Piecing together information afforded by scattered entries, we can obtain some idea of the working of a coal pit about the end of the fifteenth century. After the overseer, or a body of miners, had inspected the ground and chosen a likely place, a space was marked out, and a small sum distributed among the workers as earnest money. The pit was then sunk at such charge as might be agreed upon: at Heworth in 1376 the charge was six shillings the fathom,[35] at Griff in 1603 six shillings the ell.[36] A small 'reward' was paid when the vein of coal was struck, the pit was then cleaned up and timbered, and a water-gate or adit driven to afford drainage and ventilation. Over the mouth of the pit was erected a thatched 'hovel' with wattled sides to keep the wind and rain from the pit, and in this was a windlass for raising the corves. The workmen consisted of hewers, who cut the coal, and bearers who carried it to the bottom of the pit and filled the corves: they were under the control of the 'viewer,' whose duty it was 'to see under the ground that the work was orderly wrought,' and the 'overman,' who had 'to see such work as come up at every pit to be for the coal owner's profit.'[37] Their wages do not appear to have been much, if at all, above those of the ordinary labourer or unskilled artisan. Owing no doubt to the comparatively late rise of the industry and the simplicity of the work, no refining or skilled manipulation being required as in the case of metallic ores, the coal miners never acquired the privileged position of the 'free miners' of Dean, Derbyshire, Cumberland, and Cornwall.[38] The work was not attractive, and the supply of labour seems occasionally to have run dry. So much was this the case after the Black Death in 1350 and the second epidemic of 1366 that the lessees of the great mines at Whickham and Gateshead had to resort to forced labour, and obtained leave to impress workmen.[39] Much later, about 1580, the Winlaton pits were hampered by lack of workmen and the owners, having sent into Scotland for more hands with little success, had to hire women and even then were short-handed, to say nothing of being troubled with incompetent men who for their negligence and false work had to be 'laid in the stocks,' and even 'expulsed oute of their worke.'[40]
The question of mineral rights as regards coal is complicated by the variety of local customs. In some cases, as at Bolsover,[41] the manorial tenants had the right to dig sea coal in the waste and forest land for their own use; but it was probably usual to charge a fee for licence to dig, and this was clearly the practice at Wakefield.[42] So far as copyhold lands were concerned the lord of the manor, or his farmer, appears as a rule to have had the power to dig without paying the tenant compensation. This was certainly being done at Houghton, in Yorkshire, and in the adjacent manor of Kipax in 1578, and the undoubted injury to the copyholders was held to be counterbalanced by the advantage to the neighbourhood of a cheap supply of coal.[43] The uncertainty of the law and the conflicting claims of ground landlords, tenants, and prospectors led to a plentiful crop of legal actions. For the most part these were actions for trespass in digging coal without leave, occasionally complicated by counter appeals.[44] In the first half of the sixteenth century, for instance, Nicholas Strelley, being impleaded for trespass by Sir John Willoughby, set forth that he had a pit in Strelley from which he obtained much coal, to the advantage of the neighbourhood and of 'the schyres of Leicestre and Lincoln, being very baren and scarce contres of all maner of fuell'; and no doubt, though he omitted to say so, to his own advantage; now, owing to the deepness of the mine and the amount of water, the old pit could only be worked if a sough or drain were constructed at an unreasonable expense; he had therefore dug a fresh pit on the borders of Strelly close to Sir John's manor of Wollaton, purposing to use an old sough running through Sir John's ground. Sir John had promptly blocked the sough with a 'counter-mure' and brought actions for trespass, and Nicholas Strelley, much aggrieved, invoked the aid of the Star Chamber.[45] The same court was also invoked a few years later by William Bolles, who complained that by the procurement of Sir William Hussey certain persons came to Newthorpe Mere in Gresley and 'most cruelly and maliciously cutt in peaces brake and caste downe dyvers frames of tymbre made upon and in one pitte made and sonken to gett cooles, and cutt in peaces dyvers greate ropes loomes and tooles apperteyninge to the said woorke at the said pitte,' the offenders being unidentified as the outrage took place 'in the night tyme when every good trew and faithful subjecte ought to take their reste.'[46]
Presuming an undisputed title, the owner of coal measures could exploit them in a variety of ways. He might work them himself; the outlay would be small, provided extensive drainage operations were not required, for wages, as we have said, were low and the equipment of the mine, consisting of a few picks, iron bars or wedges, wooden shovels shod with iron and baskets, buckets, and ropes, inexpensive, and there was a steady sale for the coal, though the price of coal varied so greatly and was so much affected by cost of carriage that it is not possible to give even an approximate average value for the medieval period; the question being further complicated by the extraordinary variety of measure employed. Coal is quoted in terms of the 'hundredweight,' the 'quarter' (valued at Colchester in 1296 at 6d.),[47] the 'seam' (or horse-load), the 'load,' which may be either horse or wain load, the 'scope,' which appears to be equivalent to the 'corf,' or basket, the 'roke' or 'rowe,' the 'rod' or 'perch' (a measure apparently peculiar to Warwickshire),[48] the 'butress' and the 'three-quarters' (of a buttress), and most commonly in the Tyne district by the 'fother,' 'chalder,' or 'chaldron' and 'ten,' and also by the 'keel' or barge load. Where the owner did not work the coals himself he could either issue annual licences to dig coal or lease the mines for a term of years.