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Fen Plantation: Commons, Calvinism, and the Boundaries of Belonging in Early Modern England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2024

Abstract

In the first half of the seventeenth century, several foreign plantations were established on wetlands drained during a wave of ambitious state-led projects across eastern England. The lines of solidarity and separation forged by this little-known episode in the history of migration pose important questions about how emergent notions of nationhood intersected with local and transnational, religious and economic communities. This article investigates the causes and consequences of the settlement of Calvinist refugees on drained commons in Hatfield Level. It argues that fen plantation expands understanding of the relationship between English agricultural improvement and imperial expansion in the British Atlantic, as migrant communities acted in the service of empires and states while forging transnational Protestant networks. As Calvinists and cultivators, however, the settlers were met with hostility in England. While the crown encouraged foreign plantation as a source of national prosperity, Laudian church authorities identified it as a threat to religious conformity, the state, and society, muddying depictions of English governors as guarantors of refugee rights. Local efforts to violently expel settlers from Hatfield Level, meanwhile, were rooted in fen commoners’ defense of customary rights, as parallel communities sought to enact rival environmental and economic models. The settler community interpreted these experiences through the lens of transnational Protestant adversity, entangling their quest for religious freedoms with their remit as fen improvers. Moving beyond dichotomous arguments about xenophobia, this article traces the transnational imaginaries, national visions, and emplaced processes through which collective identities and their sharp edges were constituted in early modern England.

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Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The North American Conference on British Studies

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References

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17 On the concept of community, see Phil Withington and Alexandra Shepard, “Introduction: Communities in Early Modern England,” in Communities in Early Modern England: Networks, Place, Rhetoric, ed. Alexndra Shepard and Phil Withington (Manchester, 2000), 1–17.

18 James I to sewer commissioners in the Great Level, 17 April 1605, Additional MS 35171, fol. 206r, BL.

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21 Brodie Waddell, “Neighbours and Strangers: The Locality in Later Stuart Economic Culture,” in Locating Agency: Space, Power and Popular Politics, ed. Fiona Williamson (Newcastle upon Tyne, 2010), 103–32; Linda Colley, “Britishness and Otherness: An Argument,” Journal of British Studies 31, no. 4 (1992): 309–29, at 315.

22 Jacob Selwood, Diversity and Difference in Early Modern London (Farnham, 2010), 6.

23 Susan D. Amussen, “Punishment, Discipline, and Power: The Social Meanings of Violence in Early Modern England,” Journal of British Studies 34, no. 1 (1995): 1–34, at 15–16.

24 Ash, Draining of the Fens, 1–14.

25 “Articles of agreement between Charles I and Cornelius Vermuyden,” 24 May 1626, in William Peck, A Topographical Account of the Isle of Axholme [. . .], 2 vols. (Doncaster, 1815), 1:appendix 2, i–iv.

26 Contract between Charles I and Cornelius Vermuyden, 27 December 1628, R/HCC/D/3, Nottingham University Library (this repository hereafter abbreviated as NUL); Lord Treasurer Weston to the Attorney General, [1629?], SP16/154, fol. 130, National Archives (this repository hereafter abbreviated as TNA).

27 A pass for Cornelius Vermuyden, 14 January 1623, PC/31, fol. 561, TNA. For further details of the Canvey community, see Basil E. Cracknell, Canvey Island: The History of a Marshland Community (Leicester, 1959), 20–28.

28 They may have followed Vermuyden south to work on other drainage schemes or returned home. None of the Dutch drainage workers who testified in 1628 appear in the settlers’ later church registers; see “Informations taken by Robert Portington,” 18–20 August 1628, SP16/113 fols. 62–67, TNA; Overend, “Isle of Axholme,” 291–92.

29 Piet van Cruyningen, “Dutch Investors and the Drainage of Hatfield Chase, 1626 to 1656,” Agricultural History Review 64, no. 1 (2016): 17–37, at 28; J. Korthals-Altes, Sir Cornelius Vermuyden: The Lifework of a Great Anglo-Dutchman in Land-Reclamation and Drainage (London, 1925), 81; Overend, “Isle of Axholme,” 289–90.

30 The earliest record of Sandtoft as the settlement's location appears in Map of Hatfield Level, 1633, MR1/336, TNA. By 1634, about 130 families had arrived. See Letter of Peter Bontemps to the Participants, 13 June 1636, translated from Latin, in Overend, “Isle of Axholme,” 297–98.

31 “An agreement of the Participants for a minister of the gospel amongst the French and Dutch Protestants,” 16 January 1634, HCC/9111/1, fols. 319–20, NUL.

