. The very last of them was an attempt by Wisbech, in 1844, to force the hand of the Bedford Level Corporation (as the old Company of Adventurers is now called) by proposing a rival scheme in Parliament.

Now, however, all is victory. For many years past the reclaimed fen has borne excellent crops; and if, since the agricultural depression of the later nineteenth century decades set in, it can no longer merit so fully as it did the title of "the Golden Plain of England," yet the widespread cultivation of fruit and flowers (mostly narcissus) has furnished no small compensation, and the district as a whole enjoys a very large share of prosperity. At this moment the vast areas allotted to the great Adventurers are being largely broken up into small holdings, with the happiest results.

Sentimentally, and even to a certain extent economically, we may regret the Fenland of old, with its vanished wealth of picturesque life; its reeds which made such splendid thatch, its marsh flowers, its butterflies, its shoals of fish, its endless skeins of wild-fowl, its clever "decoys" where these were taken in such exhaustless numbers that a single one (in 1750) sent up to London 3000 couples a week and let for £500 a year. But with these have also vanished the incessant fever and ague and rheumatism which were an ever-present torment in the old Fen life, and the incessant opium-eating in which the Fen-Folk were fain to find relief. Taking things altogether, the gain has outweighed the loss in the draining of the Fens.

CHAPTER XX

Coveney.—Manea.—Doddington.—March, Angel Roof.—Whittlesea.—Old Course of Ouse, Well Stream.—Upwell, Outwell.—Emneth.—Elm.—The Marshland.—West Walton.—Walsoken.—Walpole.—Cross Keys.—Leverington.—Tydd.—Wisbech, Church, Trade, Castle, Catholic Prisoners, Clarkson.—The Wash.—King John.

In close contiguity to the Island of Ely, on the west, is a tiny satellite, which supports the little village of Coveney. Here the church has some remarkable modern woodwork from Oberammergau, the gift of Mr. Athelstan Riley. The pulpit is also remarkable, dating from 1703 and being of Danish work. More remote are Manea and Stonea, both, happily for themselves, now on a railway line, but otherwise unspeakably inaccessible. It is strange at Manea to see the towers of Ely a short five miles away, and to know that twenty miles of bad road will scarcely get you there. Both names seem to have the same signification, Stone Island; which (as they are eminently unstony, being merely low elevations of gravel) may perhaps refer to the selenite crystals with which the ground here teems. Manea Station is one of the few inland places where the curvature of the earth can be clearly seen. The line (towards March) is perfectly straight and perfectly level, and along it you may observe the trains rising into sight over the horizon like ships at sea.

March stands on a much larger island, seven miles in length. At its southern extremity is Doddington, where the fine Early English church was once the richest in England. It was the Mother Church of a wide district, including its whole island and the fens for miles around. As these were drained so did the value of the benefice increase, till it became worth over £7,000 per annum. Parliament then stepped in, and divided the parish (and income) into seven Rectories, three of these being in the town of March, a modern growth around its important railway junction at the furthest northern point of the island. A fourth is Old March, a quiet "village-hamlet" (as Cardinal Wolsey calls it) two miles south of its larger offspring. The church here is most exceptionally beautiful. It is a Perpendicular structure, with a fine crocketed spire and flint patterns in the outer walls of the clerestory. The roof is beyond all magnificent, with "an innumerable company of Angels" along its vista of double hammer-beams. A brass commemorates William Dredeman, the donor of this crowning glory, who died in 1503; and there is another to Catharine Hansard, 1517, on which the Annunciation is depicted. The church is dedicated to St. Wendreda, a purely local saint.[246] The Parish account-books here give a striking picture of the mutations of the Reformation period. There are payments "for pluckynge doun emags [images] in ye Chyrch and for drynkynge thereat" (1547); "for breckyng down the Altar and carrying forth ye stons" (1550); "for makyng the Hy Alter" (1553); "for pulling doun ye hy alter" (1558); and "for a comunion tabull" (1559).