[49] The earliest leases give a vague general permission to dig coal wherever found within the lands in question, but it soon became usual to limit the output either by fixing the maximum amount to be taken in one day, or more usually in early leases by restricting the number of workmen to be employed. In 1326 Hugh of Scheynton granted to Adam Peyeson land at Benthall with all quarries of sea coal, employing four labourers to dig the same, and as many as he chose to carry the coals to the Severn.[50] Slightly before this date we find that payment was made at Belper according to the number of picks employed, the royalty on one pick in 1315 being over £4.[51] In 1380 the prior of Beauvale in leasing a mine of sea coal at Newthorpe to Robert Pascayl and seven other partners,[52] stipulated that they should have only got two men in the pit, a viewer (servaunt de south la terre), and three men above ground. The lessees of a pit at Trillesden in 1447 were 'to work and win coal every day overable [i.e. working day] with three picks and ilk pick to win every day 60 scopes,'[53] and at Nuneaton, in 1553, the lessees were not to employ more than six workmen at the time.[54] In this latter case there was a further stipulation that the pits when exhausted should be filled up with 'yearthe and slecke,' while at Trillesden the pit was to be worked workmanlike and the miners were to 'save the field standing,' pointing to a fairly elaborate system of galleries and pillars liable to subsidence if not properly planned.[55] But the most important lease was that of five mines in Whickham, made in 1356 by Bishop Hatfield of Durham to Sir Thomas Gray and the Rector of Whickham for the enormous rent of 500 marks (£333, 6s. 8d.).[56] In this case the lessees were limited to one keel (about twenty tons) daily from each mine; but on the other hand the bishop agreed never to take their workmen away, and not to open any fresh pits in the district, and not to sell the coal from his existing pits at Gateshead to ships. A century later Sir William Eure leased some of the most important Durham coal mines, his daily output being restricted to 340 corves at Raly, 300 at Toftes, 600 at Hartkeld, and 20 at any other mines, with the right of making up from one mine any deficiency in another, and also of making up any deficiency caused by delays due to 'styth' or choke-damp, which appears to have been so troublesome in the hot season as to cause a complete suspension of work. Under this lease Sir William obtained at Raly in one week of 1460, some 1800 corves, each of 2½ bushels, making rather over 140 chalders, paying 5d. a day to each of the three hewers, the three barrowmen, who brought the coal to the foot of the shaft, and the four drawers who raised and banked it.[57]
In the Whickham lease of 1356 it will be noticed that the bishop undertook not to allow coals from his own pits to be exported by sea. The sea-borne trade in coals from Newcastle and the Tyne was obtaining considerable dimensions; ten years later, in 1366, a large purchase of coal was made at Winlaton for the king's works at Windsor. The sheriff of Northumberland accounted for £165, 5s. 2d. expended on the purchase and carriage to London of 576 chalder of coals, reckoning by the 'great hundred' of six score, so that there were actually shipped 676 chalder, but of this 86 chalder had to be written off, partly through some being jettisoned during a sudden storm at sea, and partly because the London chalder was much bigger than that used in Northumberland, the difference amounting to about five per cent.[58] The chalder, or chaldron, seems to have been originally about eighteen to twenty hundredweight, and from early times twenty of these made the load of a keel, or coal barge, but in order to evade the export duty of 2d. on every keel, or at least to compensate for it, it became the practice to build keels of twenty-two or twenty-three chalder burden. This was forbidden in 1385,[59] but the prohibition being evaded, an Act was passed in 1421[60] by which the actual capacity of each keel had to be marked upon it. This in turn was evaded by a rapid increase in the size of the chalder, until by the time of Elizabeth it had doubled its original weight, and the 'ten' (chalder) was the equivalent of the keel of twenty tons.[61] Returning to the fourteenth century, the customs accounts of the port of Newcastle[62] show that between Michaelmas 1377 and Michaelmas 1378 as much as 7338 chalder of coal, valued at 2s. the chalder, was exported to foreign countries. For the most part this went to the Low Countries—Sluys, Bremerhaven, Flushing, and Dunkirk being amongst the ports mentioned, though in a number of cases ships of 'Lumbardye' occur, the average quantity taken by each vessel being a little less than fifty chalder. Of the home trade for this period no record is obtainable, and it is not until the time of Elizabeth that we can compare the exports to home and foreign ports. For the seven years 1591-7, the amount sent abroad was 95,558 chalder, rising from 10,000 in 1591 to 18,000 in 1593, and then falling gradually back to 10,000, while the home trade amounted to 418,200 chalder, increasing steadily from 45,700 up to over 70,000.[63] The supremacy of Newcastle is shown by a comparison of the amounts of coal exported to foreign countries from the chief English ports in 1592.[64] Newcastle comes first with 12,635 chalder, then Bristol with 580, Wales with 464, and Liverpool with 448.
