horror and that of the fen-men, that he had let down upon Lynn the
pent-up waters of the whole higher bogs; that rivers were running
backwards, brooks swelling to estuaries, and the whole north-eastern
fen ruinate, to be yet more ruinate by banks confusedly thrown up in
self-defence, till some order was restored in 1332, and the fens
prospered--such little of them as could be drained at all--for nigh
two hundred years. Honour, meanwhile, to another prelate, good
Bishop Morton, who cut the great learn from Guyhirn--the last place
at which one could see a standing gallows, and two Irish reapers
hanging in chains, having murdered the old witch of Guyhirn for the
sake of hidden treasure, which proved to be some thirty shillings and
a few silver spoons.

The belief is more general than well-founded that the drainage of the
fens retrograded on account of the dissolution of the monasteries.
The state of decay into which those institutions had already fallen,
and which alone made their dissolution possible, must have extended
itself to these fen-lands. No one can read the account of their
debts, neglect, malversation of funds, in the time of Henry VIII.,
without seeing that the expensive works necessary to keep fen-lands
dry must have suffered, as did everything else belonging to the
convents.

It was not till the middle or end of Elizabeth's reign that the
recovery of these 'drowned lands' was proceeded with once more; and
during the first half of the seventeenth century there went on, more
and more rapidly, that great series of artificial works which, though
often faulty in principle, often unexpectedly disastrous in effect,
have got the work done, as all work is done in this world, not as
well as it should have been done, but at least done.