He now had had only two available options to attempt to square his debts before his potential death in 1641. He played the arguments again through his mind:
Point the First: Covent Garden
Here the information was very, very good, especially for a developer. His original plans had finally turned out well it seemed, and his descendants had prospered as a result. Francis had leaked a little of this information to the London market, and waited for offers to assist in bringing his plans to completion.
The keys to early success were not housing and tenants as originally thought, but shops, arcades, and the concentration of specific trades. Booksellers and map makers on one street, tailors of high fashion on another and the vegetable and flower sellers concentrated in a single square. He would be damned if he would give them Covent Garden Square, and preferred its more profitable later use as a fashionable covered arcade for shops and dining. More work for Inigo Jones, after he finished the church on the west side.
He also enjoyed the idea of a sober theatre with large columns and retiring rooms on the north side. That would please the king, and his agents had already been approached with offers to fund and build it by the Mercers Company.
As far as Francis knew, Rob had bought the only copy of the "Central London A-Z" map. Therefore he had only changed one thing on his original street plan, renaming the newly assigned tailors street "Saville Rowe." No one would ever know the difference.
Covent Garden should bring in about three-quarters of what was needed, especially the idea of the nine hundred and ninety-nine year leases, and recurring land rents. Cobnuts to the Duke of Westminster, whoever he was!
Point the Second: The Great Level
This was going to be a little trickier. There was an obvious new source of capital: Dutch landowners and merchants salting their monies outside the United Provinces. Robert had similar concerns about the introduction of a flood of new residents to the Fen. So they had decided on a two-pronged approach
Set land aside near the existing towns for housing, to generate more land rents and increase the tithe returns for the towns and surrounding areas. Use the American style of building in "divisions," using a local developer to build town houses, shops, schools and amenities, and releasing them for sale in stages. In these ways new families, their retainers, and the merchants they depended on could be introduced gradually. If possible, grease the palms of councilors, and co-opt the Gardeners' Company to the scheme. The seed of this idea came from Tom Cotton's copies of 1930's encyclopedia entries on English towns that did not yet exist: Letchworth and Welwyn Garden Cities, "planned in advance and surrounded by a permanent belt of agricultural land." And they now knew which crops would thrive on the new level; so there was no need for experimentation. Francis liked the sound of "Wisbech Garden City."
Lastly, apprentice the children of prominent Dutch merchants to the corporation. The war on the continent was not going well for the United Provinces; it would allow fathers to get their sons and daughters safely out of the way of Spanish armies for a time. An example had come from a "Second World War" picture book; it had described English children being fostered abroad to escape war's ravages and hunger. The effort was to be circulated in the press and churches as "true Christian charity." The children would continue to learn their trades, and many would probably stay and make a life, thus tying their families' fortunes to the area. Let any man tell the Dutch children's accents from a fen man after five years, and Francis would pay him twenty pounds.
There was a lot still to think about. Francis quenched his pipe and reopened his account book. The bankers' meeting was next Thursday and the numbers seemed to total up quite well, but Vermuyden was coming over to be briefed tomorrow. Francis was unsure how that second meeting would go, on one hand his Director's name was still known in the future; "Vermuyden's Plans" had it's own place in the encyclopedia entry for the Great Fen. On the other, immediately thereafter the plan's shortcomings, losses to intentional flooding in a war, and how others had tried to resolve his flawed design might bruise a touchy ego.
1633 October, A Wednesday, Englefield House, Reading, Berkshire
Rob and the other groomsman knocked on the door of Englefield House, and then returned down to the bottom step. The white double doors opened, and two Irish lads waited; one in green and the other brown and blue corduroy jerkins, both decorated with blue flowers and green herbs.
"The brothers, I suppose," he speculated, not that he cared at this point.
"Will she come, lads? Tell us if your lady will come?" Rob's fellow groomsman asked the bridesmen barring the doorway.
The brothers turned inside the house, and returned escorting the bride. Her hair hung to her waist, her dress was all blue satin, pearls, flowers and mixed ribbons as she stood between their linked arms. "Aye, here she comes. We go to St. Marks to see her wed, do ye come?" they said in unison.
A large cheer from the villagers behind the groom's party responded favorably, and a few dirty suggestions volleyed over the back of Rob's head. A country wedding indeed!
The two groomsmen returned to their own party and watched as the bride's family and friends funneled through the front door and down the lane after the bride and her two brothers. Two bridesmaids tailed their group, as usual checking out the potential young bucks in both parties.
The bride's father nodded to Rob on the way past. They had negotiated the match between them in Dublin last month. After John Paulet's first wife, Jane had died suddenly; the pressure to marry him off again as quickly as possible had been, for a well-landed English nobleman, immense. The line must have more children; new alliances should be forged, and others quietly forgotten. The tight Roman Catholic community in England all had opinions on who John should marry, why, and for how much money.
Although not a Catholic, Robert had offered to take the pressure off. John had still not cared at that point, still missing his "bonnie Jane," and fretting after his only son.
