[14] The district is known as the Erzgebirge or Ore Mountains, and the Riesengebirge or Giant Mountains, MacCulloch says that upwards of 500 mines are wrought in the former district, and that one-thirtieth of the entire population of Saxony to this day derive their subsistence from mining industry and the manufacture of metallic products.— Geographical Dict. ii. 643, edit. 1854.
[15] Chamberlaine and Dudley's first licence was granted in 1661 for plating steel and tinning the said plates; and Chamberlaine's sole patent for "plating and tinning iron, copper, &c.," was granted in 1673, probably the patent in question.
[16] JOHN CHAMBERS, Biographical Illustrations of Worcestershire. London, 1820.
[17] Yarranton's Land Bank was actually projected in 1695, and received the sanction of Parliament; though the Bank of England (founded in the preceding year) petitioned against it, and the scheme was dropped.
[18] It is interesting to note in passing, that part of Yarranton's scheme has recently been carried into effect by the Act (25 and 26 Vict. c. 53) passed in 1862 for the Registration of Real Estate.
[19] One of these is entitled 'A Coffee-house Dialogue, or a Discourse between Captain Y—— and a Young Barrister of the Middle Temple; with some Reflections upon the Bill against the D. of Y.' In this broadside, of 3 1/2 pages folio, published about 1679, Yarranton is made to favour the Duke of York's exclusion from the throne, not only because he was a papist, but for graver reasons than he dare express. Another scurrilous pamphlet, entitled 'A Word Without Doors,' was also aimed at him. Yarranton, or his friends, replied to the first attack in a folio of two pages, entitled 'The Coffee-house Dialogue Examined and Refuted, by some Neighbours in the Country, well-wishers to the Kingdom's interest.' The controversy was followed up by 'A Continuation of the Coffee-house Dialogue,' in which the chief interlocutor hits Yarranton rather hard for the miscarriage of his "improvements." "I know," says he, "when and where you undertook for a small charge to make a river navigable, and it has cost the proprietors about six times as much, and is not yet effective; nor can any man rationally predict when it will be. I know since you left it your son undertook it, and this winter shamefully left his undertaking." Yarranton's friends immediately replied in a four-page folio, entitled 'England's Improvements Justified; and the Author thereof, Captain Y., vindicated from the Scandals in a paper called a Coffee-house Dialogue; with some Animadversions upon the Popish Designs therein contained.' The writer says he writes without the privity or sanction of Yarranton, but declares the dialogue to be a forgery, and that the alleged conference never took place. "His innocence, when he heard of it, only provoked a smile, with this answer, Spreta vilescunt, falsehoods mu st perish, and are soonest destroyed by contempt; so that he needs no further vindication. The writer then proceeds at some length to vindicate the Captain's famous work and the propositions contained in it.
[20] This work (especially with the plates) is excessively rare. There is a copy of it in perfect condition in the Grenville Library, British Museum.
[21] Dr. Nash, in his History of Worcestershire, has thrown some doubts upon this story; but Mr. Green, in his Historical Antiquities of the city, has made a most able defence of Yarranton's statement (vol.i. 9, in foot-note).