32 Archbishop Neile to Archbishop Laud, 23 June 1636, SP16/327, fol. 84, TNA.

33 Petition of Peter Berchett et al., 15 November 1645, HL/PO/JO/10/1/196, PA; J. H. Hessels, Ecclesiae Londino-Batavae Archivum [. . .], 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1897), 3, pt. 2:2119.

34 See Goose and Luu, introduction to Immigrants in Tudor and Early Stuart England, 17.

35 Roberta Gilchrist, Sacred Heritage: Monastic Archaeology, Identities, Beliefs (Cambridge, 2020), 168–70.

36 Lien Luu, “Alien Communities in Transition, 1570–1640,” in Goose and Luu, Immigrants in Tudor and Early Stuart England, 192–210.

37 Nigel Goose, “Immigrants and English Economic Development,” in Goose and Luu, Immigrants in Tudor and Early Stuart England, 136–55; Charles G. D. Littleton, “The Strangers, Their Churches and the Continent: Continuing and Changing Connexions,” in Goose and Luu, Immigrants in Tudor and Early Stuart England, 177–91; David Trim, “Immigrants, the Indigenous Community, and International Calvinism,” in Goose and Luu, Immigrants in Tudor and Early Stuart England, 211–22; Silke Muylaert, Shaping the Stranger Churches: Migrants in England and the Troubles in the Netherlands, 1547–1585 (Leiden, 2021).

38 Luu, “Alien Communities in Transition,” 194–99.

39 Paul Musselwhite, ‘“Plantation,” the Public Good, and the Rise of Capitalist Agriculture in the Early Seventeenth-Century Caribbean’, Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 20, no. 4 (September 2022): 598–99. See also: Paul Musselwhite, ‘Private Plantation: The Political Economy of Land in Early Virginia’, in Virginia 1619: Slavery and Freedom in the Making of English America, ed. Paul Musselwhite, Peter C. Mancall, and James Horn (Williamsburg Virginia, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019), 150–72.

40 Petition of James de Con et al., 10 December 1640, and “Copy of Dr. Farmery's direction to the French and Dutch refugees,” n.d., HL/PO/JO/10/1/44, PA; Certificate of Charles Harbord, surveyor-general, 1 November 1633, SP16/250, fol. 13, TNA.

41 Anya Zilberstein, A Temperate Empire: Making Climate Change in Early America (New York, 2016), 129–30.

42 John Patrick Montaño, The Roots of English Colonialism in Ireland (Cambridge, 2011), 4, 17–18.

43 Pluymers, “Taming the Wilderness,” 622–26.

44 Mulry, Empire Transformed, 100, 110. See also Todd A. Borlik, “Caliban and the Fen Demons of Lincolnshire: The Englishness of Shakespeare's Tempest,” Shakespeare 9, no. 1 (2013): 21–51, at 22.

45 See Privy Council orders in response to riots in 1628, PC2/38, fols. 419, 479–80, 485, 491, TNA.

46 Michael Hechter, Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, 1536–1966 (London, 1975), chaps. 3 and 4; Mark Netzloff, England's Internal Colonies: Class, Capital, and the Literature of Early Modern English Colonialism (New York, 2003), 1–3, 6–10; Carl J. Griffin, “Enclosure as Internal Colonisation: The Subaltern Commoner, Terra Nullius and the Settling of England's ‘Wastes’,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 1 (2023): 95–120.

47 Montaño, English Colonialism in Ireland, 140–53. On the transportation of indentured servants from England to America in this period, see Anna Suranyi, “Indenture, Transportation, and Spiriting: Seventeenth Century English Penal Policy and ‘Superfluous’ Populations,” in Building the Atlantic Empires: Unfree Labor and Imperial States in the Political Economy of Capitalism, ca. 1500–1914, ed. John Donoghue and Evelyn P. Jennings (Leiden, 2016), 132–59.

48 Henry Sidney, “Sir Henry Sidney's Memoir of His Government of Ireland (Continued),” Ulster Journal of Archaeology, no. 5 (1857): 299–323, at 306.

49 Sir William Russell's petition and answer, ca. 1590, Lansdowne MS 110, fols. 19–22, BL. See also Gladys Scott Thomson, Family Background: Four Studies of the Russells (London, 1949), 161–71.

50 MacCoinnich, Plantation and Civility in the North Atlantic World, 270–78.

51 A similar although unsuccessful scheme was proposed again in the 1640s; see Thomas Leng, “‘A Potent Plantation Well Armed and Policeed’: Huguenots, the Hartlib Circle, and British Colonization in the 1640s,” William and Mary Quarterly 66, no. 1 (2009): 173–94, esp. 175–77.