March is the half-way house between Ely and Peterborough, and between it and the last-named lies Whittlesea, also on a good-sized island of its own, which extends nearly to the Northamptonshire mainland. It is a pleasant little town, with a picturesque market place, where the ancient Market House still rises in the centre. And its church almost rivals that of March, with a still more glorious spire. In 1335 Whittlesea was the scene of a most unedifying conflict between the Abbeys of Ramsey and Ely. To begin with, the Abbot of Ramsey and his monks raided the lands at Whittlesea belonging to Ely, drove away sixteen horses, and (by firing the sedge) burned twenty others, besides ten oxen, eighty cows, and one hundred swine, along with much grass, reeds, and other property. In retaliation for this outrage the Prior of Ely (and he, too, the saintly Prior Crauden) organised a regular military expedition, and came, at the head of the whole Abbey musters, "with banners flying as in war," to Ramsey itself, where, as that House complains, he "hewed down our woods, depastured our grass, and drove off our cattle." Both parties appealed to the King; but the discreditable transaction seems to have ended in a compromise. That such wild work should be possible at all in England reminds us that at this date the country had not yet recovered from the confusions attendant on the fall and murder of Edward the Second eight years before.

Till the latter part of the nineteenth century Whittlesea gave its name to a famous mere, lying to the south of the town, and on the very border of the fens. It was a sheet of shallow water a couple of miles in length and breadth, and furnished a splendid field for angling, skating, and boat-sailing. Its shallowness made it none the less dangerous; for the bottom was fathomless ooze, so soft that the punting poles used here had to be furnished with a round board at their extremities, and demanded special skill, for if you once let this board get underneath the mud, it was much more likely to pull you in than you to pull it out.

Other islets of the fen archipelago are Murrow, between Thorney and Wisbech, Westry near March, and Welney, on the Old Bedford river to the north of Manea. The name of the last reminds us that by it ran the old Well Stream, long robbed of its waters by their diversion to Lynn in the thirteenth century. To this day, however, its course may be traced on the map by the meandering boundary between Cambridgeshire and Norfolk across the fen. Following this line northwards we shortly come to the outskirts of the firm ground on which Wisbech stands, an artificial island dating from Roman times and owing its existence to the great Roman sea wall around the Wash.

Through this island ran the great Well Stream, giving their names to the villages (or rather the village, for they form a continuous row of houses) of Upwell and Outwell. This is the longest village in England, stretching on either side of the road for nearly five unbroken miles. It contains over 5,000 inhabitants, and lies partly in Cambridgeshire partly in Norfolk. The churches are in the latter county, and are grand specimens of the splendid series of churches which glorify the Marshland, as this district by the Wash has for ages been named. Both are of Perpendicular date, with a tower somewhat older. That of Upwell has an elaborate turret for the Sanctus bell. The canopy over the pulpit is still more elaborate. The roof has a series of angels, but far less numerous and effective than those at March. At Outwell there is a fine Decorated door, like that of Barrington.

Here at a farm house called Needham Hall (from a famous historic mansion formerly on the site) is shown an old table formed of one solid piece of oak, on which Oliver Cromwell is said to have once slept. When he arrived here at the head of his command during the Civil War, he chose this rude couch in preference to the best bed in the house, that he might fare no better than his men, who were bivouacking in the yard and outhouses.

The churches along the Roman sea-wall on either side of the old Well Stream estuary are also of rare magnificence. To the east, in Norfolk, we find a series of villages deriving their names from the wall itself,—Walsoken, West Walton, Walpole St. Peter, and Walpole St. Andrew. In every one of these the church is a joy; above all at West Walton, with its bell-tower (fifty yards to the south of the main building) uplifted on four graceful arches enriched with dog-tooth moulding. Octangular buttresses support the angles, which are ornamented with blank lancet arches. The next floor has on each side an arcade of three lancets, and the storey above a window of two lights beneath an arch of two mouldings, forming a splay of four banded pillars. No more perfect gem of composition exists; and the Perpendicular parapet which now crowns it very inadequately takes the place of the spire which seems to have been purposed by the original builder. The church itself displays similar features of Early English grace. The nave pillars have Purbeck marble shafts, with beautifully foliated capitals, and the clerestory is pierced with seventeen small archlets, alternately blind and light.

Walsoken, now practically a suburb of Wisbech, has a Perpendicular shell around a Norman nave, which is (next to Norwich Cathedral) the best example of the style in all Norfolk. The chancel arch is a deservedly famous specimen of Transition work. It springs from six banded pillars, and has a soffit exquisitely worked with zig-zags and cusps. The screens of the chapels which formerly occupied the east end of either aisle are rich Perpendicular woodwork. The roof is also Perpendicular, with angels on the transome beams.

