| CHAP. | PAGE | |
| I. | MINING—COAL | 1 |
| II. | " IRON | 20 |
| III. | " LEAD AND SILVER | 38 |
| IV. | " TIN | 62 |
| V. | QUARRYING—STONE, MARBLE, ALABASTER, CHALK | 76 |
| VI. | METAL-WORKING | 92 |
| VII. | POTTERY—TILES, BRICKS | 114 |
| VIII. | CLOTHMAKING | 133 |
| IX. | LEATHER WORKING | 171 |
| X. | BREWING—ALE, BEER, CIDER | 184 |
| XI. | THE CONTROL OF INDUSTRY | 200 |
| INDEX | 241 | |
CHAPTER I
MINING—COAL
Coal is so intimately connected with all that is essentially modern—machinery, steam, and the black pall that overhangs our great towns and manufacturing districts—that it comes almost as a surprise to find it in use in Britain at the beginning of the Christian era. Yet excavation has proved beyond all doubt that coal was used by the Romans, ashes and stores of the unburnt mineral being found all along the Wall, at Lanchester and Ebchester in Durham,[1] at Wroxeter[2] in Shropshire and elsewhere. For the most part it appears to have been used for working iron, but it was possibly also used for heating hypocausts, and there seems good reason to believe that it formed the fuel of the sacred fire in the temple of Minerva at Bath, as Solinus, writing about the end of the third century, comments on the 'stony balls' which were left as ashes by this sacred fire.[3] That such coal as was used by the Romans was obtained from outcrops, where the seams came to the surface, is more than probable. There appears to be no certain evidence of any regular mining at this period.
With the departure of the Romans from Britain coal went out of use, and no trace of its employment can be found prior to the Norman Conquest, or indeed for more than a century after that date. It was not until quite the end of the twelfth century that coal was rediscovered, and the history of its use in England may be said for all practical purposes to begin with the reign of Henry III. (1216). In the 'Boldon Book'[4] survey of the see of Durham, compiled in 1183, there are several references to smiths who were bound to make ploughshares and to 'find the coal' therefor, but unfortunately the Latin word invenire bears the same double meaning as its English equivalent 'to find,' and may imply either discovery or simple provision. In view of the fact that the word used for coal (carbonem) in this passage is unqualified, and that carbo, as also the English 'cole,' practically always implies charcoal, it would be unsafe to conclude that mineral coal is here referred to. The latter is almost invariably given a distinguishing adjective, appearing as earth coal, subterranean coal, stone coal, quarry coal, etc., but far most frequently as 'sea coal.' The origin of this term may perhaps be indicated by a passage in a sixteenth-century account of the salt works in the county of Durham:[5] 'As the tide comes in it bringeth a small wash sea coal which is employed to the making of salt and the fuel of the poor fisher towns adjoining.' It is most probable that the first coal used was that thus washed up by the sea and such as could be quarried from the face of the cliffs where the seams were exposed by the action of the waves. The term was next applied, for convenience, to similar coal obtained inland, and as an export trade grew up it acquired the secondary significance of sea-borne coal.
No references to purchases of sea coal occur in the Pipe Rolls of Henry II., nor, so far as I am aware, in those of Richard I. and John, but it would seem that its existence was known before the end of the twelfth century, as Alexander Neckam in his treatise, De Naturis Rerum,[6] has a curious and puzzling section, 'De Carbone,' at the beginning of his discourse on minerals, parts of which seem applicable to sea coal, though other parts appear to refer to charcoal. So far as can be gathered, he considered sea coal to be charcoal found in the earth; he comments on the extreme durability of coal and its resistance to the effects of wet and the lapse of time, and makes the interesting statement that when men were setting up boundary stones they dug in below them a quantity of coal, and that in the event of a dispute as to the position of the stone in later years the presence of this coal was the determining factor. Whether there is any corroborative evidence of this alleged custom I have not been able to ascertain, but it is at least a proof that mineral coal was known, though evidently not extensively used for fuel at this period. Coal was apparently worked in Scotland about 1200,[7] and it would seem that about a quarter of a century later it was being imported into London, as a mention of Sea Coal Lane, just outside the walls of the city, near Ludgate, occurs in 1228.[8] As property in this lane belonged to William 'de Plessetis,' it is probable that the coal was brought from Plessey, near Blyth, in which neighbourhood the monks of Newminster were given the right to take coal along the shore about 1236.[9] The monks also obtained leave from Nicholas de Aketon about the same time to take sea coals in his wood of Middlewood for use at their forge of Stretton, near Alnwick. It may be remarked that at this time, and for the greater part of the next three centuries, the use of coal was restricted to iron-working and lime-burning, the absence of chimneys rendering it unsuitable for fuel in ordinary living rooms. So particularly was it associated with lime-burning that we find Sea Coal Lane also known as Lime-burners Lane, and references in building accounts to purchases of sea coal for the burning of lime are innumerable.
