§ 4. DRAINAGE OF THE FENS—A most important feature in the development of agriculture in the Eastern counties was the drainage of the fens—_i.e._ all that large district {112} which extends inward from the Wash into the counties of Lincoln, Cambridge, Northampton, Huntingdon, Norfolk and Suffolk. This district had been reclaimed by the Romans, and had been then a fertile country. But in the time of the Domesday Book it was once again a mere marsh, owing to incursions of the sea, which the English at that time had not the ability to prevent. Although even in 1436, and subsequently, partial attempts had been made to reclaim this vast area, the first effectual effort was begun only in 1634, by the Earl of Bedford, who got 95,000 acres of the reclaimed land as a reward for his undertaking. The contract was fulfilled in 1649, and a corporation was formed to manage the “Bedford level,” as it was now called, in 1688. The reclaiming of so much land naturally increased the prosperity of the counties in which it stood, and their agriculture flourished considerably in consequence, Bedfordshire for instance being now the most exclusively agricultural county in the kingdom. § 5. RISE OF PRICE OF CORN, AND OF RENT—The price of corn, meanwhile, was now steadily rising. From 1401 to 1540—_i.e._ before the rise in prices and the debasement of the coinages—the average price had been six shillings per quarter; after prices had recovered from their inflation and settled down to a general average once more, taking the price from 1603 to 1702, corn was forty-one shillings per quarter. The average produce had apparently declined since the fifteenth and before the improvements of the seventeenth century. In the former period it was about twelve bushels per acre, and in the fourteenth century eleven bushels; but Gregory King, writing in the seventeenth century, only gives ten bushels as the average of his time. His estimate, however, is doubted. At the same time, rent had risen from the sixpence per acre of the fifteenth century to four shillings, according {113} to Professor Rogers, or even 5_s._ 6_d._ according to King, who says the gains of the farmer of his time are very small, and that rents were more than doubled between 1600 and 1699. We will reserve the topic of the rise of rent, however, for a separate section, and keep to the agricultural developments of the period.