THE PROVINCIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
IN speaking of the county families and principal towns of this Province, we have necessarily mentioned several of the events connected with its history from the time of the Norman Conquest, but a few still remain to be added.
During the wars between the Houses of York and Lancaster we read of uo remarkable occurrences in Bedfordshire, and this has been accounted for the by the Messrs. Lysons by the probability that all the castles in that county, except Bedford, bad beau demolished in the reign of King John, Matthew Paris telling us that that Prince on his march to the northward destroyed all the castles which lay in his route. Bedfordshire was one of the first counties that associated against King Charles in the civil war. A special licence for the Eastern Association, of which it was a mem- ber, was passed by Parliament, November 30, 1612. According to Clarendon, Bedfordshire was one of the counties in which the King had not any visible party, nor one fixed quarter. The Cavaliers, however, in 1643, made au attempt on the county. Sir Lewis Dyve was sent into Bedfordshire with 2,000 or 3,000 horse, and came first to Ampthill, then to Bedford, which latter town ho entered, and took Sir John Norris and other Parliamentary officers prisoners. From thence he went to the house of Sir S fume' Luke (the supposed original of Butler's Hudibras), either Ilawnes or 1Voodend, near Bedford, and served that, says the Royalist chronicler, as Sir Lewis himself was served in the same county, at Bromham, then the seat of the Dyves, by the sequestrators. Soon after this, Colonel Montagu, with some of the Parliamentary forces, entered Bedford by a feint, under pretence of their being the Royal forces under Dyve, and took away some money and horses intended for the King's use. From this time the county remained quietly in the hands of the Parliament.
The struggle of Hereward the Saxon in the Isle of Ely has been already referred to. He was joined in this wild retreat in the marshes by Earl Morcar (or Morkere), and lEgelwine, Bishop of Durham, both of whom, however, submitted to William some time before Hereward abandoned his defence of the isle. King William, alarmed at the growing strength of the confederacy, took, as we have seen, decided measures to reduce the stronghold. On the east of the isle he posted his picked troops, for the purpose of obstructing all egress on that side. On the west ho had a large causeway thrown up, two miles in length, to euablc him to send his cavalry against the insurgents. Many bold deeds were done by Hereward and his Saxons during this struggle. On one occasion he is said to have availed himself of an attack from Yvo Taillebois (one of the most hated of the Norman invaders), on one side of the isle to issue forth on the other side and capture Thorold and other Norman leaders, whom he only released on receiving a ransom of three thousand marks' weight of silver. At length, however, Gilbert de Clare and William Warren made themselves masters of Ely, and Hereward fled to the fens of Lincolnshire. Nigel, Bishop of Ely, held the island for the Empress Maud against Stephen ; but that King came himself with a fleet of small vessels to Aldreth, and having made a temporary bridge for his cavalry, entered the isle, and put an end to the Bishop's resistance. In 1144 the men of the isle called in to their aid Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Essex, who had deserted to the side of the Empress. This Earl laid waste the royal demesnes whenever he came, as well as the lands and possessions of such as were attached to the King's interest. Having spoiled Ramsey Abbey, he traversed Cambridgeshire from west to east ; at Benwick, near Doddington, where was a passage into the Isle of Ely, he placed a garrison ; thence passing by way of Ely, he went to Fordham, at the eastern extremity of the county, where he placed a strong garrison of horse. Stephen in revenge laid waste the possessions of the Bishop, and the miser- able inhabitants of the isle were also visited with the horrors of famine and pestilence. In the struggle at the close of the reign of John between that King and the Barons, Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely again suffered severely. Walter Bruuck, with a party of of Brabanters, entered the isle opposite a place called lierebie, and plundered the monasteries, carrying away the monks and extorting great sums for their ransom. Soon afterwards the Earl of Salisbury, Faukes de Brent, and Savary de Mallo Leone entered the isle at Stuntneybridge, and spreading devastation as they went, robbed the churches of what Bruuck had left, and only spared the Cathedral of Ely from fire on the payment by the Prior of 209 marks. Most of the richer inhabitants made their escape over the ice, and either concealed themselves in the neigh- bourhood or fled to London. Then the army of the Barons marched into Cambridgeshire and laid it waste, and were followed by the King, who, we are told, " did hurt enough." In the civil revolutions of the reign of Henry III. the isle