It is in 1243 that we get our first dated reference to an actual coal working. In that year Ralf, son of Roger Wlger, was recorded to have been drowned 'in a delf of sea coals' (in fossato carbonum maris).[10] The use of the word fossatum is interesting, as clearly indicating an 'open cast working,' that is to say, a comparatively shallow trench carried along the seam where it comes close to the surface, a step intermediate between the mere quarrying of outcrop and the sinking of regular pits. An indication of the spread of coal mining is to be found in one of the articles of inquiry for the Forest Assize of 1244, which relates to 'sea coal found within the forest, and whether any one has taken money for the digging of the same.'[11] It is probable that special reference was intended to the Forest of Dean, coal being worked about this time at Blakeney, Stainton, and Abinghall; from the last named place a penny on every horse-load of coal was paid to the Constable of St. Briavels, as warden of the Forest.[12] By 1255 the issues of the Forest of Dean included payments for digging sea coals, and customs on all sea coal brought down the Severn.[13] Some of this latter may have been quarried in Shropshire, as about 1260 Walter de Clifford licensed Sir John de Halston to dig for coals in the forest of Clee,[14] and there are other indications of the early exploitation of the Shropshire coal-field. The Midland field of Derbyshire and Notts was also working, coal being got in Duffield Frith in 1257,[15] the year in which Queen Eleanor was driven from Nottingham Castle by the unpleasant fumes of the sea coal used in the busy town below,[16] a singularly early instance of the smoke nuisance which we are apt to consider a modern evil. Half a century later, in 1307, the growing use of coal by lime-burners in London became so great a nuisance that its use was rigorously prohibited, but whether successfully may be questioned.[17]
By the end of the thirteenth century it would seem that practically all the English coal-fields were being worked to some extent. In Northumberland so numerous were the diggings round Newcastle that it was dangerous to approach the town in the dark, and the monks of Tynemouth also were making good use of their mineral wealth;[18] in Yorkshire coal was being got at Shippen at least as early as 1262,[19] and in Warwickshire and at Chilvers Coton in 1275.[20] The small Somerset field near Stratton on Fosse and the Staffordshire coal measures may be possible exceptions, but in the latter county coal was dug at Bradley in 1315 and at Amblecote during the reign of Edward III.[21] The diggings were still for the most part open-cast works, but pits were beginning to come in. These 'bell pits,' of which numbers remained until recently in the neighbourhood of Leeds,[22] at Oldham in Lancashire,[23] and elsewhere, were narrow shafts sunk down to the coal and then enlarged at the bottom, and widened as far as was safe—and sometimes farther, if we may judge from a number of instances in Derbyshire in which miners were killed by the fall of their pits.[24] When as much coal as could safely be removed had been obtained, the pit was abandoned and a fresh pit sunk as near to it as possible. As a rule the old pit had to be filled up, and at Nuneaton we find this very properly enforced by the bailiff in 1343,[25] and at later dates. Open coal delfs were a source of considerable danger to men and animals, especially when water had accumulated in them, and a number of cattle were drowned at Morley in Derbyshire in 1372,[26] while it was probably in an abandoned working at Wingerworth that a beggar woman, Maud Webster, was killed in 1313 by a mass of soil falling on her as she was picking up coal.[27] From the pits the coal was raised in corves, or large baskets, and as early as 1291 we have a case of a man being killed at Denby in a 'colpyt' by one of these loaded corves falling upon his head.[28]
A case of some interest is recorded in Derbyshire in 1322, when Emma, daughter of William Culhare, while drawing water from the 'colepyt' at Morley was killed by 'le Damp,' i.e. choke damp.[29] This is one of the very few early references to choke damp, or 'stithe,' as it was often called, and the case is also interesting because, as water from a coal pit could hardly be good for either drinking or washing purposes, she must have been engaged in draining the pit, and this suggests a pit of rather exceptional dimensions. A more certain indication of a considerable depth having been attained is given forty years later in the case of another pit at Morley Park, said to have been drowned, or flooded, 'for lack of a gutter.'[30] This may only refer to a surface drain, but there is abundant proof that regular drainage by watergates, soughs, or adits had already come into use, and that coal-mining had reached the 'pit and adit' stage. In this system of working, the water, always the most troublesome enemy of the miner, was drawn off by a subterranean drain leading from the bottom of the pit. It need hardly be pointed out that the system was only practicable on fairly high ground, where the bottom of the pit was above the level of free drainage: in such a case a horizontal gallery, or adit, could be driven from a suitable point on the face of the hill slightly below the bottom of the pit to strike the latter, and a wooden sough,[31] or drain, of which the sections were known in Warwickshire as 'dearns,' could be laid to carry the water from the pit to a convenient point of discharge. In 1354 the monks of Durham, when obtaining a lease of coal mines in Ferry, had leave to place pits and watergates where suitable,[32] and ten years later a lease of a mine at Gateshead stipulated for provision of timber for the pits and water-gate.[33] During the next century a certain number of pits were sunk in lower ground, or to a greater depth, below the level of free drainage, and in 1486 we find the monks of Finchale, active exploiters of the northern coal measures, erecting a pump worked by horse power at Moorhouse,[34] but it is not until the second half of the sixteenth century, nearly at the end of the medieval period, that we find such pumps, 'gins,' or baling engines, and similar machines in common use.