52 J. F. Bosher, “Huguenot Merchants and the Protestant International in the Seventeenth Century,” William and Mary Quarterly 52, no. 1 (1995): 77–102, at 77. See also David Ormrod, “The Atlantic Economy and the ‘Protestant Capitalist International,’ 1651–1775,” Historical Research 66, no. 160 (1993): 197–208.

53 Jan de Vries and Ad van der Woude, The First Modern Economy: Success, Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500–1815 (Cambridge, 1997), 32.

54 Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (London, 1991), 34–50.

55 Salvatore Ciriacono, Building on Water: Venice, Holland, and the Construction of the European Landscape in Early Modern Times, trans. Jeremy Scott (Oxford, 2006), 195–98, 207, 209. See also Heinz Schilling, “Innovation through Migration: The Settlements of Calvinistic Netherlanders in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Central and Western Europe,” Histoire Sociale/Social History 16, no. 31 (1983): 7–33.

56 Joris van den Tol, Lobbying in Company: Economic Interests and Political Decision Making in the History of Dutch Brazil, 1621–1656 (Leiden, 2021), chap. 3; Benjamin Schmidt, Innocence Abroad: The Dutch Imagination and the New World, 1570–1670 (Cambridge, 2001), 210–15, 246–49; Frank Lestringant and Ann Blair, “Geneva and America in the Renaissance: The Dream of the Huguenot Refuge, 1555–1600,” Sixteenth Century Journal 26, no. 2 (1995): 285–95; Owen Stanwood, “Between Eden and Empire: Huguenot Refugees and the Promise of New Worlds,” American Historical Review 118, no. 5 (2013): 1319–44; April Lee Hatfield, “Dutch Merchants and Colonists in the English Chesapeake: Trade, Migration and Nationality in 17th-Century Maryland and Virginia,” in Vinge and Littleton, Strangers to Citizens, 296–305.

57 Raphaël Morera, “Environmental Change and Globalization in Seventeenth-Century France: Dutch Traders and the Draining of French Wetlands (Arles, Petit Poitou),” International Review of Social History 55, no. S18 (2010): 79–101, at 82, 84–85.

58 Schmidt, Innocence Abroad, 139–40, 176–78, 182, 247.

59 Ole Peter Grell, Dutch Calvinists in Early Stuart London: The Dutch Church in Austin Friars, 1603–1642 (Leiden, 1989), 260, 265; Ole Peter Grell, Calvinist Exiles in Tudor and Stuart England (Aldershot, 1996), 16; van den Tol, Lobbying in Company, 103–4; “A List of the Several owners of the Level of Hatfield Chace,” 1635, HCC/9111/1, fols. 62–63, NUL.

60 John C. Appleby, s.v. “Courten, Sir William (c. 1568–1636),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/6445; Grell, Calvinist Exiles in Tudor and Stuart England, 9–16.

61 Korthals-Altes, Sir Cornelius Vermuyden, 79. Rapeseed from the Level was exported to Rotterdam in the 1630s; see van Cruyningen, “Dutch Investors and the Drainage of Hatfield Chase,” 34. For similar conditions in earlier Dutch proposals to drain the Great Level, see “Proposed conditions to be observed between the King and the French [sic] contractors,” 1622, SP14/18, fols. 150v–51r, TNA. L. E. Harris suggested that Hatfield Level should be understood as a Dutch rather than English undertaking. See L. E. Harris, Vermuyden and the Fens: A Study of Sir Cornelius Vermuyden and the Great Level (London, 1953), 43.

62 Schmidt, Innocence Abroad, 247–49.

63 Grell, Dutch Calvinists, 48, 161, 260; Overend, “Isle of Axholme,” 287–88; George Stovin, “A brief account of the drainage of the Level of Hatfield Chase,” ca. 1762, HCC/9111/1, fols. 17, 27, 239, 255, 323, 365, NUL; Map of Hatfield Level, 1633, MR1/336, TNA. For a full discussion of the Dutch investors in Hatfield Level, see van Cruyningen, “Dutch Investors and the Drainage of Hatfield Chase.”

64 Archbishop Neile to Archbishop Laud, 23 June 1636, SP16/327, fol. 84, TNA; Petition of James de Con et al., 10 December 1640, and “Copy of Dr. Farmery's direction to the French and Dutch refugees,” n.d., HL/PO/JO/10/1/44, PA; “An agreement of the Participants for a minister of the gospel amongst the French and Dutch Protestants,” 16 January 1634, HCC/9111/1, fols. 319–20, NUL.

65 Bernard Cottret, The Huguenots in England: Immigration and Settlement, c. 1550–1700, trans. Peregrine and Adriana Stevenson (Cambridge, 1991), 2–8; Robin D. Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage: The History and Contribution of the Huguenots in Britain (London, 1985), 1–3; Goose, “Immigrants and English Economic Development.”

