Samuel Fortrey (1622–1681) was an English landowner and fen drainer, author of England's Interest and Improvement, consisting in the increase of the Store and Trade of this Kingdom (Cambridge, 1663).
[1] Fortrey, born on 11 June 1622, was the eldest son of Samuel Forterie, a merchant of Walbrook Ward, London, who was grandson of John de la Forterye, a Huguenot refugee from Lille, and owned a house at Kew, eventually bought by Queen Charlotte.
[2] Its most specific advice is that immigration and enclosure should be encouraged, and that the king should set a good example by preferring fabrics of home manufacture.
It was for many years frequently referred to by financial writers in consequence of a very circumstantial statement contained in it to the effect that the value of the English imports from France was £2,600,000, and the value of the exports to France £1,000,000, "by which it appears that our trade with France is at least sixteen hundred thousand pounds a year clear lost to this kingdom.Samuel Fortrey experimented with small wooden models in a tank using falling weights"[2] This poem was published anonymously by Moses Pitt in 1685 and has subsequently been attributed to Samuel Fortrey.
The critic, Bridget Keegan, has highlighted this poem as depicting the viewpoint of the "gentlemen drainers" in opposition to the "fenland commoners".