Tinmouth Priory had a colliery at Elwick, which in 1330 was let at the yearly rent of five pounds; in 1530 it was let for twenty pounds a year, on condition that not more than twenty chaldron should be drawn in a day; and eight years after, at fifty pounds a year, without restriction on the quantity to be wrought. In Richard the Second's time, Newcastle coals were sold at Whitby, at three shillings and four-pence per chaldron; and in the time of Henry VIII. their price was twelvepence a chaldron in Newcastle; in London about four shillings, and in France they sold for thirteen nobles per chaldron. Queen Elizabeth obtained a lease of the manors and coal mines of Gateshead and Whickham, which she soon transferred to the Earl of Leicester. He assigned it to his secretary, Sutton, the founder of the Charter-house, who also made assignment of it to Sir W. Riddell and others, for the use of the Mayor and Burgesses of Newcastle. Duties were laid upon this article to assist in building St. Paul's Church, and fifty parish churches in London after the great fire; and in 1677, Charles II. granted to his natural son, Charles Lenox, Duke of Richmond, and his heirs, a duty of one shilling a chaldron on coals, which continued in his family till it was purchased by government in 1800. The collieries in the vicinity of Newcastle are perhaps the most valuable and extensive in Europe, and afford nearly the whole supply of the metropolis, and of those counties on the eastern coast deficient in coal strata; thus—
"The grim ore
Here useless, like the miser's brighter hoard,
Is from its prison brought and sent abroad,
The frozen horns to cheer, to minister
To needful sustenance and polished arts—
Hence are the hungry fed, the naked clothed,
The wintry damps dispell'd, and social mirth
Exults and glows before the blazing hearth."
Iago's Edge Hill, p. 106.