Dutch investors and the drainage of Hatfield Chase, 1626 to 1656

This article tries to disentangle the financial consequences of the drainage of Hatfield Chase by Sir Cornelius Vermuyden and a group of Dutch investors. Recently discovered documents in the Noord-Holland Archives at Haarlem throw a new light on this enterprise. They show that losses incurred by the investors were not just caused by the actions of disgruntled commoners, but also by Vermuyden's chaotic financial management. These losses may have been more limited than has commonly been assumed in the past, because the costs of drainage were relatively low compared with projects in the Netherlands. It is argued that only those investors who had not sold their land before the outbreak of the Civil War incurred heavy losses.