History, Wonder Tales, Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends The Flemish | Page 189

of about 70,000 acres of fen, subject to inundation from the Don, Ouse, and Trent.
Additional financial backing was obtained from Amsterdam and Dordrecht, and
Vermuyden brought over Dutch workmen for the execution of his plans.
The drainage schemes met with bitter opposition from the fenmen, whose common
rights were taken away, and whose occupations of fishing and fowling were destroyed,
and the feeling was aggravated by the general English dislike for foreign workmen.
The Dutch were attacked from the outset, and their embankments were cut as soon as
they were built. Vermuyden became discouraged and sold his interest to the French
engineer Gibbon, who brought in Picards and Normans to work alongside the Dutch.
The attacks of the fenmen culminated in the great riot of 1650-1, when 82 houses and
the church at the Dutch settlement in the isle of Axholme were destroyed, and quiet
was not completely restored for several years.
Many of the Dutchmen now removed to the Great Fens in Cambridgeshire and settled
first at Whittlesea and then at Thorney Abbey, where they founded a church in 1652.
Vermuyden used these workmen on his schemes for draining the ‘Great Fens’,
afterwards the Bedford Level, which he described as ‘a great continent of 400,000
acres’ lying within Lincolnshire, Northants., Huntingdonshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, and
Cambridgeshire. The first scheme was under the patronage of the Earl of Bedford and
others and was not very successful, largely because the funds ran out and because
interruption came through the outbreak of civil war. The undertaking was resumed
after the war, and Vermuyden was again appointed engineer after competition with
another Dutch engineer Westerdyke. Here also the workmen had to contend with the
violent opposition of the fenmen, who destroyed drains and sluices. The final effort
upon Vermuyden's plans was made in 1649, and the work was completed in 1652.
A smaller scheme for the reclamation of Canvey Island in Essex was carried out by
Dutch workmen under the direction of Croppenbergh, and the settlers built a church
for themselves in 1641.
8. 2.
In the Middle English period a number of words appear which deal with the drainage
of land and the construction of ditches. Groop (c. 1330, R. Brunne), to dig a trench;
(1412-20, Lydgate), to groove, hollow out, incise. The sb. is later, Groop (c. 1440, Pr.
Parv.), the drain or gutter in a stable or cowshed, a small trench, ditch; (c. 1440, Pr.
Parv.), a groove, mortice; ad. M.Du. groepe (Du. groep, LG. grôpe).
Spay (1415), a sluice; ad. M.Flem. speye (Kilian spije, W.Flem. speie, spei, related to
M.Flem, spoye, Flem. and Du. spui), in the same sense. Spayer (1450), a sluice; from
the above and -er.
Wilkin (1495), a ram, a pile-driving engine; perhaps originally a proper name,
probably of Du. or LG. origin, Willekin, diminutive of Willem.
In the modern period we get the following terms.
A most difficult word is Suds, sb. plur. (1548), dregs, leavings, filth, muck; (1599),
flood-water, the water of the fens, water mixed with drift-sand and mud, drift-sand left
by a flood; (1581), water impregnated with soap for washing; (1592), foam, froth;

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