Walpole St. Peter's is even more remarkable; for there is actually an ancient right of way through it, underneath the Altar. The thirteenth century chancel, with its five large Decorated windows on either side, ascends by no fewer than eleven steps from the nave to make room for this unique passage way. The five windows of the nave are of the earliest and best Perpendicular, and its eastern gable is crowned with three beautifully proportioned pinnacles. In this parish is the hamlet of Cross Keys, the name of which is sometimes supposed to be connected with St. Peter. But it is much more probably the quay at the starting point of the ancient low-tide passage across the sands of the estuary which led to Sutton Crosses on the Lincolnshire side, five miles away, and which played, as we shall shortly tell, so notable a part in English history. From Walpole the sea-wall sweeps round by Terrington to Lynn. But here we are far in Norfolk. We must not, however, forget that we owe one of our Cambridge Colleges to Terrington, for Dr. Gonville, while Vicar here, founded in 1347 his "College of the Annunciation," the embryo of Caius College.

On the Cambridgeshire side of the Well Stream we also find churches fully equal to those on the Norfolk bank. Leverington is one specially to be noted, with its beautiful steeple, an Early English tower surmounted by a Decorated spire so exquisitely proportioned that it seems absolutely to melt away into the sky. There is also a fine Decorated porch with a stone-roofed parvis chamber of original and singular beauty. The chancel is also Decorated, while the grand nave is Perpendicular. The font, too, is Perpendicular, an octagonal structure of oolite, with richly ornamented niches on every face, each containing the head of a saint in high relief. The east window of the north aisle retains much of its ancient glass, proving it to be a "Jesse" window, tracing the descent of Christ from that patriarch through David.

Tydd St. Giles lies at the northernmost extremity of the Isle of Ely, where the "Shire Drain" divides the village from its sister parish of Tydd St. Mary in Lincolnshire. Here, too, the church is remarkable, having its tower fifty feet beyond the East End, a unique position. Like Leverington, it has a specially fine octagonal font, richly traceried, and carved with emblems of the Passion and with the arms of the See of Ely. In the floor of the nave is a thirteenth century gravestone, bearing a floriated cross, and the legend (in Old English characters): "Orate.pro.anima.dni John.Fysner, cujus.aie.deus.ppiciet.Amen." (Pray for the soul of Mr. John Fysner, on whose soul may God be merciful.)

On one of the pillars is a more interesting inscription in rude capital letters, much worn. It is in French, and would seem to be of the early fourteenth century, when that language was becoming very fashionable in England, as our current legal phraseology still shows. It runs thus:—

CEST . PILER . CVME
NCAT . RICARD . LE . PRE
STRE . PRIMER . PRE
YEZ . PVR . LVI

i.e. in modern French: "Ce pilier commença Ricard le Prêtre premièrement. Priez pour lui"; and in English "This pillar Richard the Priest first began. Pray for him."

After having told of so much loveliness all around, it is disappointing to be obliged to confess that at Wisbech itself, the metropolis of the northern Fenland, the church is comparatively commonplace. Not that it is otherwise than a fine structure, and, like Great Yarmouth, splendidly wide, having a double nave and a double chancel; but it is hopelessly outclassed by those in the neighbouring villages. The best feature is the tower, which is richly ornamented with sacred and heraldic devices of the later Perpendicular period. And in the nave is a fine fifteenth century brass. Otherwise there is little to say about it; and, indeed, little to say about Wisbech at all. It is a picturesque old place, with that somewhat pathetic picturesqueness of an ancient seaport town which the sea has deserted.

Wisbech, however, is not by any means a "dead city." It has 10,000 inhabitants, and keen local ambitions, which have developed an excellent museum and other up-to-date municipal equipment. Modern energy and science have, moreover, made so effective a waterway through the ten miles of silted-up estuary that vessels of 3,000 tons can now, at high tide, reach the wharf. Such, however, are almost unknown visitants. Last year (1909) the vessels clearing from the port numbered 209, of 36,000 tons in all. Two of these are registered at Wisbech itself, as are also twelve sea-fishing boats. A characteristic photograph of Wisbech's shipping is given by Mrs. Hughes in the "Geography of Cambridgeshire" (p. 118). Other photographs (pp. 47, 48) show the great height to which the tide rises in the river, there being a difference of over twenty feet between high and low water mark. The Nene still has its outfall here, and flows through the town in a fine sweep locally called the Brink.