The expansion of the home trade noticed in the returns for 1591-7 is borne out by an abundance of corroborative evidence, and may be largely attributed to the great increase at this period in the use of chimneys. Practically the chimney was an Elizabethan invention so far as the smaller houses were concerned, and 'the multitude of chimnies lately erected' was one of the changes most remarked upon by Harrison's old friends at the time that he wrote his Description of England, published in 1577. The reign of Elizabeth, therefore, when the rapid increase in the demand for house coal, coupled with a rise in the price, resulted in a rapid expansion of the industry in all parts of the country, marks the end of the medieval period of coal mining and the initiation of a new epoch with which we are not concerned.
CHAPTER II
MINING—IRON
Iron has been worked in Britain from the earliest historical times, and flint implements have been found at Stainton-in-Furness and at Battle in Sussex in positions suggesting that ironworks existed in those places at the end of the Stone Age.[65] Julius Cæsar relates that iron was produced along the coast of Britain, but only in small quantities, its rarity causing it to be considered as a precious metal, so that iron bars were current among the natives as money. The coming of the Romans soon changed this. They were not slow to see the value of the island's mineral wealth and to turn it to account. Ironworks sprang up all over the country: at Maresfield in Sussex they were apparently in full swing by the time of Vespasian (died A.D. 79), and in the neighbourhood of Battle fifty years later. Even more important were the workings in the West, on the banks of the Wye and in the Forest of Dean. Near Coleford have been found remains of Roman mines with shallow shafts and adits, while round Whitchurch, Goodrich, and Redbrook are enormous deposits of 'cinders,' or slag, dating from the same period.[66] Ariconium, near Ross, was a city of smiths and forgemen; and Bath (Aquae Sulis) is often said to have had a 'collegium fabricensium,' or gild of smiths, as one of its members, Julius Vitalis, armourer of the 20th Legion, dying after nine years' service, was given a public funeral here by his gild; but it seems more probable that the seat of the gild was at Chester, and that Julius had come to Bath for his health.[67]
It is a most remarkable fact that although abundant circumstantial evidence of the Roman exploitation of British iron exists in the shape of coins and other relics found upon the site of the works, there is practically no trace of any such working during the Saxon period until shortly before the Conquest. The furnaces must have been still in blast when the Saxons landed; they were a warlike race, possessing a full appreciation of iron and something of the Scandinavian admiration for smithcraft, yet there is hardly a trace of their having worked iron in this country. Few, if any, objects definitely assignable to this period have been found upon the site of iron works, and documentary evidence is almost non-existent. There is a charter of Oswy, King of Kent, given in 689, by which he grants to the abbey of St. Peter of Canterbury land at Liminge 'in which there is known to be a mine of iron';[68] and there is the legend that about 700 A.D. Alcester, in Warwickshire, was the centre of busy ironworks, peopled with smiths, who, for their hardness of heart in refusing to listen to St. Egwin, and endeavouring to drown his voice by beating on their anvils, were swallowed up by the earth;[69] but the rest is silence, until we come to the time of Edward the Confessor. The Domesday Survey shows that in the time of the Confessor, Gloucester rendered as part of its farm 36 dicres of iron, probably in the form of horseshoes, and 100 rods suitable for making bolts for the king's ships,[70] while from Pucklechurch in the same country came yearly 90 'blooms' of iron.[71] The same Survey mentions that there were six smiths in Hereford, each of whom had yearly to make for the king 120 horseshoes, and it also refers to iron mines on the borders of Cheshire, in Sussex and elsewhere.