climate were widely prevalent, but at the present day the Fen country is as healthy as the rest of England; indeed, there is reason to believe that it is conducive to longevity.
Historical Notes.—The earliest inhabitants of this region of whom we have record were the British tribes of the Iceni confederation; the Romans, who subdued them, called them Coriceni or Coritani. In Saxon times the inhabitants of the Fens were known (e.g. to Bede) as Gyrvii, and are described as traversing the country on stilts. Macaulay, writing of the year 1689, gives to them the name of Breedlings, and describes them as “a half-savage population . . . who led an amphibious life, sometimes wading, sometimes rowing, from one islet of firm ground to another.” In the end of the 18th century those who dwelt in the remoter parts were scarcely more civilized, being known to their neighbours by the expressive term of “Slodgers.” These rude fen-dwellers have in all ages been animated by a tenacious love of liberty. Boadicea, queen of the Iceni, the worthy foe of the Romans; Hereward the Saxon, who defied William the Conqueror; Cromwell and his Ironsides, are representative of the fenman’s spirit at its best. The fen peasantry showed a stubborn defence of their rights, not only when they resisted the encroachments and selfish appropriations of the “adventurers” in the 17th century, in the Bedford Level, in Deeping Fen, and in the Witham Fens, and again in the 18th century, when Holland Fen was finally enclosed, but also in the Peasants’ Rising of 1381, and in the Pilgrimage of Grace in the reign of Henry VIII. So long as the Fens were unenclosed and thickly studded with immense “forests” of reeds, and innumerable marshy pools and “rows” (channels connecting the pools), they abounded in wild fowl, being regularly frequented by various species of wild duck and geese, garganies, polchards, shovelers, teals, widgeons, peewits, terns, grebes, coots, water-hens, water-rails, red-shanks, lapwings, god-wits, whimbrels, cranes, bitterns, herons, swans, ruffs and reeves. Vast numbers of these were taken in decoys[1] and sent to the London markets. At the same time equally vast quantities of tame geese were reared in the Fens, and driven by road[2] to London to be killed at Michaelmas. Their down, feathers and quills (for pens) were also a considerable source of profit. The Fen waters, too, abounded in fresh-water fish, especially pike, perch, bream, tench, rud, dace, roach, eels and sticklebacks. The Witham, on whose banks so many monasteries stood, was particularly famous for its pike; as were certain of the monastic waters in the southern part of the Fens for their eels. The soil of the reclaimed Fens is of exceptional fertility, being almost everywhere rich in humus, which is capable not only of producing very heavy crops of wheat and other corn, but also of fattening live-stock with peculiar ease. Lincolnshire oxen were famous in Elizabeth’s time, and are specially singled out by Arthur Young,[3] the breed being the shorthorn. Of the crops peculiar to the region it must suffice to mention the old British dye-plant woad, which is still grown on a small scale in two or three parishes immediately south of Boston; hemp, which was extensively grown in the 18th century, but is not now planted; and peppermint, which is occasionally grown, e.g. at Deeping and Wisbech. In the second half of the 19th century the Fen country acquired a certain celebrity in the world of sport from the encouragement it gave to speed skating. Whenever practicable, championship and other racing meetings are held, chiefly at Littleport and Spalding. The little village of Welney, between Ely and Wisbech, has produced some of the most notable of the typical Fen skaters, e.g. “Turkey” Smart and “Fish” Smart.
Apart from fragmentary ruins of the former monastic buildings of Crowland, Kirkstead and other places, the Fen country of Lincolnshire (division of Holland) is especially remarkable for the size and beauty of its parish churches, mostly built of Barnack rag from Northamptonshire. Moreover, in the possession of such buildings as Ely cathedral and the parish church of King’s Lynn, other parts of the Fens must be considered only less rich in ecclesiastical architecture. Using these fine opportunities, the Fen folk have long cultivated the science of campanology.
Dialect.—Owing to the comparative remoteness of their geographical situation, and the relatively late period at which the Fens were definitely enclosed, the Fenmen have preserved several dialectal features of a distinctive character, not the least interesting being their close kinship with the classical English of the present day. Professor E. E. Freeman (Longman’s Magazine, 1875) reminded modern Englishmen that it was a native of the Fens, “a Bourne man, who gave the English language its present shape.” This was Robert Manning, or Robert of Brunne, who in or about 1303 wrote The Handlynge Synne. Tennyson’s dialect poems, The Northern Farmer, &c., do not reproduce the pure Fen dialect, but rather the dialect of the Wold district of mid Lincolnshire.