It is hard to believe that this Brink is not the Beach whence the name of the town is vulgarly supposed to be derived. But you must not suggest this to a Wisbech man. The single vowel is an integral part of local faith and local pride, and to insert the "a" is to show yourself a hopeless outsider. With it the name would come from Ouse-beach (like Land-beach and Water-beach near Cambridge). Without it the derivation is Ouse-beck. This last syllable is a Scandinavian word, well known throughout the north of England, and there signifying a running brook. Throughout the Fenland it is frequently used for a drain. But can the mighty Well Stream of the Ouse, at its tidal outfall here, have ever suggested either drain or brook to the men of old who named the place? And can these have been Scandinavians?

The chief oversea trade of Wisbech is in timber from Norway; and it also does a large traffic in fruit, flowers, and vegetables, which are extensively grown hereabouts. In this neighbourhood, moreover, may be seen a much rarer cultivated crop, nothing less primitive than the woad with which the ancient Britons dyed their bodies; though it is a mistake to suppose that this dye took the place of clothing, for as far back as history traces them they were quite fairly civilised, and used woad only for tattooing, like sailors.[247] It is now used for dyeing cloth. "An old woad mill, built of turf blocks arranged in the ancient herring-bone pattern, with a timber and reed-thatched roof, can still be seen at the village of Parson's Drove, about six miles from Wisbech. The plant (Isatis tinctoria) grows about six feet high, and has a blue-green leaf and bright yellow flower; the people still call it by its old name, wād. The young plants are delicate, and the crop requires much care. It is weeded by men and women clad in hardened skirts and leathern knee-caps, who creep along the ground and take out the weeds with a curious little handspade which fits into the palm. The plant is picked by hand. The leaves are crushed to a pulp in the mill by rude conical crushing wheels dragged round by horses, and are then worked by hand into large balls and laid on "fleaks" of twined hazel, or on planks, in special sheds, for three months to dry. After this, the balls are thrown together, mixed with water and allowed to ferment in a dark house for five or six weeks. The woad is then rammed into casks and is ready to be sold to cloth manufacturers."[248]

Wisbech plays but little part in history. Its position at the convergence of the two great Roman sea-walls, east and west of the estuary, makes it pretty certain that they must have had a station here; but, if so, it has wholly passed out of memory. Wisbech Castle is said to have been built by William the Conqueror, and certainly existed in the time of King John. It passed into the possession of the Bishops of Ely, and was rebuilt by two famous holders of the See, Bishop Morton, the designer and excavator of Morton's Leam,[249] and Bishop Alcock, the Founder of Jesus College, Cambridge.[250] Both these prelates were singularly thoroughgoing reformers. The former went into minute details about the dress of his clergy, forbidding them to wear gaudy attire (such as "lirripoops" or gowns open in front like a present-day M.A. gown), and charging them straitly to cut their hair "so that all men may see their ears." And the latter was an indefatigable pulpiteer; one of his University sermons is recorded to have lasted three mortal hours on end.

This episcopal connection of Wisbech Castle led to its becoming, in the reign of Elizabeth, the final scene of that pathetic and lingering tragedy, the fate of the old Catholic Hierarchy of England. Such of that hierarchy as were alive at Elizabeth's succession were, with one exception, deposed for refusing the Oath of Supremacy, to the number of fifteen. Shortly afterwards they were imprisoned, not by any process of law but by the Royal fiat, and continued under more or less severe restraint for the rest of their lives. This was wholly on account of their religion. Lord Burghley, a hostile witness (in his Execution of Justice in England[251]), testifies to their blameless characters, describing them as "faithful and quiet subjects," "persons of courteous natures," "of great modesty, learning and knowledge," "secluded only for their contrary opinions in religion, that savour not (like those of the seminary priests) of treason."

Yet, though thus inoffensive, their doom was grievously heavy. Committed, to begin with, to solitary confinement, in what Froude calls "the living death of the Tower" and other London prisons, for three or four years, they were afterwards quartered (singly) on the Protestant prelates, who were stringently ordered by the Council to prevent them from communication, either by word or letter, with anyone, and to see that they had neither paper to write withal, nor books to read (except Protestant ones). Thus deprived of every intellectual, social, and religious solace, "pining away in miserable desolation, tossing and shifting from one keeper to another," they one by one drooped and died. But all remained steadfast to their Faith; and finally the "obstinate" survivors were, in 1580, closely imprisoned, along with others in like case, in Wisbech Castle.

