With all these privileges, to which may be added exemption from ordinary taxation and military service, though the tinners were liable to be taxed separately and enrolled for service under their own officers, it was natural that the exact definition of a tinner should have given rise to much dispute. On the one hand, it was argued that these exemptions and privileges applied only to working tinners actually employed in getting ore; on the other, the tin dealers, blowers, and owners of blowing-houses claimed to be included. Eventually the larger definition was accepted, and, indeed, it was almost entirely from the capitalist section of the industry that the parliaments were elected, from the sixteenth century, if not earlier.
It is rather remarkable that when the stannaries first come into evidence, in the reign of Henry II., the chief centre of production appears to have been Devon rather than Cornwall.[221] So far as can be estimated the output during this reign rose gradually from about 70 tons in 1156 to about 350 in 1171. Richard I., with his constant need of money, reorganised the stannaries in 1198, and at the beginning of John's reign the output was between 400 and 450 tons. The issue of the charter to the stannaries in 1201 does not seem to have had any immediate effect on the industry, but about ten years later there was increased activity, the output rising in 1214 to 600 tons.[222] During the early years of Henry III. the tin revenues were farmed out, and no details are available either for these years, or from the period 1225-1300, during which time the stannaries were in the hands of the Earls of Cornwall. Two things only are clear, that the total output had fallen off, and that Cornwall had now far outstripped Devon. The grant of a charter confirming the privileges of the stannaries in 1305 seems to have marked the beginning of a more prosperous era, and by 1337 the output had reached 700 tons. The Black Death, however, in 1350 put an end to this prosperity, and with the exception of a boom during the reign of Henry IV. tinning did not recover until just at the end of our medieval period. Even at its worst, however, the industry was a source of considerable revenue, the coinage duties[223] never falling below £1000, and amounting in 1337 and 1400 to over £3000, in addition to which there were other smaller payments and perquisites.[224] The royal privileges of pre-emption was also of value to needy kings who frequently availed themselves of it to grant this pre-emption, or virtual monopoly, to wealthy foreign merchants and other money-lenders in return for substantial loans.
Before leaving the subject of the tin mines of Cornwall and Devon, it is perhaps worth while noting that there is virtually no documentary evidence of the working of the copper deposits of Cornwall prior to the late sixteenth century, and it would seem that most of the copper used in medieval England must have been imported.
CHAPTER V
QUARRYING—STONE, MARBLE, ALABASTER, CHALK
Stone-quarrying is an industry to which the references in medieval records are more numerous than enlightening. It would be easy to fill pages with a list of casual references to the working of quarries in all parts of England, and after struggling through the list the reader would know that stone was dug in quite a lot of places at different times, which he might have assumed without the documentary evidence. It is natural that when a castle, an abbey, a church, or other stone building is to be erected the stone, whose cost lies mainly in transport, should be obtained from the nearest possible source. Founders of monasteries frequently made grants either of existing quarries or of the right to dig stone for the monastic buildings, and the discovery of a bed of suitable stone close to the site selected for the Conqueror's votive abbey of Battle was so opportune as to be deemed a miracle.[225] When a monastery was founded in a district where stone could not be found, it was almost essential that its supplies should be drawn if possible from some place from which the stone could be carried by water, and it was no doubt the position of Barnack between the Welland and the Nene that made its quarries so important to the monks of the Fenland.[226] The abbeys of Peterborough, Ramsey, Crowland, Bury St. Edmund and Sawtry all held quarries in Barnack and quarrelled amongst themselves over their respective rights. The monks of Sawtry, for instance, had made a canal for carrying stone to their abbey by way of Wittlesea Mere by permission of the abbey of Ramsey, a permission which they seem to have abused, as in 1192 orders were given to block all their lodes except the main one leading to Sawtry, and they had to promise to put up no buildings except one rest house for the men on their stone barges.[227]
For York Minster[228] stone was brought from the quarries of Thevesdale, Huddleston, and Tadcaster down the Wharfe, and from Stapleton down the Aire into the Ouse, and so up to St. Leonard's wharf, whence it was carried on sleds to the mason's yard. Westminster and London were mainly supplied from Surrey, from the Reigate and Chaldon quarries, and Kent, from the Maidstone district. The tough 'Kentish rag,' which was used by the Romans for the walls of London, was much in demand for the rougher masonry,[229] and in a contract for building a wharf by the Tower in 1389, it was stipulated that the core of the walls should be of 'raggs,' and the facing of 'assheler de Kent.'[230] The Reigate stone, on the other hand, was of superior quality and more suited for fine work, and we find it constantly used for images, carved niches, and window tracery.[231]
The most accessible stone not always being the most suitable for the varying requirements of architecture, it was necessary to find other stone possessing the desired qualities, and certain quarries at an early date acquired renown. Setting aside the famous Norman quarries of Caen, whose stone appears in greater or less quantities in hundreds of buildings and of records, there are a number of English quarries of more than local repute in medieval times. Such were the quarries of Beer in Devonshire, from whose labyrinthine galleries stone was carried to Rochester in 1367,[232] to St. Stephen's Westminster in 1362,[233] and elsewhere. The fine limestone, later known as Bath Stone, was quarried to a large extent at Haslebury in Box in Wiltshire, from which place it was sent in 1221 to the royal palace at Winchester for the columns of the hall and for chimney hoods,[234] Richard Sired receiving 23s. 4d. for cutting 105 blocks of stone in the quarry of Hesalburi.[235] For these same works at Winchester much stone was brought from the Hampshire quarry of Selebourne, and from the better known quarries of the Isle of Wight, while a stone-cutter was sent to procure material from the quarry of Corfe. This latter was no doubt the same as the 'hard stone of Corfe,' bought for Westminster in 1278.[236] With Corfe and Purbeck is associated Portland stone, which attained its greatest fame in the hands of Wren after the Fire of London, but was already appreciated in the fourteenth century, when it was used in Exeter Cathedral and at Westminster.[237] Further east Sussex possessed a number of quarries of local importance,[238] and the quarry of green sandstone at Eastbourne, from which the great Roman walls of Pevensey and the medieval castle within them were alike built, probably provided the '28 stones of Burne, worked for windows of the vault under the chapel' at Shene in 1441.[239] Another Sussex quarry, that of Fairlight, near Hastings, supplied large quantities of stone for Rochester Castle in 1366 and 1367.[240] The list of stone brought in the latter year at Rochester is of interest as showing the various sources from which it was derived.[241] There were bought 55 tons of Beer freestone at prices varying from 9s. to 10s. the ton,[242] 62 tons of Caen stone at 9s., 45 tons of Stapleton freestone[243] at 8s., 44 tons of Reigate stone at 6s., 195 tons of freestone from Fairlight at 3s. 4d., 1850 tons of rag from Maidstone at 40s. the hundred tons, and a large quantity[244] of worked stone from Boughton Mounchelsea.