History of Madeley / including Ironbridge, Coalbrookdale, and Coalport

by John Randall

Montgomery, in verses from which we extract the following, paid a just tribute to his memory:

Strike a louder, loftier lyre;
Bolder, sweeter strains employ;
Wake remembrance! and inspire
Sorrow with the song of joy.

Who was he for whom our tears
Flowed, and will not cease to flow?
Full of honours and of years,
In the dust his head lies low.

. . . . . . .

He was one whose open face
Did his inmost heart reveal;
One who wore with meekest grace
On his forehead heaven’s broad seal.

Kindness all his looks express’d,
Charity was every word;
Him the eye beheld and bless’d,
And the ear rejoiced and heard.

Like a patriarchal sage,
Holy, humble, courteous, mild,
He could blend the awe of age
With the sweetness of a child.

. . . . . . .

Oft his silent spirit went,
Like an angel from the throne,
On benign commission bent,
In the fear of God alone.

Then the widow’s heart would sing,
As she turned her wheel, for joy;
Then the bliss of hope would spring
On the outcast orphan boy.

To the blind, the deaf, the lame,
To the ignorant and vile,
Stranger, captive, slave, he came,
With a welcome and a smile.

Help to all he did dispense.
Gold, instruction, raiment, food,
Like the gifts of Providence,
To the evil and the good.

Deeds of mercy, deeds unknown,
Shall eternity record,
Which he durst not call his own,
For he did them for the Lord.

As the earth puts forth her flowers,
Heaven-ward breathing from below;
As the clouds descend in showers,
When the southern breezes glow.

. . . . . . .

Full of faith, at length he died,
And victorious in the race,
Wore the crown for which he died,
Not of merit but of grace.

William Reynolds.

The father, Richard Reynolds, as will be seen from our sketch, managed to realize immense wealth at Ketley, and, what is more, to remain superior to the influence wealth too often has upon its possessor. The finer feelings of the man never succumbed to the vulgar circumstances of his position, but maintained their freshness, and graduated to maturity by the mastering force of a resolute will and a well-disciplined and highly enlightened mind. Never so completely absorbed in the arts and intricacies of money-making as to lose sight of higher and worthier aims, he sought an opportunity earlier than men in his circumstances usually do of enjoying the well-earned fruits of an active life; of indulging in that repose and retirement congenial to minds similarly constituted to his own. Accordingly, his shares in the works were turned over to his two sons, William and Joseph. William was the more distinguished of the two in carrying out improvements connected with the works. Like his father, he possessed an active mind, an elevated taste, and a desire for knowledge; to which were added a mechanical genius, and an aptitude for turning to account resources within his reach. He saw the necessity of uniting science with practice in developing the rich resources of the district; and that knowledge and discovery must keep pace with aptitude in their use.

“An equal appreciation of all parts of knowledge,” it was remarked by Humboldt, “is an especial requirement of an epoch in which the material wealth and the increasing prosperity of nations are in a great measure based on a more enlightened employment of natural products and forces. The most superficial glance at the present condition of European states shows that those which linger in the race cannot hope to escape the partial diminution, and perhaps the final annihilation, of their resources. It is with nations as with nature, which, according to a happy expression of Goethe, knows no pause in ever-increasing movement, development, and production—a curse, still cleaving to a standstill. Nothing but serious occupation with chemistry and physical and natural science can defend a state from the consequences of competition. Man can produce no effect upon nature, or appropriate her powers, unless he is conversant with her laws, and with their relations to material objects according to measures and numbers. And in this lies the power of popular intelligence, which rises or falls as it encourages or neglects this study. Science and information are the joy and justification of mankind. They form the spring of a nation’s wealth, being often indeed substitutes for those material riches which nature has in many cases distributed with so partial a hand. Those nations which remain behind in manufacturing activity, by neglecting the practical application of the mechanical arts, and of industrial chemistry, to the transmission, growth, or manufacture of raw materials—those nations amongst whom respect for such activity does not pervade all classes—must inevitably fall from prosperity they have attained; and this so much the more certainly and speedily as neighbouring states, instinct with the power of renovation, in which science and the arts of industry operate or lend each other mutual assistance, are seen pressing forward in the race.”

Upon this principle Mr. Reynolds placed himself under the teaching of Dr. Black, the discoverer of latent heat, a gentleman who by his eminent ability and teaching did so much to inspire a love for the science in England during the latter part of the last century. He was thus enabled to bring the knowledge he possessed of elementary substances and of their peculiar qualities, gained in the laboratory, to bear upon the manufacture of iron in the furnace and the forge, and to anticipate some of the discoveries of later times.

Steel and iron have long been manufactured at Ulverstone, and the quality or fitness of the ore for the purpose is attributed to the presence of manganese in the ore, which since the establishment of railways has come into general use. In Mr. Reynolds’s time we imported large quantities of iron and steel; and ignorant of what constituted the difference between our own and that of foreign markets, had with some humiliation to confess our dependence. In no case had a uniform quality of bar-iron with the superior marks of Sweden and Russia been produced. A great variety of processes had been tried, and makers were not wanting who made laudable efforts for the accomplishment of the object, feeling that in so doing they devoted their time to the service of their country, and that in a national as well as a commercial point of view no experiments were fraught with more important consequences.

Mr. Reynolds thought he saw the solution of the problem how to produce metal equal to that made from the magnetic and richer ores of the Swedish and Siberian mines, when Bergman published his analysis of Swedish iron, showing the large percentage of manganese it contained. The analysis showed the following results:

Cast Iron.
	Parts.
Plumbago	2.20
Manganese	15.25
Silicious Earth	2.25
Iron	80.30
	100
Steel.
Plumbago	.50
Manganese	15.25
Silicious Earth	.60
Iron	83.65
	100
Bar-Iron.
Plumbago	.50
Manganese	15.25
Silicious Earth	1.75
Iron	84.78
	100

In order to effect a combination corresponding with this analysis of the French chemist he introduced manganese into the refinery during the re-smelting process, and succeeded in producing bar-iron capable of conversion into steel of better quality than had previously been made from coke-iron. From subsequent experiments the per-centage introduced of metallic manganese could be traced into bar-iron, the inference being that the purpose served was the additional supply of oxygen it gave to burn out the impurities—a result the Bessemer process has since attained in another way. When it is remembered that the end to be attained in these processes is to consume the impurities of the metal, and that those impurities are of such a nature as to unite with oxygen at a high temperature and form separate compounds, also that this boiling and bubbling up of the liquid metal was carefully watched and tended formerly, one can understand how near the iron-kings of a past age were to the Bessemer discovery of the present.