Here they were under the charge of Cox, the new Protestant Bishop of Ely, who writes of them as "sworn against Christ," and boasts that "if walls, locks, and doors can separate them from out-practice they shall not want a sufficient provision of each." "Nor let it be thought, as some bishops have reported, that I mind to make trade by over-ruling such wretches." The "trade" was handed over to a favourite servant, to make what he could out of the unhappy prisoners (who, like all prisoners in those days, had to be supported by their friends), subject only to providing out of his takings £80 per annum for the upkeep of two Protestant preachers, "who are well able to set down God's anger" against Popery. These preachers (amongst whom one regrets to find "Lancelot Andrewes of Pembroke Hall") were ever and anon to pester the "recusants" with denunciatory discourses in the castle hall. "And the recusants shall be conveyed thither by a secret way, without seeing any; and they shall have a secret place for themselves to be in, to hear and not be seen.... This is the holy ordinance of God."[252]

Kept with this rigour the Confessors lingered on, year after year, till death set them free. The latest to be released were Thomas Watson, Bishop of Lincoln, who died in 1584, and Feckenham, the last Abbot of Westminster, who died in 1585. Both are buried (as the Parish Registers testify) in Wisbech churchyard.

The castle was sold by the See of Ely in 1783, and has since been almost wholly pulled down. Nearly at the same date a young man, born at Wisbech, was beginning those efforts which have reflected glory on his native town, and have revolutionised public opinion throughout the civilised world. The man was Thomas Clarkson, and the cause to which he devoted his life was the abolition of slavery. That institution, up to his time, was regarded as a very foundation of the earth. Rooted in the furthest past of man's history, and as world-wide as it was ancient, the idea of questioning its place in the eternal fitness of things never occurred even to philanthropists. A virtuous man would treat his slaves kindly; but as for not having such, he would as soon have scrupled at having sheep and oxen, or at employing hired servants.

It was left for young Clarkson, while a student at Cambridge, to realise that the time was come when, if the human conscience was to make any further progress in enlightenment, this hoary iniquity must, root and branch, be abolished. On a steep hillside above Wade Mill, in the road between Cambridge and London, a monument by the wayside still marks the spot where he dismounted from his horse, and, kneeling on the ground in the fervour of youthful enthusiasm, solemnly vowed to God that for this holy object he would live and, if need be, die.

At once he set to work. Gathering a band of like-minded friends round him (mostly belonging to the so-called Clapham Sect, who were then inaugurating the great Evangelical Revival)—Wilberforce, Zachary Macaulay, Babington, Thornton, Buxton, Cropper, and the rest—he started an agitation in and out of Parliament, which carried all before it. The Slave Trade was abolished in 1807; on August 1st, 1834, slavery itself ceased throughout the British Empire; the example of Britain was followed by other European Powers; and finally, in 1864, after a last desperate struggle for existence in the American Civil War, it was cast forth from its last stronghold in the United States. If practised at all now, it is practised under some feigned name and elusive system. No civilised man dare any longer proclaim himself an avowed slave-driver. Well indeed does Clarkson deserve the monument which Wisbech has erected to her glorious son.

At Wisbech, till the reclamation of the neighbouring Washes, Cambridgeshire (or rather the Isle of Ely) possessed an actual strip of seaboard extending from Wisbech town northward to the county boundary between Tydd St. Mary and Tydd St. Giles. This strip was itself reclaimed ground, but of far earlier date, due to the era of Roman civilisation in Britain. The old coast-line, as has been said, is still marked for us by a massive embankment extending from Sutton, in Lincolnshire, to Wisbech, and thence to King's Lynn, in Norfolk—an embankment sufficiently old to have given its name to the ancient villages along its course. The designations of Walsoken, West Walton, Walpole St. Peter, and Walpole St. Andrew, all testify to this sea wall having been already in existence when the East Anglians, in the fifth century, first took possession of the land.

This embankment kept back, to the west and to the east, the tide-water of the Well Stream (see p. 399), a wide inlet of the sea, narrowing southward till it reached its extremity at Wisbech, and forming the estuary for the united outfall of all the Fenland waterways. In later days operations connected with the draining of the fens have diverted nearly the whole volume of the Great Ouse and its tributary streams to fall into the sea at King's Lynn, and have led the Nene straight to Wisbech. But till the thirteenth century was well advanced the Ouse and the Nene joined each other near Outwell, the united river being called the "Well" or "Well Stream." The names of Upwell, Outwell, Welney, &c., still preserve the memory of this old waterway.

