Читать книгу English Industries of the Middle Ages - L. F. Salzman - Страница 6

In addition to the actual ironworkers every forge afforded employment to a number of charcoal-burners and miners. For the most part these latter, as was the case with the coal miners, ranked as ordinary labourers, but in the Forest of Dean they formed a close corporation of 'free miners,' possessing an organisation and privileges of considerable importance and antiquity.[117] So far as can be judged the customs of the free miners were traditional, based on prescription, recognised as early as the time of Henry III., and officially confirmed by Edward I. By these customs the right of mining was restricted to the free miners resident within the bounds of the Forest, and they had also control of the export of the iron ore, all persons carrying the same down the Severn being bound to pay dues to the miners under penalty of forfeiture of their boat. The free miners had also the right of digging anywhere within the Forest, except in gardens, orchards, and curtilages; the lord of the soil, who might be the king or a private landowner, being entitled to a share as a member of the fellowship, almost always consisting of four 'verns' or partners. Besides the right thus to open a mine the miners had a claim to access thereto from the highway, and to timber for their works. In return, the king received from every miner who raised three loads of ore in a week one penny, which was collected by the 'gaveller' every Tuesday 'between Mattens and Masse,' and he had also the right to certain quantities of 'law-ore' from the different mines every week, for which the miners were paid at the rate of a penny a load, and if he was working an itinerant forge they were bound to supply ore therefor at the same rate, and finally there was a royal export duty of a halfpenny on every load of ore taken out of the Forest.[118]

The right of mining within the forest was restricted, as we have already said, to the resident free miners, and they might only employ the labour of their own family or apprentices. These rights to their mines, or shares therein, were definite, and could be bequeathed by will; and in order to prevent trespass the rule was laid down that no man should start a fresh working near that of another miner 'within so much space that the miner may stand and cast ridding[119] and stones so far from him with a bale, as the manner is.' When disputes arose between the miners, they were settled at their own court, held every three weeks at St. Briavels, under the presidency of the Constable, appeals being made, if necessary, from the normal jury of twelve miners to juries of twenty-four or forty-eight. These Mine Law Courts continued to be held until the latter half of the eighteenth century; but we are not here concerned with their later proceedings and constant endeavours to maintain restrictions which had long passed out of date; endeavours which seem to have resulted chiefly in promoting 'the abominable sin of perjury,' so that it was found necessary to ordain that any miner convicted thereof should be expelled and 'all the working tooles and habitt burned before his face.' What those tools and costume were in the fifteenth century, and until modern times, may be seen on a brass in Newland Church, whereon is depicted a free miner wearing a cap and leather breeches tied below the knee, with a wooden mine-hod slung over his shoulder, carrying a small mattock in his right hand, and holding a candlestick between his teeth.[120]

Although not so intimately connected with iron working as the smiths, smelters and miners, the charcoal-burners were auxiliaries without whom the industry could not have existed, and who in turn derived their living largely from that industry. The amount of wood consumed by the iron works was enormous. As an example we may take the case of the two Sussex mills of Sheffield and Worth for 1547-9.[121] At Sheffield 6300 cords of wood were 'coled' for the furnace, and 6750 cords for the forge; at Worth the amounts were respectively nearly 5900 and 2750 cords; the cords being 125 cubic feet, this represents an expenditure of about 2,175,000 cubic feet of timber for these two works alone in less than two years. Later, in 1580, it was stated that a beech tree of one foot square 'at the stubbe' would make one and a half loads of charcoal, and the ironworks at Monkswood, near Tintern, would require 600 such trees every year,[122] while some thirty years later Norden referred to the fact that there were in Sussex alone about 140 forges using two, three, or four loads of charcoal apiece daily. Acts were passed in 1558, 1581, and 1585 regulating the cutting of wood for furnaces and prohibiting the use of timber trees for charcoal, but they were evaded, and the destruction of trees continued until in the eighteenth century charcoal was supplanted by mineral coal, the first successful use of which for iron smelting, by Dud Dudley in 1620, marks, as we have said, the termination of the medieval period.