in Ireland and abroad carried on the same tradition and pursued the same policy in later years. In 1879, John Devoy, a member of the Fenian Brotherhood, promoted a “new departure” in America, by which the “physical force party” allied itself with the “constitutional movement” under the leadership of C. S. Parnell (q.v.); and the political conspiracy of the Fenians was combined with the agrarian revolution inaugurated by the Land League.
See William O’Connor Morris, Ireland from 1798 to 1898 (London, 1898); Two Centuries of Irish History, 1601–1870, edited by R. Barry O’Brien (London, 1907); Henri Le Caron, Twenty-five Years in the Secret Service (London, 1892); Patrick J. P. Tynan, The Irish National Invincibles and their Times (London, 1896); Justin M‘Carthy, A History of our own Times (4 vols., London, 1880). (R. J. M.)
FENNEL, Foeniculum vulgare (also known as F. capillaceum), a perennial plant of the natural order Umbelliferae, from 2 to 3 or (when cultivated) 4 ft. in height, having leaves three or four times pinnate, with numerous linear or awl-shaped segments, and glaucous compound umbels of about 15 or 20 rays, with no involucres, and small yellow flowers, the petals incurved at the tip. The fruit is laterally compressed, five-ridged, and has a large single resin-canal or “vitta” under each furrow. The plant appears to be of south European origin, but is now met with in various parts of Britain and the rest of temperate Europe, and in the west of Asia. The dried fruits of cultivated plants from Malta have an aromatic taste and odour, and are used for the preparation of fennel water, valued for its carminative properties. It is given in doses of 1 to 2 oz., the active principle being a volatile oil which is probably the same as oil of anise. The shoots of fennel are eaten blanched, and the seeds are used for flavouring. The fennel seeds of commerce are of several sorts. Sweet or Roman fennel seeds are the produce of a tall perennial plant, with umbels of 25-30 rays, which is cultivated near Nismes in the south of France; they are elliptical and arched in form, about 25 in. long and a quarter as broad, and are smooth externally, and of a colour approaching a pale green. Shorter and straighter fruits are obtained from the annual variety of F. vulgare known as F. Panmorium (Panmuhuri) or Indian fennel, and are employed in India in curries, and for medicinal purposes. Other kinds are the German or Saxon fruits, brownish-green in colour, and between 15 and 14 in. in length, and the broader but smaller fruits of the wild or bitter fennel of the south of France. A variety of fennel, F. dulce, having the stem compressed at the base, and the umbel 6-8 rayed, is grown in kitchen-gardens for the sake of its leaves.
Giant fennel is the name applied to the plant Ferula communis, a member of the same natural order, and a fine herbaceous plant, native in the Mediterranean region, where the pith of the stem is used as tinder. Hog’s or sow fennel is the species Peucedanum officinale, another member of the Umbelliferae.
FENNER, DUDLEY (c. 1558–1587), English puritan divine, was born in Kent and educated at Cambridge University. There he became an adherent of Thomas Cartwright (1535–1603), and publicly expounded his presbyterian views, with the result that he was obliged to leave Cambridge without taking his degree. For some months he seems to have assisted the vicar of Cranbrook, Kent, but it is doubtful whether he received ordination. He next followed Cartwright to Antwerp, and, having received ordination according to rite of the Reformed church, assisted Cartwright for several years in preaching to the English congregation there. The leniency shown by Archbishop Grindal to puritans encouraged him to return to England, and he became curate of Cranbrook in 1583. In the same year, however, he was one of seventeen Kentish ministers suspended for refusing to sign an acknowledgment of the queen’s supremacy and of the authority of the Prayer Book and articles. He was imprisoned for a time, but eventually regained his liberty and spent the remainder of his life as chaplain in the Reformed church at Middleburgh.
A list of his authentic works is given in Cooper’s Athenae Cantabrigienses (Cambridge, 1858–1861). They rank among the best expositions of the principles of puritanism.
FENNY STRATFORD, a market town in the Buckingham
parliamentary division of Buckinghamshire, England, 48 m.
