The Settlers at Home

The Settlers at Home, by Harriet
Martineau

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Title: The Settlers at Home
Author: Harriet Martineau
Illustrator: Kronheim
Release Date: October 31, 2007 [EBook #23264]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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SETTLERS AT HOME ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

The Settlers at Home, by Harriet Martineau.
CHAPTER ONE.

THE SETTLERS AT HOME.
Two hundred years ago, the Isle of Axholme was one of the most
remarkable places in England. It is not an island in the sea. It is a part
of Lincolnshire--a piece of land hilly in the middle, and surrounded by
rivers. The Trent runs on the east side of it; and some smaller rivers
formerly flowed round the rest of it, joining the Humber to the north.
These rivers carried down a great deal of mud with them to the Humber,
and the tides of the Humber washed up a great deal of sea-sand into the
mouths of the rivers; so that the waters could not for some time flow
freely, and were at last prevented from flowing away at all: they sank
into the ground, and made a swamp of it--a swamp of many miles
round the hilly part of the Isle of Axholme.
This swamp was long a very dismal place. Fish, and water-birds, and
rats inhabited it: and here and there stood the hut of a fowler; or a
peat-stack raised by the people who lived on the hills round, and who
obtained their fuel from the peat-lands in the swamp. There were also,
sprinkled over the district, a few very small houses--cells belonging to
the Abbey of Saint Mary, at York. To these cells some of the monks
from Saint Mary's had been fond of retiring, in old times, for
meditation and prayer, and doing good in the district round; but when
the soil became so swampy as to give them the ague as often as they
paid a visit to these cells, the monks left off their practice of retiring
hither; and their little dwellings stood empty, to be gradually
overgrown with green moss and lank weeds, which no hand cleared
away.
At last a Dutchman, having seen what wonders were done in his own
country by good draining, thought he could render this district fit to be
inhabited and cultivated; and he made a bargain with the king about it.
After spending much money, and taking great pains, he succeeded. He
drew the waters off into new channels, and kept them there by sluices,
and by carefully watching the embankments he had raised. The land
which was left dry was manured and cultivated, till, instead of a reedy
and mossy swamp, there were fields of clover and of corn, and
meadows of the finest grass, with cattle and sheep grazing in large

numbers. The dwellings that were still standing were made into
farm-houses, and new farmhouses were built. A church here, and a
chapel there was cleaned, and warmed, and painted, and opened for
worship; and good roads crossed the district into all the counties near.
Instead of being pleased with this change, the people of the country
were angry and discontented. Those who lived near had been long
accustomed to fishing and fowling in the swamp, without paying any
rent, or having to ask anybody's leave. They had no mind now to settle
to the regular toilsome business of farming,--and to be under a landlord,
to whom they must pay rent. Probably, too, they knew nothing about
farming, and would have failed in it if they had tried. Thus far they
were not to be blamed. But nothing can exceed the malignity with
which they treated the tenants who did settle in the isle, and the spiteful
spirit which they showed towards them, on every occasion.
These tenants were chiefly foreigners. There was a civil war in England
at that time: and the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire people were so much
engaged in fighting for King Charles or for the Parliament, that fewer
persons were at liberty to undertake new farms than there would have
been in a time of peace. When the Dutchman and his companions found
that the English were not disposed to occupy the Levels (as the drained
lands were called), they encouraged some of their own countrymen to
come over. With them arrived some few Frenchmen, who had been
driven from France into Holland, on account of their being Protestants.