Even though Grantville was said to change this world's story, Rob wasn't in the mood to push John's fate further. Milton's poem had been revived and revised for the funeral. John had been lost in his grief.
This girl was recorded in the histories as giving John healthy sons and daughters in the Other Place, so Rob had resigned himself to his task. If God pleased this to be, so would it be again. From John's biography, and knowing her given name "Honoura," it had not been hard; the history books had said she was Irish, obviously Roman Catholic, and titled. Her father owning Englefield clinched it, he was sure it was the right family
Rob had pressed his friend's case, and showed the information to the earl of Clanricarde, but the two had still tussled the terms between them this weekend past to settle for a dowry. Only then had the intended couple been allowed to meet for a short walk and conversation at Aldermaston on Monday.
The house, estate and rents of Englefield House would transfer to the groom's family. In return John and his new bride must follow the Irish tradition—thirty days in this house between wedding and returning to John's own home near Basingstoke. The estate workers had the traditional Irish wedding mead and the feast waiting in the main barn for after the ceremony.
Rob gathered the groom in his finery, and called the rest of the visiting party to order. His wife Mary held onto young Charles Paulet's hand on the half-mile walk to the church with the lad's nurse. Ellen Margaret Cotton, her first outing since her mourning period was completed, gathered the children to her, with the first signs of a tear in her eye. It was nice to see some color in her dress at last; yellow mourning clothes had not suited her at all the past year.
"Hmm, I'll ask Mary about seeing for Margaret also. All alone in a draughty house is not safe for a widow," Rob mused. In some part of his mind, he could have done without the additional paperwork of Connington on his plate. When he'd offered to stand witness to Tom's will in all the haste before traveling to Thuringia, he'd forgotten that there were no other Cotton men of age to be the prime
executor.
"Ah, well." Robert smiled. He, too, could make best use of the next thirty days. At his request, John's estate steward had already been exchanging letters with his family at Hilgay in secret. Rob's recollection from years before, visiting between terms at Oxford, of John's main estate land and facilities had not been off course. Between them they had ventured that the happy couple's wedding present from the Weasenhams might help clear John's debts in three or four years, and set the family up for life.
In Grantville last year, Rob had been held in "isolation" for three weeks, whilst his cousin had suffered and died of his fever. The doctors had explained that the hot fever changes its mood periodically, and a few hundred years of changes had hit Tom's drink-weakened humours, or "immune system" hard. Tom had so wanted to meet the two ladies, and in his short happiness of seeing a new library, it had killed him.
While waiting to be allowed to leave Grantville, Rob had finally, with reluctance, turned to the books himself but naturally wanted to follow up on his family's specialty: the future trade market in the Germanies. He had bought or borrowed every book and pamphlet he could, including those from the Grange, the libraries, and the personal collections of the history "buffs" he had been introduced to.
The typical crops described from the encyclopedias in the twentieth century for Norfolk, and Lincolnshire areas had led to the making of some positive notes by Tom for the Gardeners'. Rob had laughed that the Dutch methods of vegetable farming were later called "The Norfolk method."
Back in England Rob's family and other landowners were interested in introducing all the crop varieties to the Level when the works completed. But in the meantime, they needed somewhere to try out some of the planting and refining methods described in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica for one crop in particular.
In his last week Rob had delved into an enjoyable and entertaining read of some of the series of books following the character "Hornblower," some which mentioned the closing of European ports by the English during the Napoleonic War. It had had drawn parallels in Rob's mind to England's current trade gap. At the moment the most expensive international commodities went first to Amsterdam, Hamburg, Venice, or Istanbul. Without a strong English trade fleet London, Southampton, Lynn, Boston, and Bristol were at best secondary markets for some products, with all the appropriate mark-ups.
Excited, he had asked for other story and history books on the same period. Finally one had described, in some detail, a dinner in a future German province of "Prussia," in honor of Emperor Napoleon himself. It had shown an example of how some of the same Fen crops from the encyclopedia could replace the most expensive of this world's delicacies in the right market conditions. In Prussia and Silesia mills had made great profits in the early 1800s until that war ended. Rob thought there was a chance this could be done again; England now was just like the closed Continental ports during that other war. The venture would not work in Amsterdam or Hamburg, but with a Crown License, just might produce at home.
The groom's party entered the Norman church of St. Mark's, and the organ music changed to a more somber tone.
Back on the estate, a gilded box lay on the top table in the barn. The usual flowers and herbs garlanded all the walls, windows and table surfaces. Uniquely, two root crops lay next to the present. Mary still didn't quite believe he'd put a sample of red and white beetroots—Silesian winter cattle feed and sea kale—on a wedding table, but since there was no superstition to forbid him, she'd kept her mouth shut for once. Unknown to everyone but Robert, instructions on how to make sugar from these plants was locked in the box.
1634, March, Wisbech, Lincolnshire
Rob took the small oilskin wrapped parcel from the shipmaster, and stepped carefully down the gangplank to the new wharf. God's teeth, the weather was awful! The parcel went under his arm as he strode back to town, the rain bouncing off his large brimmed hat, and overcoat.