66 Petition of John Liens to Charles I, 1637, SP16/375, fol. 84, TNA.

67 I[ohan] L[iens], A Discourse concerning the Great Benefit of Drayning and Imbanking [. . .] (London, 1641), 10, 7. On Liens's authorship, see A. W. Skempton and Margaret Knittl, “Liens, Johan or John (fl. 1627–1641),” in A Biographical Dictionary of Civil Engineers in Great Britain and Ireland, ed. A. W. Skempton, 3 vols. (London, 2002), 1:406–8.

68 Overend, “Isle of Axholme,” 297–98.

69 “Another proposal for draining the Eight Hundred Fen,” [1635?], SP16/307, fol. 62, TNA. Liens became director of works in Eight Hundred Fen and the Lindsey Level soon after; see Skempton and Knittl, “Liens,” 406–7.

70 Petition of Robert Long and John Gibbon, 6 June 1637, SP16/323, fol. 55, TNA.

71 William Dugdale, History of Imbanking and Drayning of Divers Fenns and Marshes [. . .] (London, 1662), 214–15. Charlemont was also the name of a fort in County Armagh, Ireland, built in 1602 by its namesake—Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, the Lord Deputy of Ireland—during the Nine Years’ War: see James O'Neill “The Cockpit of Ulster: War along the River Blackwater, 1593–1603,” Ulster Journal of Archaeology 72 (2013): 184–99, esp. 194–96.

72 Ash, Draining of the Fens, 190.

73 Wit and Drollery Joviall Poems: Corrected and Much Amended [. . .] (London, 1661), 231–33. For discussion of this ballad, see Todd A. Borlik and Clare Egan, “Angling for the ‘Powte’: A Jacobean Environmental Protest Poem,” English Literary Renaissance 48, no. 2 (2018): 256–89.

74 Wit and Drollery Joviall Poems, 233.

75 Only members of the van Peenen, de Witt, van Valkenburg, and Vernatti families settled permanently in the Level. See Will of Sir Gabriel Vernatt of Hatfield, Yorkshire, 23 October 1655, PROB 11/250/447, TNA; George Stovin, “A brief account of the drainage of the Level of Hatfield Chase,” ca. 1762, HCC/9111/1, fols. 17, 27, 239, 255, 323, 365, NUL; van Cruyningen, “Dutch Investors and the Drainage of Hatfield Chase,” 29, 36.

76 Sonia Tycko, “The Legality of Prisoner of War Labour in England, 1648–1655,” Past & Present 246 (2020): 35–68.

77 Colley, “Britishness and Otherness,” 317–21.

78 Tony Claydon and Ian McBride, “The Trials of the Chosen Peoples: Recent Interpretations of Protestantism and National Identity in Britain and Ireland,” in Protestantism and National Identity: Britain and Ireland, c.1650–c.1850, ed. Tony Claydon and Ian McBride (Cambridge, 1998), 3–30, at 9–15.

79 Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600–1640 (Cambridge, 1995), 511, 525–27.

80 Peter Lake, “The Laudian Style: Order, Uniformity, and the Pursuit of the Beauty of Holiness in the 1630s,” in The Early Stuart Church, 1603–1642, ed. Kenneth Fincham (Basingstoke, 1993), 161–84, at 164–66. See also Kenneth Fincham and Nicholas Tyacke, Altars Restored: The Changing Face of English Religious Worship, 1547–c.1700 (Oxford, 2007), chaps. 5 and 6.

81 Michael Questier, “Arminianism, Catholicism, and Puritanism in England during the 1630s,” Historical Journal 49, no. 1 (2006): 53–78: John Walter, “‘Affronts and Insolencies’: The Voices of Radwinter and Popular Opposition to Laudianism,” English Historical Review 122, no. 495 (2007): 35–60.

82 Anthony Milton, s.v. “Laud, William (1573–1645),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/16112.

83 William Laud, Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, ed. William Scott and James Bliss, 10 vols. (Oxford, 1847–1860), 5:323. See also William Laud, “The State of the French and Dutch Churches in England,” 17 April 1634, SP16/265, fol. 157, TNA; Hugh Trevor-Roper, Archbishop Laud, 1573–1645 (London, 1940), 244–57; Ole Peter Grell, “From Uniformity to Tolerance: The Effects on the Dutch Church in London of Reverse Patterns in English Church Policy from 1634 to 1647,” Dutch Review of Church History 66, no. 1 (1986): 17–40, at 17–21.

84 Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 523.