N.W. by N. of London on a branch of the London & North-Western
railway. Pop. of urban district (1901), 4799. It lies
in an open valley on the west (left) bank of the Ouzel, where the
great north-western road from London, the Roman Watling
Street, crosses the stream, and is 1 m. E. of Bletchley, an important
junction on the main line of the North-Western railway.
The church of St Martin was built (c. 1730) on the site of an older
church at the instance of Dr Browne Willis, an eminent antiquary
(d. 1760), buried here; but the building has been greatly enlarged.
A custom instituted by Willis on St Martin’s Day (November
11th) includes a service in the church, the firing of some small
cannon called the “Fenny Poppers,” and other celebrations.
The trade of the town is mainly agricultural.
FENRIR, or Fenris, in Scandinavian mythology, a water-demon in the shape of a huge wolf. He was the offspring of Loki and the giantess Angurboda, who bore two other children, Midgard the serpent, and Hel the goddess of death. Fenrir grew so large that the gods were afraid of him and had him chained up. But he broke the first two chains. The third, however, was made of the sound of a cat’s footsteps, a man’s beard, the roots of a mountain, a fish’s breath and a bird’s spittle. This magic bond was too strong for him until Ragnarok (Judgment Day), when he escaped and swallowed Odin and was in turn slain by Vidar, the latter’s son.
FENS,[1] a district in the east of England, possessing a distinctive history and peculiar characteristics. It lies west and south of the Wash, in Lincolnshire, Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk, and extends over more than 70 m. in length (Lincoln to Cambridge) and some 35 m. in maximum breadth. (Stamford to Brandon in Suffolk), its area being considerably over half a million acres. Although low and flat, and seamed by innumerable water-courses, the entire region is not, as the Roman name of Metaris Aestuarium would imply, a river estuary, but a bay of the North Sea, silted up, of which the Wash is the last remaining portion. Hydrographically, the Fens embrace the lower parts of the drainage-basins of the rivers Witham, Welland, Nene and Great Ouse; and against these streams, as against the ocean, they are protected by earthen embankments, 10 to 15 ft. high. As a rule the drainage water is lifted off the Fens into the rivers by means of steam-pumps, formerly by windmills.
General History.—According to fairly credible tradition, the first systematic attempt to drain the Fens was made by the Romans. They dug a catchwater drain (as the artificial fenland water-courses are called), the Caer or Car Dyke, from Lincoln to Ramsey (or, according to Stukeley, as far as Cambridge), along the western edge of the Fens, to carry off the precipitation of the higher districts which border the fenland, and constructed alongside the Welland and on the seashore earthen embankments, of which some 150 m. survive. Mr S. H. Miller is disposed to credit the native British inhabitants of the Fens with having executed certain of these works. The Romans also carried causeways over the country. After their departure from Britain in the first half of the 5th century the Fens fell into neglect; and despite the preservation of the woodlands for the purposes of the chase by the Norman and early Plantagenet kings, and the unsuccessful attempt which Richard de Rulos, chamberlain of William the Conqueror, made to drain Deeping Fen, the fenland region became almost everywhere waterlogged, and relapsed to a great extent into a state of nature. In addition to this it was ravaged by serious inundations of the sea, for example, in the years 1178, 1248 (or 1250), 1288, 1322, 1335, 1467, 1571. Yet the fenland was not altogether a wilderness of reed-grown marsh and watery swamp. At various spots, more particularly in the north and in the south, there existed islands of firmer and higher ground, resting generally on the boulder clays of the Glacial epochs and on the inter-Glacial gravels of the Palaeolithic age. In these isolated localities members of the monastic
- ↑ The word “fen,” a general term for low marshy land or bog, is common to Teutonic languages, cf. Dutch ven or veen, Ger. Fenne, Fehn, Goth. fani, mud; the Indo-European root is seen in Gr. πῆλος, mud, Lat. palus, marsh. The word “bog” is from the Irish or Gaelic bogach, formed from Celtic bog, soft, and meaning therefore soft, swampy ground.