"Filthy day, sir" said Mr. Bell, the customs man from the porch of his office at the entrance to the new timber dock. "Settle up tomorrow?"
Robert swept past, trying to keep the rain from his eyes. "Noon? We should get her unloaded by then " he called back.
Not waiting for a reply, and turned the corner onto Norwich Street, then through the puddles onto West Street, and on to his in-laws' house near the church.
Wisbech streets had changed somewhat in the past two years. The Bedford Levels Corporation had contracted with the town council to land supplies, fish, and additional laborers from the war-torn United Provinces, and to rent marshaling yards and build warehouses. Three new wharfs had been built recently, and the Weasenham family had taken a larger interest in the timber dock. His men were now to fulfill the contract for the new lock gates to be installed on the Nene and Ouse Rivers to hold back the high tides.
He passed a bustle of Dutch merchants in the churchyard, including Vermuyden and his young staff. Obviously they were heading to the Nene Ditch cutting through the town, and the engineer was extolling the new land opportunities of the next phase of drainage to potential investors. The decision of naming the first section of new town houses "Meadowlands" was great press.
"You had to admire the man," Robert thought. His plans had been savaged by information from Grantville, but with copies of other books from the libraries procured by Robert, he had taken to new engineering forms like "built-in redundancy" and "risk management" like a salmon going upriver to spawn. There might have been God's hand at work in the Germanies, war in the United Provinces, and a fickle king at home, but never try and keep a Zeelander from making money, or getting his hands on more land.
He winked at the very wet lad at the back of the Dutch contingent, Vermuyden's new apprentice, young van Rosevelt. Rob had served his time following his uncle in much the same way, lagging behind unnoticed in all weathers.
Master Mercer Robert Weasenham laughed at the cycle of life, and opened the side door. "Mary, I'm back!" he called, while brushing off his hat and hanging up his overcoat on the door peg. Shoes were dropped in the box by the door. No mud through the house, or there would be hell to pay.
"Captain Williams has your fabrics and packages from Hamburg. We'll get them offloaded tomorrow morning." Rob placed the package he carried on the kitchen table, and added, "And here's the naming present for John and Honoura."
Getting books and other printed material past the king's customs-men and censors was so much easier in Wisbech than the main port in Lynn, he thought with a wry smile.
Mary smiled back, and shooed him out of the kitchen fussing over flour and pastries.
Robert hurriedly took the parcel and went upstairs to his office. Better to get this done now, so the boy could take the post before the day was done. He sat down at his desk, and wrote a short note to John Paulet on fresh paper to go with the present.
To John and Honoura,
To you both, a short missive with another package from my agents in Hamburg. We would like you both to accept this storybook as a naming present in advance of the occasion of our godchild's birth.
Mary has a German copy of this book, and suggested we procure an original "Up-time" edition in English. Note the printers are the "Oxford University Press." Ironic, John, considering our labors cleaning presses and scraping parchment as punishments for failing the Rule at Exeter College.
In the Germanies and United Provinces, a fashion has taken for Ladies to read "Romantic Fiction." Publishers are spending a fortune translating hundreds of storybooks from the Grantville libraries, and they are in wide circulation. Most involve a formula following various trials and tribulations of a young Lady, and how she finds "Eternal Love with the Man of Her Dreams." Another American phrase you will have to get used to if the London publishers are ever allowed to print this kind of thing. Unfortunately for my purse, Mary has developed a taste for these and every three months receives parcels from a "Book Club" in Magdeburg. I have learned to pace my business trips to be away the week they arrive.
Mary tells
me this book was seen in the might-have-been future as the most important and influential romantic fiction "novel" ever produced and to note it is written by a gentlewoman of quality, the daughter of a Church of England incumbent. No one may reproach Honoura to read it during her confinement.
The "Romance Appreciation Society" in Magdeburg has circulated a short biography of the author, which we also include. She was (would have been?) born in your county of Southamptonshire, or "Hampshire" as it will later be named, two hundred years from now. It may be interesting to inquire to see if the Austen family has as yet any association in society near Basingstoke.
Mary and I have selected this particular book as entertainment and for your interest as there is mention of your wife's family, although as a protagonist to the main character. If the sketch is true of the future, Honoura's family continues to be well connected at court, has prospered in London, and holds large estates in England (and I assume continue still in Ireland, although there is no mention of that).
However we must also include a "Glossary of Terms" as our English language has subtly changed in the next two hundred years. The researchers at the Grantville libraries were most helpful in collating the changed words, and alternate meanings. We must trouble you both to keep it at hand whilst reading.
A simple example of misunderstanding in the use of our mother tongue comes from my visit to Grantville two years ago. I was named a "Gentleman" in the first person singular during a conversation at dinner at a beer garden in town. I instantly lost my temper and of course tried to hit the man who called me thus, and needs must to be restrained by my colleagues.