85 Grell, “From Uniformity to Tolerance,” 21–26.

86 As cited in Milton, “Laud, William (1573–1645).”

87 Laud, Works of the Most Reverend Father in God [. . .], 6:22–27. For his later reiteration of such views, see Laud, 7:134-6; Laud, The history of the troubles and tryal of the Most Reverend Father in God and blessed martyr [. . .] (London, 1695), 120, 164–66, 377–78. On the theological and political dimensions of Laud's attitude to foreign reformed churches, see Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 512–23.

88 Petition of French and Dutch Protestant strangers, 16 April 1656, SP18/126, fol. 159, TNA.

89 Tsushima, “Melting into the Landscape,” 108; Petition of Robert Long and John Gibbon, 6 June 1637, SP16/323, fol. 55, TNA; Archbishop Neile to Archbishop Laud, 23 June 1636, TNA, SP16/327, fol. 84; Hessels, Ecclesiae Londino-Batavae Archivum, 3, pt. 2:1899–900, 2115–16, 2123, 2321, 2335, 2562–64.

90 Hessels, Ecclesiae Londino-Batavae Archivum, 3, pt. 2:2115–16.

91 Luu, “Alien Communities in Transition,” 195–99.

92 Archbishop Neile to Archbishop Laud, 23 June 1636; SP16/327, fol. 84, TNA; Robin D. Gwynn, The Huguenots in Later Stuart Britain, 2 vols. (Eastbourne, 2015), 1:84.

93 The transcribed register documented 144 baptisms of 499 in the original register and a scattering of marriages and burials; see HCC/9111/1, fols. 360–66, NUL. A total of five hundred named settlers can be identified in the register and other records.

94 Hessels, Ecclesiae Londino-Batavae Archivum, 3, pt. 2:2115.

95 As cited in Spicer, “‘Place of Refuge and Sanctuary of a Holy Temple,’” 100.

96 Hessels, Ecclesiae Londino-Batavae Archivum, 3, pt. 2:1759–60.

97 Overend, “Isle of Axholme,” 297–98.

98 Petition of Letitia Kemeys, 27 November 1660, HL/PO/JO/10/1/300, PA; Overend, “Isle of Axholme,” 302–3.

99 Petition of John D'Espagne, December 1643, HL/PO/JO/10/1/162, PA. For similar complaints by his successor, see Petition of Peter Berchett et al., 15 November 1645, HL/PO/JO/10/1/196, PA.

100 Grell, “From Uniformity to Tolerance,” 28. Sandtoft Church was admitted into the colloquium of French Churches in September 1647: see A. C. Chamier, ed., Les actes des colloquies des Eglises Francaise et des Synodes des Eglises Etrangeres, refugees en Angleterre, 1581–1654 (Lymington, 1890), 103–7. From 1648 until the 1670s, congregants at Sandtoft were in frequent contact with the coetus of the Dutch and French churches of London: see Hessels, Ecclesiae Londino-Batavae Archivum, 3, pt. 2:2115–16, 2564.

101 Archbishop Neile to Archbishop Laud, 23 June 1636, SP16/327, fol. 84, TNA.

102 Archbishop Neile to Archbishop Laud, 18 September 1636, SP16/331, fol. 108, TNA. See also Archbishop Neile's report of his own diocese, January 1637, SP16/345, fol. 156, TNA.

103 Archbishop Neile to Archbishop Laud, 23 June 1636, SP16/327, fol. 84, TNA.

104 Archbishop Neile to Archbishop Laud, 18 September 1636, SP16/331, fol. 108, TNA; Archbishop Neile's report of his own diocese, January 1637, SP16/345, fol. 156, TNA.

105 Brian Quintrell, s.v. “Williams, John (1582–1650),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/29515. For Farmery's grievances against Williams, see Petition of Dr John Farmery to the King, [1621?], SP14/124, fol. 212, TNA; Petition of John Farmerie to the King, 26 July 1635, SP16/294, fol. 99, TNA; C. E. Welch, “The Downfall of Bishop Williams,” Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society 40 (1964–65): 42–58, at 54–55.

106 Answer of Dr. John Farmery, commissary for Archbishop Laud for co. Lincoln, [1635?], SP16/310, fol. 1, TNA. See also Cottret, Huguenots in England, 133.

107 W. J. C. Moens, The Walloons and Their Church at Norwich: Their History and Registers, 1565–1832 (Lymington, 1888), 277.

108 Petition of Robert Long and John Gibbon, 6 June 1637, SP16/323, fol. 55, TNA; “Another proposal for draining the Eight Hundred Fen,” [1635?], SP16/307, fol. 62, TNA.

