The Settlers at Home | Page 2

From first to last, there were about two hundred families, Dutch and
French, settled in the Levels. Some were collected into a village, and
had a chapel opened, where a pastor of their own performed service for
them. Others were scattered over the district, living just where their
occupations required them to settle.
All these foreigners were subject to bad treatment from their
neighbours; but the stragglers were the worst off; because it was easiest
to tease and injure those who lived alone. The disappointed fishers and
fowlers gave other reasons for their own conduct, besides that of being
nearly deprived of their fishing and fowling. These reasons were all bad,
as reasons for hating always are. One excuse was that the new settlers

were foreigners--as if those who were far from their own land did not
need particular hospitality and kindness. Another plea was that they
were connected with the king, by being settled on the lands which he
had bargained to have drained: so that all who sided with the
parliament ought to injure the new tenants, in order to annoy the king.
If the settlers had tried to serve the king by injuring his enemies, this
last reason might have passed in a time of war. But it was not so. It is
probable that the foreigners did not understand the quarrel. At any rate,
they took no part in it. All they desired was to be left in peace, to
cultivate the lands they paid rent for. But instead of peace, they had
little but persecution.
One of these settlers, Mr Linacre, was not himself a farmer. He
supplied the farmers of the district with a manure of a particular kind,
which suited some of the richest soils they cultivated. He found, in the
red soil of the isle, a large mass of that white earth, called gypsum,
which, when wetted and burnt, makes plaster of Paris; and which, when
ground, makes a fine manure for some soils, as the careful Dutchmen
well knew. Mr Linacre set up a windmill on a little eminence which
rose out of the Level, just high enough to catch the wind; and there he
ground the gypsum which he dug from the neighbouring patch or
quarry. He had to build some out-houses, but not a dwelling-house; for,
near his mill, with just space enough for a good garden between, was
one of the largest of the old cells of the monks of Saint Mary's, so well
built of stone, and so comfortably arranged, that Mr Linacre had little
to do but to have it cleaned and furnished, and the windows and doors
made new, to fit it for the residence of his wife and children, and a
servant.
This building was round, and had three rooms below, and three over
them. A staircase of stone was in the very middle, winding round, like a
corkscrew,--leading to the upper rooms, and out upon the roof, from
which there was a beautiful view,--quite as far as the Humber to the
north-east, and to the circle of hills on every other side. Each of the
rooms below had a door to the open air, and another to the staircase;--
very unlike modern houses, and not so fit as they to keep out wind and
cold. But for this, the dwelling would have been very warm, for the

walls were of thick stone; and the fire-places were so large, that it
seemed as if the monks had been fond of good fires. Two of these
lower rooms opened into the garden; and the third, the kitchen, into the
yard;--so that the maid, Ailwin, had not far to go to milk the cow and
feed the poultry.
Mrs Linacre was as neat in the management of her house as people
from Holland usually are; and she did not like that the sitting-room,
where her husband had his meals, and spent his evenings, should be
littered by the children, or used at all by them during her absence at her
daily occupation, in the summer. So she let them use the third room for
their employments and their play. Her occupation, every summer's day,
was serving out the waters from a mineral spring, a good deal
frequented by sick people, three miles from her house, on the way to
Gainsborough. She set off, after an early breakfast, in the cool of the
morning, and generally arrived at the hill-side where the spring was,
and had unlocked her little shed, and taken out her glasses, and rinsed
them, before any travellers passed. It was rarely indeed that a sick
person had to wait a minute for her appearance. There she sat, in her
shed when it rained, and under a tree when it was fine, sewing or
knitting very