and county again suffered greatly. In 1266, while the royal forces engaged in the siege of Kenilworth Castle, John Dayville and other Barons laid waste Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, and took possession of the town and isle of Ely on the Eve of St. Lawrence ; the Bishop, who had undertaken to hold it for the King, escaping to Court, where he was ill received. The Barons then fortified the isle, and maintained themselves there, making incursions into Cambridgeshire, in one of which, however, Sir Walter Cottenham and others fell into the King's hands, and were executed. To Prince Edward was entrusted the reduction of the isle, which he effected. By means of bridges of boards and hurdles, which were made by the instructions of the neighbouring peasantry, he obtained a safe passage for his army into the isle ; and the Barons, for some reason or other, attempted no serious resistance, but some fled, and the rest capitulated. Among the latter was Lord Wake, who claimed or has been said to be de- scended from Hereward. During the civil war of the time of Charles I., Cambridge was more fortunate than in preceding civil contests. No town within it had to sustain a siege, nor was any battle fought within its limits. The only '7'njury it sustained was from the plundering of the King's Army, when it entered the Eastern Counties in 1615. At the beginning of the civil contest Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely were associated for the Parlia- ment under Lord Grey of Werke ; and Clarendon describes Cam- bridgeshire as wholly in the hands of the Parliament. Oliver Cromwell was sent down with three troops of horse in 1645 to secure the Isle of Ely. Sir Francis Russell, one of the sequestra- tors, who became closely connected by marriage with the Protec- tor's family, and was one of his " Other House," was Governor of of the isle, and his son-in-law, Hugh Underwood, was Governor of Whittlesea. In June, 1647, the Parliamentary Army under Fairfax had its head-quarters at Kennet, near Newmarket, and whilst they were stationed there occurred Cornet Joyce's exploit of carrying off or giving the King an opportunity of going off with him from Holmby House to the Army. The commanding officer of Joyce's regiment was thereupon hastily despatched by Fairfax and Cromwell to take the King out of Joyce's hands, and carry him back to Holinby, where he was to be secured from any attempts on the part either of the petty officers of the Army or the English or Scotch Presbyterians. But the King refused positively to return, and so was brought to Lady Cutts's house at Childerley, near Cambridge, where he arrived on the 7th of June, full of confidence at his proximity to the Army, telling Fairfax that he had as great an interest among the soldiers as he himself. At his own request he was removed to Newmarket on the 9th. It was during the stay of the Army in Cambridgeshire that two general rendezvous was held, one at Triplow Heath and the other at Royston, each con- nected with important phases in the history of that dark year, 1647, which ended with the reassertion of the authority of the General officers of the Army, and the discomfiture of the King's intrigues with the petty officers and private soldiers. Huntingdonshire, strong on the aide of the Parliament throughout the civil contests of this reign, was exposed, as we have already seen, to the plun- dering of the Royal Army in 1645; and when the Presbyterian- Royalist risings took place in 1648, the Earl of Holland and Duke of Buckingham, who had retreated into this county with 100 horse after an unsuccessful attempt in Surrey, were beset in St. Neat's. The Duke of Buckingham forced his way through the Parlia- mentary soldiers, but the Earl of Holland surrendered without resistance, and Colonel John Dalbier, who had changed sides more than once during these civil contests, fell a victim on the spot to the fury of his former comrades.
Huntingdonshire, says Leland, " in old time was much more woody than it is now [in the reign of Henry VIM], and the deer resorted to the fens ; it is full long since it was disforested." Camden, in Elizabeth's time, confirms this, and states that " the inhabitants say it was once covered with woods, and it appears to have been a forest, till Henry IL, in the beginning of his reign, disforested the whole, as set forth by an old proclamation, except Waybridge, Sapple, and Herthei, which were the Lord's woods, and remain forest." Sir Robert Cotton (in the next reign) says that this county was not completely disforested till Edward L's time, when that Sovereign, in his twenty-ninth year, confirmed the great charter granted by Henry III., and left no more forest than his own demesne. From a presentment made in the twenty-fourth of Edward I., and recorded by Dugdale, it appears that "the tenants of the Abbots of Ramsey, in the town of Ramsey, and the tenants in the Abbots of Thorny, in Whittlesea, had wasted all the fen of King's Dell of the alders, hassocks, and rushes, esti- mated at a thousand acres, so that the King's deer could not have harbour there, as before."