109 “Complaints of the country against Dr John Farmery,” 28 April 1629, SP16/540/1, fol. 82, TNA; Petition of the inhabitants of the deanery of Newport Pagnell, [1642?], SP16/493, fol. 107, TNA.

110 Petition of James de Con et al., 10 December 1640, and “Copy of Dr. Farmery's direction to the French and Dutch refugees,” n.d., HL/PO/JO/10/1/44, PA; Journal of the House of Lords (London, 1767–1830), 4:165. While the church was not complete by 1638, it appeared on Josias Arlebout's map of Hatfield Level in 1639; see Spicer, “‘Place of Refuge and Sanctuary of a Holy Temple,’” 103; van Cruyningen, “Dutch Investors and the Drainage of Hatfield Chase,” 29; “A true and perfect plott of [. . .] the Levell of Haitefeild Chass,” 1639, HCC/9044, NUL.

111 Petition of Jacob Meyer and Christian Vandevarte to the House of Lords, 10 December 1641, HL/PO/JO/10/1/113, PA.

112 Henry Gee and William John Hardy, eds., Documents Illustrative of English Church History (New York, 1896), 537–45.

113 “The Accusation and Impeachment of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury,” 1641, in The Harleian Miscellany [. . .], ed. Thomas Park and Edward Harley, 10 vols. (London, 1809), 4:469.

114 Petition of James de Con et al., 10 December 1640, and “Copy of Dr. Farmery's direction to the French and Dutch refugees,” n.d., HL/PO/JO/10/1/44, PA; Petition of Jacob Meyer and Christian Vandevarte to the House of Lords, 10 December 1641, HL/PO/JO/10/1/113, PA.

115 Journal of the House of Lords, 4:165.

116 Hessels, Ecclesiae Londino-Batavae Archivum, 3, pt. 2:1875–77.

117 Hessels, 3, pt. 2:1884. As noted above, formal incorporation did not take place until 1647. Sandtoft's former ministers Etienne Cursol and John d'Espagne later proved troublesome schismatics for the French Church in London; see Gwynn, Huguenots in Later Stuart Britain, 1:105–8, 537–38, 593–94; Journal of the House of Lords, 5:263, 267.

118 Act of Uniformity, 1662, 14 Car. II, c. 4.

119 Colley, “Britishness and Otherness,” 316–22.

120 See Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage, 43, 61–62, 111.

121 Lindley, Fenland Riots and the English Revolution, chap. 6.

122 Examination of witnesses by the Darley and Say committee, 29 February, 5–6 May and 14 May 1652, SP18/37, fols. 21–86, TNA.

123 Deposition of John Clesby, SP18/37, fol. 85, TNA.

124 Edmund Lord Sheffield and inhabitants of Haxey and Owston v. inhabitants of Misterton, 1596/7, E134/39Eliz/East14, TNA.

125 Joy Lloyd, “The Communities of the Manor of Epworth in the Seventeenth Century” (PhD diss., University of Sheffield, 1999), 30–33, 275–77. See also Answer of Dr. John Farmery, commissary for Archbishop Laud for co. Lincoln, [1635?], SP16/310, fol. 1, TNA; Map of Hatfield Level, 1633, MR1/336, TNA.

126 Will of Michael Corselis of Belton, Lincolnshire, 1 November 1637, PROB11/175/224, TNA.

127 Will of Andrew Clerban, husbandman of Hatfield, Yorkshire, 29 November 1658, PROB11/283/668, TNA; Will of Charles Bandrad, husbandman of Belton, Lincolnshire, 23 April 1652, PROB11/221/455, TNA; Will of James Decamps, yeoman of Belton, Lincolnshire, 31 May 1652, PROB11/221/871, TNA; Will of Sir Gabriel Vernatt of Hatfield, Yorkshire, 23 October 1655, PROB 11/250/447, TNA; Petition of Jacob Meyer and Christian Vandevarte to the House of Lords, 10 December 1641, HL/PO/JO/10/1/113, PA; Petition of Peter Berchett et al., 15 November 1645, HL/PO/JO/10/1/196, PA; Petition for a minister, c. 1681, HCC/9111/1, fols. 321–22, NUL.

128 Protestation Return, Crowle Parish and hamlets, Lincolnshire, 1642, HL/PO/JO/10/1/98/32, PA; Protestation Return, Belton Parish, Lincolnshire, 1642, HL/PO/JO/10/1/98/27, PA.

129 Affidavits of Edward Hill, husbandman of Sandtoft and Jacob Vernoy, yeoman of Haxey Parish, 10 February 1646, HL/PO/JO/10/1/202, PA.

130 Depositions of Edmund Aukland and William Wroot, SP18/37, fol. 52, TNA; Deposition of Thomas Roade in Sir Thomas Abdy and Sir Thomas Barneham v. Gregory Torr et al., 1648–49, E134/24Chas1/East4, fol. 2v, TNA.