The estuary was, of course, tidal, leaving at low water a broad expanse of sands, amidst which the shifting channel of the river was so far broadened out as to be fordable at certain points; thus admitting of passage across the whole breadth of the inlet, even where it became five miles wide. The regular track for this passage was from the little hamlet of Cross Keys, on the Norfolk coast (the name of which is derived from this circumstance) to Sutton Crosses, near the village of Long Sutton, on the Lincolnshire side, and is approximately marked for us to-day by the line of the Great Northern Railway between these spots, traversing the level fields and meadows which have (since the year 1830) finally replaced the sands of old.

The conditions of the passage were identical with those to be found now at Morecambe Bay. That estuary can also be crossed at low tide; but to do so in safety a good deal of local knowledge is essential. The right points for fording the river channels must be found, the numerous quicksands must be avoided, while the localities of both fords and quicksands are constantly changing. It is therefore exceedingly rash to make the attempt without guides; for across the level sands of every estuary the tide makes with extreme rapidity, sometimes coming in before the wind faster than any man can hope to outrun it. These guides are professionals, who await on either bank the demand for their services.

All this is exactly what is said of the Well Stream "Washes" in authorities of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As late as 1775, though successive reclamations had by that time reduced the breadth of the passage by more than half, we hear of the guide "always attending at Cross Keys to conduct passengers over, bearing a wand or rod in his hand, probably in imitation of Moses, who held a rod when he conducted the Israelites through the Red Sea." The rod was really used for probing the sand in front, lest it should prove "quick," and also for taking the bearings on the opposite shore by which the course was steered.

It was through neglect of such expert advice that the Well Stream estuary became the scene of that dramatic episode in English history, which, on the 13th of October in the year 1216, cost King John his treasures and his life. The story is narrated by the contemporary historian Roger of Wendover, and the Barnwell and Coggeshall chroniclers. The whole circumstances have been most carefully and minutely elaborated by Mr. St. John Hope, through whose kindness I am enabled to use his materials. His able monograph on the subject is to be found in Vol. LX. of "Archæologia."

John was, in 1216, at death-grips with the Barons, who, in the previous year, had wrung from him the signature of Magna Charta. The rights and wrongs of the quarrel were not so wholly one-sided as is popularly supposed, and the appeal of both parties to the Pope had not sufficed to clear them up. The offer of the Crown by the Barons to Louis, Dauphin of France, was for the moment more successful. Most of England acknowledged him as King, and even the King of Scots came to do homage for his sub-kingdom (as Scotland then was); only a few strongholds, notably Windsor Castle, holding out for John and being besieged by the Barons.

John himself, however, was still at large, and at the head of a small, but very effective, mercenary army of filibusters from all the countries of Europe. He met the situation by a campaign of extraordinary energy; his object being to relieve his invested fortresses by drawing off their assailants to the defence of their own lands. Incidentally, desire of revenge, and the need of paying his troops by plunder, operated as a further motive for the merciless destruction which, in a series of brilliant and ferocious raids, he meted out to the districts owned by his opponents. The speed of his movements is almost incredible, considering the conditions of travel in the thirteenth century; but they can be traced with accuracy by the still existing entries in the Patent and Close Rolls; for day by day John did not cease to do royal business and to sign the documents submitted to him, however far he might have marched since morning. In the eyes of his Continental contemporaries this consuming energy came to be held his chief characteristic. In the "Dittamondo" of the Italian poet, Fazio degli Uberti, written early in the fourteenth century, which gives a brief notice of the successive Kings of England from the Norman Conquest onwards, the one thing mentioned about John is the "hot haste" of his riding.

