If this list includes all the forges then at work in the Forest, a diminution of seventeen had occurred during the last thirty-five years, and apparently on the west side of the district. Changes may also be observed to have taken place in the owners, although several names are met with a second time.
Considerable prosperity and steadiness continued to attend the mining and making iron in the Forest, so as to render it eligible for the imposition of tithes. So, on the completion of Newland Church, at this period, the Bishop of Llandaff, who presented to it, applied for and obtained from Edward III., in the
fourteenth year of his reign, A.D. 1341, a grant of the tenth part of the ore raised in the neighbourhood, which, together with the forest forges, yielded a rental of £34 the same year. [25a]
To the Edwardian period, that has now, by the aid of the numerous records already quoted, been so minutely substantiated, must be assigned the most prosperous era of the Forest of Dean iron works. A large portion of such success is to be traced to the celebrity at this date of the great fair in Gloucester. It began annually on the eve of St. John Baptist’s day, and continued for the five days following. Agricultural implements were in much request at it, and even noblemen are said to have attended. [25b]
Other places, such as Caerleon, Newport, Barkley, Monmouth, and Trellech, obtained their supplies of iron, or at least the mine-ore, from this neighbourhood, the Forest miner having a certain status of his own, and constituting, with his partners or “verns,” a guild of considerable local influence. [25c]
The heraldic crest (p. 67) forming part of a mutilated brass of the fifteenth century, within the Clearwell Chapel of Newland Church, gives a graphic representation of the iron miner equipped for his work, if not actually engaged in it. He is represented as wearing a cap, and holding between his teeth a candle-stick, an appurtenance still in use amongst the miners about Coleford, as may be observed by examining the frontispiece to this volume, thus illustrating the primitive use and significance of the
phrase candle-stick. With the small mattock in his right hand, he would loosen the fine mineral earth lodged in the cavity within which he worked, as occasion required, or else detach the metallic incrustations lining its sides. A light wooden mine hod, covered, probably, with hide, hangs at his back by a shoulder-strap, fastened to his belt. His attire is completed by a thick flannel frock and leathern breeches, tied with thongs below the knee. The feet most likely were bare.
Other contemporary representations of the mining implements in use at this time in the Forest occur at Abbenhall, where the west side of the church tower, and also the font, exhibit panels carved with hammers, shovels, &c.