Authorities.—Sir William Dugdale, History of Imbanking and Draining (2nd ed., London, 1772); W. Elstobb, A Historical Account of the Great Level (Lynn, 1793); W. Chapman, Facts and Remarks relative to the Witham and the Welland (Boston, 1800); S. Wells, History and Drainage of the Great Level of the Fens (2 vols., London, 1828 and 1830); P. Thompson, History of Boston (Boston, 1856); Baldwin Latham, Papers on the Drainage of the Fens, read before the Society of Engineers, 3rd November 1862; N. and A. Goodman, Handbook of Fen Skating (London, 1882); Moore, Associated Architectural Societies’ Reports and Papers (1893); Fenland Notes and Queries, and Lincolnshire Notes and Queries, passim; W. H. Wheeler, A History of the Fens of South Lincolnshire, pp. 223 et seq. (2nd ed., Boston, 1897). Various phases of Fen life, mostly of the past, are described in Charles Kingsley’s Hereward the Wake (Cambridge, 1866); Baring Gould’s Cheap-Jack Zita (London, 1893); Manville Fenn’s Dick o’ the Fens (London, 1887); and J. T. Bealby’s A Daughter of the Fen (London, 1896). (J. T. Be.)
FENTON, EDWARD (d. 1603), English navigator, son of
Henry Fenton and brother of Sir Geoffrey Fenton (q.v.), was a
native of Nottinghamshire. In 1577 he sailed, in command of
the “Gabriel,” with Sir Martin Frobisher’s second expedition
for the discovery of the north-west passage, and in the following
year he took part as second in command in Frobisher’s third
expedition, his ship being the “Judith.” He was then employed
in Ireland for a time, but in 1582 he was put in charge of an
expedition which was to sail round the Cape of Good Hope to the
Moluccas and China, his instructions being to obtain any knowledge
of the north-west passage that was possible without
hindrance to his trade. On this unsuccessful voyage he got
no farther than Brazil, and throughout he was engaged in
quarrelling with his officers, and especially with his lieutenant,
William Hawkins, the nephew of Sir John Hawkins, whom he had
in irons when he arrived back in the Thames. In 1588 he had
command of the “Mary Rose,” one of the ships of the fleet that
was formed to oppose the Armada. He died fifteen years afterwards.
FENTON, ELIJAH (1683–1730), English poet, was born at
Shelton near Newcastle-under-Lyme, of an old Staffordshire
family, on the 25th of May 1683. He graduated from Jesus
College, Cambridge, in 1704, but was prevented by religious
scruples from taking orders. He accompanied the earl of Orrery
to Flanders as private secretary, and on returning to England
became assistant in a school at Headley, Surrey, being soon
afterwards appointed master of the free grammar school at
Sevenoaks in Kent. In 1710 he resigned his appointment in the
expectation of a place from Lord Bolingbroke, but was disappointed.
He then became tutor to Lord Broghill, son of his
patron Orrery. Fenton is remembered as the coadjutor of
Alexander Pope in his translation of the Odyssey. He was responsible
for the first, fourth, nineteenth and twentieth books, for
which he received £300. He died at East Hampstead, Berkshire,
on the 16th of July 1730. He was buried in the parish church,
and his epitaph was written by Pope.
Fenton also published Oxford and Cambridge Miscellany Poems (1707); Miscellaneous Poems (1717); Mariamne, a tragedy (1723); an edition (1725) of Milton’s poems, and one of Waller (1729) with elaborate notes. See W. W. Lloyd, Elijah Fenton, his Poetry and Friends (1894).
- ↑ For descriptions of these see Oldfield, Appendix, pp. 2-4, of A Topographical and Historical Account of Wainfleet (London, 1829); and Miller and Skertchly, The Fenland, pp. 369-375.
- ↑ See De Foe’s account in A Tour through the Eastern Counties, 1722 (1724–1725).
- ↑ General View, pp. 174-194 and 288-304.