Hot haste it was, indeed! Week after week the King made his army (which, though small, cannot have numbered fewer than two or three thousand men) cover distances that would be creditable to a solitary bicycle tourist on the macadamised roads of to-day. From Corfe Castle, in Dorsetshire, whither he had retreated on the landing of Louis, he dashed across England (via Bristol) to Cheshire, ravaged that district for over a fortnight, and was back at Corfe within six weeks of setting out. The very next day he was off again, and by a circuitous route of 155 miles (for his enemies' forces barred the direct way) reached Oxford within a week. A few days later another yet more wonderful week of 225 miles carried him from Reading to Lincoln; his daily stages being Bedford (45 miles), Cambridge (30), Castle Hedingham, in Essex (25), Stamford (70), Rockingham (10), and Lincoln (50). Here he remained ten days, during which he raised the siege of the castle; having also succeeded in relieving Windsor, for the Barons who were attacking it hastily broke up, and marched to Cambridge in hopes of cutting him off at this strategic point—the only place, as we have said,[253] where the Cam was passable for an army. It was doubtless to escape this danger that John undertook, on September 19th, the forced march of 70 miles from Hedingham to Stamford, which had perforce to be made via "the Great Bridge" of Cambridge.

Yet another week of marches up and down Lincolnshire, 115 miles in all, brought him round the Wash to Lynn (by way of Wisbech); and then came the great catastrophe.

It was on Wednesday the 12th of October, 1215, that King John, after three days' stay at Lynn, retraced his steps, with his wonted celerity, by way of Wisbech, to Swineshead Abbey near Boston, a distance of over forty miles. Documents signed by him on this day at all three places are to be found in the Patent and Close Rolls. His baggage train, which obviously could not have kept up with this pace, he ordered to follow by the direct route across the sands. We read with some surprise that his flying column was accompanied by such a train at all; but the contemporary historians agree in telling us of "carts, waggons, and sumpter horses," loaded with the King's treasures and properties (including even a portable chapel), and with the spoil amassed during this long raid.

Such a train would cover at least a mile on any road, and could only move quite slowly, three miles an hour at the very outside. How it kept touch with the column at all is a wonder, and we may be sure that it could never have done so during the forced march from Hedingham on the 19th of September. After that date the occupation of Cambridge by the Baronial forces would effectually bar the way against any attempt to follow in the King's track; and it is highly probable that he, knowing that this would be so, had ordered the train and its escort to make their way instead from Hedingham to Lynn, and that he paid his hurried visit to that place with the sole object of once more getting into touch with them.

However that may be, there is no doubt that the train did set out from Lynn, along the road to Cross Keys, after the King and his troops had ridden off towards Wisbech. It was impossible, however, to attempt the passage that same day, for the channel of the Well Stream could only be forded during the hour or so on either side of low-water, which, as calculations show, was on this day about noon. The long line of vehicles had, accordingly, to halt for the night at Cross Keys, for to have attempted the passage in the dark (the moon was nearly at the new), would have been simply suicidal.

Next morning, Thursday, October 13th, they woke to find the tide lapping against the old Roman embankment behind which they lay, for it was a spring tide, and at its highest about 6.30 a.m. Rapidly it receded, and by 9 a.m. the wide expanse of the sands would lie bare before them. The moment these were dry enough for the passage of carts they would start, for their leaders knew well the urgent necessity for speed. To get such a train across the Well Stream channel in the short space of two hours they must be at the ford the very moment it was practicable. Every instant was precious, and every driver did his utmost to press on, regardless of the warnings of the guides (if they had any).

But to drive a loaded cart over wet sand is at the best a slow job. Readers of Sir Walter Scott will remember his vivid description, in Redgauntlet, of the difficulties attending such attempts:

"The vehicle, sinking now on one side, now on the other, sometimes sticking absolutely fast and requiring the utmost exertions of the animal which drew it to put it once more in motion, was subjected to jolts in all directions.... There seemed at least five or six people around the cart, some on foot, others on horseback. The former lent assistance whenever it was in danger of upsetting or sticking fast in the quicksands: the others rode before and acted as guides, often changing the direction of the vehicle as the precarious state of the passage required.... Thus the cart was dragged heavily and wearily on, until the nearer roar of the advancing tide excited apprehension of another danger.... A rider hastily fastened his own horse to the shafts of the cart, in order to assist the exhausted animal which drew it, ... but at length, when, after repeated and hair-breadth escapes, it actually stuck fast in a quicksand, the driver, with an oath, cut the harness, and departed with the horses, splashing over the wet sand and through the shallows as he galloped off."