We must not pass from the history of this Province without some reference to the great Bedford Level. This district " com- prehends nearly the whole of a large tract of flat land, extending into the six counties of Northampton, Huntingdon, Cambridge, Lincoln, Norfolk, and Suffolk. It is bounded on the north-east by the German Ocean, and on all other sides by high lands, which encompass it in the form of a horseshoe. Its length from Toynton in Lincolnshire to Milton in Cambridgeshire is 60 miles, and its breadth from Peterborough in Northamptonshire to Brandon in Suffolk is nearly 40 miles. The Bedford Level extends northward only as far Tydd St. Giles ; its length whence to Millton, on the south, is about 33 miles. The Level is divided into three parts, which are distinguished as the North, the Middle, and the South Level. The North Level lies between the rivers Welland and Nene ; the Middle Level between the Nene and the Old Bedford River ; the South Level extending from the Old Bedford River to Stoke, Feltwell, and Mildenhall. The area of these marshes may be taken in round numbers as about 400,000 acres. The seventh part of the Level is in Huntingdonshire ; the whole of the Isle of Ely, and a few parishes in Cambridgeshire which lie south-east of the isle, are included in the Level. Norfolk contains 63,000 and Suffolk 30,000 acres of the Level ; the remainder is in the south-east division of Lincolnshire." This tract has undergone great physical changes. There seems evidence that once it was dry land at a much lower level than at pre- sent. It also appears to have been once covered with forests, and then to have been marsh land. The Emperor Severna in the begin- ning of the third century caused roads to be made through the marshes. One of these is now covered with soil from five to three feet in thickness. Henry of Huntingdon in the twelfth century describes the fenny country as being " very pleasant and agreeable to the eye, watered by many rivers, which run through, diversified into many large and small lakes, and adorned with many woods and islands." William of Malmeabury, about the same period, speaks of the lordship of Thomey as abounding in lofty trees, fruitful vines, and productive orchards, and having no waste land in any part. " What shall I say," he adds, " of the beautiful buildings which it is so wonderful to see the ground amidst these fens to bear ?" And it appears that up to the thirteenth century "the waters usually flowed in their natural channels, and the surrounding country was either under tillage or in pasturage." Then in 1236, during a high wind, the sea broke in at Wisbeach, and from that time fresh incursions took place ; the waters from the uplands were prevented from various causes from discharging themselves into the sea, and by degrees the district fell back into the state of a stagnant morass. The first attempt to drain it seems to have been made in 1436 ; but nothing effectual was done till the reign of Charles I., when Francis, the great Earl of Bedford, undertook (with certain fellow-adventurers) to perform this great work, and did it to a great extent. How it was taken out of his hands by the Crown for the purpose of benefiting the King and courtiers at his expense and that of the commoners of the Fens ; how Sir Cornelius Vermuyden went on with the operation, and, according to some authorities, greatly mismanaged it ; how the Long Parlia- ment restored the property wrested from the Earl to his son, Earl William ; and how, on the Restoration, a compromise was effected, and a charter granted in 1664 to a corporation for the main- tenance of the works, we have already had occasion to tell in these columns in narrating the history of the family of Russell. The Level is now converted into " rich pastures and fertile corn fields."
The list of eminent men born in Bedfordshire which we can sup- ply is very meagre, if we except the members of the Russell family. Silvester de Everton, who took his name from a village in a detached parish of Huntingdonshire, enclosed in this county, was Bishop of Carlisle and Chancellor in 1246 to Henry III., and one of the prelates who required the King to deprive all foreigners of bishoprics in England. Here also was born John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, in the reign of Henry VI. John of Dunstable, born at that town, was a writer in the fifteenth century, and died in 1455. John Bunyan was born at Elstow, about a mile from Bedford. Dr. Edward Casten, one of the labourers on Walton's Polyglot Bible in the seventeenth century, was born at Highain- Gordon ; and John Pomfret, the poet, was born at Luton.
Cambridgeshire has produced Nicholas de Ely, whom the
Barons forced on Henry III. for Chancellor in 1260. The King afterwards displaced him from that office, but made him Lord Treasurer, and afterwards Bishop of Worcester and Winchester. This county has also produced not a few other prelates of more or less eminence. Matthew Paris, the chronicler, is said to have been one of a family of that name in Bedfordshire, and to have been born at Caxton in that county. Balsham was the birth- place of Hugh de Balsham, the founder of Peter House, Cam- bridge. Sir John Cheke, the grammarian and divine, and one of the tutors of Edward VI., and Jeremy Taylor, the celebrated Bishop of Down and Connor, were born at Cambridge. Cottenham was the birthplace of Thomas Tennison, Archbishop of Canterbury in 1694.
Among the eminent natives of Huntingdonshire we may men- tion Henry of Huntingdon, the chronicler ; Sir Robert Cotton, the antiquary, born at Denton ; Stephen Marshall, the celebrated Presbyterian divine, born at Godmanchester ; Oliver Cromwell, the Great Protector, and his sons, Richard Cromwell, the Pro- tector, and Henry Cromwell, the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, all born at Huntingdon ; several eminent members of the Montagu family ; and Richard Broughton, author of the lionasticon Britannicum.
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