131 Deposition of Edward Hill, SP18/37, fol. 53, TNA.

132 Deposition of John Bracer, SP18/37, fols. 62–63, TNA.

133 Deposition of Anthony Massengarb, SP18/37, fol. 54, TNA.

134 Deposition of Francis Letty, SP18/37, fol. 56, TNA.

135 Petition of Peter Berchett et al., 15 November 1645, HL/PO/JO/10/1/196, PA.

136 Report of Darley and Say, 2 June 1653, SP18/37, fols. 13–19, TNA.

137 Deposition of John Mylner, SP18/37, fol. 56, TNA; Deposition of John Bracer, SP18/37, fol. 63, TNA. John Mylner is an Anglicization of Johan du Moulin, recorded in the Sandtoft Church register.

138 Deposition of John Wray, SP18/37, fol. 56, TNA.

139 On dissenting religious beliefs in the Isle of Axholme, see Lloyd, “Communities of the Manor of Epworth in the Seventeenth Century,” 197–98, 231.

140 Depositions of John Amory and Abraham Lottie, SP18/37, fols. 45–46, TNA.

141 Journal of the House of Lords, 11:139.

142 Affidavit of Elizabeth Foster, 23 August 1660, HL/PO/JO/10/1/298A, PA.

143 Keith Pluymers, “Cow Trials, Climate Change, and the Causes of Violence,” Environmental History 25, no. 2 (2020): 287–309, at 291.

144 Virginia DeJohn Anderson, Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America (Oxford, 2002), 211.

145 “William Dugdale's Diary,” 19 May 1657, in H. C. Darby, The Draining of the Fens, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1956), 283.

146 Deposition of John Amory, SP18/37, fols. 47–48, 61, TNA.

147 Affidavit of John Amory, 10 March 1662, HL/PO/JO/10/1/313, PA.

148 John Spittlehouse, The case and appeal of the inhabitants, freeholders and commoners of the Manor of Epworth [. . . ] (London, 1653), 3.

149 Deposition of John Bracer, SP18/37, fol. 63, TNA. It is unclear whether Bracer was himself a foreign tenant, since his name does not match any in the Sandtoft Church register.

150 Deposition of William Wroot, SP18/37, fol. 59, TNA.

151 Information of John Linsedge, 18 August 1628, SP 16/113, fol. 62, TNA.

152 Affidavit of Edmund Aukland, 6 July 1647, HL/PO/JO/10/1/239, PA.

153 Petition of Hatfield Level Participants, 26 June 1660, and affidavits of Nathaniel Reading and John Amory, 21 June 1660, HL/PO/JO/10/1/293, PA; Petition of Hugh Girdler, ca. 1661, HCC/6002, fols. 478–79, NUL; Order of sewer court, 1661, HCC/6002 fols. 485–86, NUL.

154 Affidavit of William Tomkinson, 10 March 1662, HL/PO/JO/10/1/313, PA. For earlier complaints of violence against sewer officials, see Record Book of the Hatfield Level Sewer Commission, HCC/6002, fols. 26, 52, 59, NUL.

155 Johannes Müller, Exile Memories and the Dutch Revolt: The Narrated Diaspora, 1550–1750 (Leiden, 2016), 9–13.

156 Petition of Peter Berchett et al., 15 November 1645, HL/PO/JO/10/1/196, PA.

157 Hessels, Ecclesiae Londino-Batavae Archivum, 3, pt. 2: 2180–81.

158 Hessels, Ecclesiae Londino-Batavae Archivum, 3, pt. 2: 2180–81.

159 Petition of French and Dutch Protestant strangers, 16 April 1656, SP18/126, fol. 159, TNA. On Cromwell's support for the Waldensians, see Nicole Greenspan, Selling Cromwell's Wars: Media, Empire, and Godly Warfare, 1650–1658 (London, 2012), 129–43.

160 Letter to Major-General Whalley, 21 August 1656, SP25/77, fol. 840, TNA.

161 Affidavit of John Amory, HL/PO/JO/10/1/313, PA.

162 Thomas S. Freeman and David Scott Gehring, “Martyrologists without Boundaries: The Collaboration of John Foxe and Heinrich Pantaleon,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 69, no. 4 (2018): 746–67, at 755–60.

163 Worse and worse news from Ireland [. . .] (London, 1641).

164 Ethan Shagan, “Constructing Discord: Ideology, Propaganda, and English Responses to the Irish Rebellion of 1641,” Journal of British Studies 34, no. 1 (1997): 4–34, at 12–13.