Multiply all this at least a hundred-fold, throwing in the added turmoil caused by the multitude of carts jamming and impeding one another, and we can picture something of the scene as that fatal morning advanced and the doomed cavalcade ploughed its way on to destruction. For there was no margin of time; and though the leading vehicles seem to have reached the Well Stream channel, they reached it too late. Already it was unfordable, for such traffic at least as theirs. Some of the carts doubtless tried to make a dash across; but their horses, exhausted by the strenuous effort of the last two hours, were unequal to the tremendous strain of negotiating the soft bottom of the stream. A very few such failures would entirely bar the way to those who were eagerly pressing on behind, and almost in a moment the whole column would be in irremediable confusion. In the struggling press, to turn would be as impossible as to proceed, while momentarily the laden carts, for which the only hope was to be kept going, would, at a standstill, sink deeper, inch by inch, into the ever quickening sand. And then in the midst of the welter, up came the tide, sweeping over the level sands, as spring tides in the Wash do sweep;—and, when the waters once more went down, of all that mass of treasure and plunder, of all those horses and drivers and carts and waggons not a trace was to be seen. The sands had swallowed all; and to this day they retain their prey. As Shakespeare makes King John say:

"These Lincoln Washes have devoured them."

The expanse of sands is now an expanse of fields and meadows, through which the River Nene is led by a straight cut from Wisbech to the sea. Where that cut is crossed by the Great Northern Railway (which, as has been said, runs almost along the line of the old crossing-track) is the traditional spot of the disaster, and Mr. St. John Hope believes that excavation might there bring to light some of its relics, even after the lapse of so many years.

Matthew Paris (in his Historia Anglorum), writing in the generation following the catastrophe, tells us that John himself was on the scene and barely escaped from the rising waters. But he, as we have seen, was the previous night (and the next) at Swineshead Abbey. It is just possible that, with his astounding energy, he may have ridden in the morning with a few attendants to Long Sutton (a distance of twenty miles, as before the reclamation of the fens travellers from Boston thither would have to go round by Spalding), and thence across the sands, to overlook in person the passage of the Well Stream. If so, he may well, in the confusion, have been surprised by the tide and have barely escaped by hard riding. Anyhow the catastrophe cost him his life; for this heart-breaking blow, coming on top of his three months' herculean exertions, brought on a feverish attack that very night. Ill as he was, he was on horseback again by dawn, and rode fifteen miles to Sleaford. Next day he struggled on twenty miles to Newark, where "the disease increasing, he received the counsel of Confession and the Eucharist from the Abbot of Croxton," and died that same evening (October 18th), fairly burnt out by his own consuming and tireless energy. If ever King did, he "died standing."

"Foul as Hell is, it is defiled by the fouler presence of John." Such is the uncompromising verdict of the inimical chronicler; and such (in less trenchant phraseology) has been very much the verdict of popular historians even to our own day. But it was a verdict by no means universally accepted by contemporaries. John did not, like William Rufus, receive what Professor Freeman calls "the distinction of a popular excommunication." For Rufus no prayer was said, no psalm was sung, no Mass was offered. All men felt that prayer was hopeless. But John was buried in peace; and it speedily appeared that the cause for which he stood was the cause which (more especially when the weight of his own personal unpopularity was removed) most commended itself to the heart of England. Men had no desire to see the English Crown become an appanage for the heir to the French monarchy. And so Louis rapidly found. Within nine days of his father's death the infant Henry the Third was crowned at Gloucester,—with his mother's bracelet, in default of the proper crown (which, however, is not likely to be amongst the treasures lost in the Wash, as many histories assume); and within six months men were flocking "as to a Holy War," from all parts of the country, to take part in that decisive battle known as "the Fair of Lincoln," which crushed, once and for all, the foreign intrusion, and established irrevocably the claim of the native-born ruler to succeed his father on the throne of England.

And with this stirring story we take our leave of the Highways and Byways of Cambridgeshire, the stage of so many a story, the home of so many a memory; the scene—to those who have eyes to see—of so much quiet loveliness; where the Present is ever brooded over by the Past, and where on the anvils of Thought and Science the Future is ever being shaped. We have explored the County from end to end, we have mounted her uplands, we have traversed her fens, we have clambered her earthworks, we have entered her churches. Her Manor-houses have told us their tale of struggle, her Colleges have borne their witness to the growth of knowledge. We have been able to

"Watch Time's full river as it flows";

and the pathos of all that has come and gone stands out before us, as a record more thrilling than the most daring romance, as a theme more inspiring than the noblest poem. We bid good-bye to the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely feeling that no hue of dulness attaches to them, as is commonly supposed by the unappreciative crowd, but that rather the footprints of the past which abound within their borders give promise of a future that shall not be unworthy of what has gone before.