91 



The Fossway from the Ocrynian promontory crosses the Meiidip 

 Hills — the road from Mancuniun to Bremetonacum traverses 

 the Calamine district of Bowland — the road from Derventio or 

 Tutbury to Mancunium runs along the west of the great Derby- 

 shire field, and the legionary path from Carlisle to York goes 

 right across the metalliferous country of Yorkshire and Durham. 



We may even ask, with some confidence, whether the line of 

 the Hadrian wall, which cuts off from the north all the richest 

 mines of the Derwent, the Allen, and the Tyne, but abandons 

 the mossy dales of bleak Northumbria, was not drawn with 

 especial reference to the mining wealth of the districts. 



May we not regard, as a confirmation of all that has been ad- 

 vanced touching the antiquity of our mining processes, the fact 

 of the existence to this day, though impaired by recent acts of 

 parliament, of peculiar rights and privileges in the mining dis- 

 tricts ? These rights are sometimes guaranteed by and appear 

 to emanate from Royal Charters, as in the Stannaries of 

 Cornwall and Devon, but they are probably of far earlier date, 

 and have merely been confirmed as old customs by John and 

 his successors. In Mendip, the Forest of Dean, and Derby- 

 shire, the miners' rights were preserved by royal officers, but the 

 rights themselves transcend all history and tradition. To sink 

 a pit or drive a level in any field ; to cover the rich herbage with 

 barren ore-stuff; to cut a way to the public road; to divert, em- 

 ploy, and waste the running waters ; and to do all this without 

 consent of o^vner, and without compensation being so much as 

 asked by lord or villein, landlord or tenant, implies in Derbyshire 

 a settlement of mining rights long anterior to Domesday Book, 

 the charters of Rep ton Abbey,* the neighing of the Saxon 



• The Mines in the neigLbourhood of Wirksworth were wrought before the year 

 714 ; at which period that district belonged to the Nunnery at Eepton, over which 

 Eadburga, the daughter of Adulph, king of the East Angles, presided as Abbess. 

 In that year the Abbess sent to Croyland, in Lincolnshire, for the interment of 

 St. Outhlac, who was originally a monk of Repton, a sarcophagus of lead lined with 

 linen, (^plumbum lintheumque). This lead was obtained from the possessions of 

 the old Saxon religious establishments at Kepton, part of which were the mines 

 near Wirksworth. In the year 835, Kenawara, tlien Abbess of the same Nunnery, 

 made a grant to Humbert, the Alderman, in which she surrenders that estate of 