165 Petition of French and Dutch Protestant strangers, 16 April 1656, SP18/126, fol. 159, TNA.

166 Deposition of Thomas Sayles, SP18/37, fol. 41, TNA.

167 Affidavit of Elizabeth Foster, 23 August 1660, HL/PO/JO/10/1/298A, PA.

168 Petition of inhabitants of the Isle of Axholme, 9 July 1651, SP46/96, fol. 52, TNA.

169 Jeffrey Alexander, Trauma: A Social Theory (Cambridge, 2012), 4.

170 Will of Peter Berchet, Minister of Thorne, Yorkshire, 16 October 1655, PROB11/250/364, TNA.

171 Will of Nicholas Tis of Thorne, Yorkshire, 14 November 1654, PROB11/240/704, TNA. For further discussion of settler wills, see Lloyd, “Communities of the Manor of Epworth in the Seventeenth Century,” 273–77.

172 For discussion of local violence against settlers in Whittlesey, see Falvey, “Custom, Resistance, and Politics,” 306–8, 362.

173 Gregorio Leti, cited in Trevor Bevis, Strangers in the Fens: Huguenot/Walloon Communities at Thorney, Parson Drove, Guyhirn, and Some Adherents, 2nd ed. (March, 1983), 8.

174 Hessels, Ecclesiae Londino-Batavae Archivum, 3, pt. 2:1884, 1899–1900, 2211; Protestation Return, Epworth Parish, Lincolnshire, 1642, HL/PO/JO/10/1/98/33, PA.

175 For similar patterns of leadership by Sandtoft settlers in Thorney Church, see Chamier, Les actes des colloquies des Eglises Francaise et des Synodes des Eglises Etrangeres, 103, 114; Hessels, Ecclesiae Londino-Batavae Archivum, 3, pt. 2:1899.

176 Bevis, Strangers in the Fens, 5–6, 8.

177 Gwynn, Huguenots in Later Stuart Britain, 1:678, 761–63.

178 Petition for a minister, c. 1681, HCC/9111/1, fols. 321–24, NUL.

179 Gwynn, Huguenots in Later Stuart Britain, 1:421; William Minet, “The Ministers of the Church at Sandtoft,” Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland 13 (1923–29): 408–10, at 409–10.

180 Daniel Byford, “Agricultural Change in the Lowlands of South Yorkshire with Special Reference to the Manor of Hatfield 1600–c.1875” (PhD diss., University of Sheffield, 2005), 128–31; Abraham de la Prime, “The History and Antiquities of the Town and Parish of Hatfield near Doncaster in Yorkshire,” [late 1690s], Lansdowne MS 837, BL.

181 David Bell, “Replies to Richard Drayton and David Motadel,” in “Discussion: The Futures of Global History,” ed. Richard Drayton and David Motadel, special issue, Journal of Global History 13, no. 1 (2018): 1–21, at 17 (Bells's emphasis).

182 Stanwood, Global Refuge, 24–25, 31, 33–34, 86.

183 Cited in O'Reilly, William, “Strangers Come to Devour the Land: Changing Views of Foreign Migrants in Early Eighteenth-Century England,” Journal of Early Modern History 21, no. 3 (2017): 154–87Google Scholar, at 178–79.

184 O'Reilly, “Strangers Come to Devour the Land,” 184–86,

185 As cited in Stanwood, Global Refuge, 33–38. See also Robin D. Gwynn, “Government Policy towards Huguenot Immigration and Settlement in England and Ireland,” in The Huguenots and Ireland: Anatomy of an Emigration, ed. C. E. J. Calidicott, H. Gough, and J.-P. Pittion (Dublin, 1987), 205–24, at 219–22.

186 Stanwood, Global Refuge, 54–57, 81–87, 153–61.

187 Mulry, Empire Transformed, chap. 3.

188 On the transition from indentured European to enslaved African labor in the early modern British Atlantic, see Newman, Simon P., A New World of Labor: The Development of Plantation Slavery in the British Atlantic (Philadelphia, 2013)Google Scholar, chap. 8; Abigail Swingen, “Labor: Employment, Colonial Servitude, and Slavery in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic,” in Mercantilism Reimagined: Political Economy in Early Modern Britain and Its Empire, ed. Philip J. Stern and Carl Wennerlind (New York, 2013), 46–73. On the environmental dimensions of this transition, see Katherine Johnston, The Nature of Slavery: Environment and Plantation Labor in the Anglo-Atlantic World (Oxford, 2022), chap. 1.

189 Hall, Kim F., Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England (Ithaca, 1996), 176CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

190 Archbishop Neile to Archbishop Laud, 23 June 1636, SP16/327, fol. 84, TNA.