Sir Cornelius Vermuyden (Sint-Maartensdijk, 1595 – London, 11 October 1677) was a Dutch engineer who introduced Dutch land reclamation methods to England. Vermuyden was commissioned by the Crown to drain Hatfield Chase in the Isle of Axholme, Lincolnshire, Vermuyden was knighted in 1629 for his work and became an English citizen in 1633. In the 1650s, he directed major projects to drain The Fens of East Anglia, introducing the innovation of constructing washes, to allow periodic flooding of the area by excess waters. Early life and education Cornelius was the son of Giles Vermuyden and Sarah Werkendet. He was born in 1595 in Sint-Maartensdijk on the Isle of Tholen in Zeeland, Netherlands. He trained in the Netherlands as an engineer, learning Dutch techniques for controlling water and draining marshland. Career in England By the period of 1621 to 1623, Vermuyden was working in England, where his first projects were on the River Thames, repairing a sea wall at Dagenham and working to reclaim Canvey Island, Essex. The latter project was financed by Joas Croppenburg, a Dutch haberdasher to whom Vermuyden was related by marriage. This, or perhaps work at Windsor, brought him to the notice of Charles I, who commissioned him in 1626 to drain Hatfield Chase in the Isle of Axholme, Lincolnshire. The King was Lord of the four principal manors there: Hatfield, Epworth, Crowle and Misterton, as well as 13 of the adjacent manors, and he wanted to expand the cultivable area. Vermuyden was to receive one third of the drained land, most of which had previously been commons, as recompense for his investment. To finance the drainage project, he sold shares in this land to other investors, including some fellow Dutchmen. Some French and Walloon Protestant refugees also settled in the area as landowners or tenants. The King intended to enclose one third of the common fen in his right of "improvement" as the Lord of the Manor, leaving one-third for those local residents who had common rights of pasturage in the fens. The local people were upset by the project, particularly those of the Manor of Epworth, whose lord had already enclosed part of the commons in the 14th century. He had later signed a legal document giving up all subsequent rights of enclosure within the manor. As with other fen drainage schemes at the time, the locals did not oppose drainage per se, but were