86 



miners to dig tin, and turves to melt thfe tin, anywhere in the 

 moors, and in the fees of Bishops, Abbots and Earls, as they had 

 been used and accustomed. (Confirmed by Edw. I., Rich. II., 

 and Henry IV.*) 



These and other singular privileges extending as far as the 

 lands on which the crown claimed rights, are long anterior to 

 the other rights of property in Cornwall, Mendip, Derbyshire, 

 and the Forest of Dean, and go far to justify the supposition 

 of our modern mining laws being a relic of Roman, or perhaps 

 of earlier than Roman times. 



As the bellows was known at least 1000 years before Pliny, 

 we have here all the materials for a successful tin smelter's 

 hearth. If the smelting work was on waste land, and a little 

 sunk in the ground, we recognize the old ' Bole' or ' Bloomery' 

 of Derbyshire, now only a traditional furnace, but antiently 

 the only one for the lead and iron of that country. 



Pure tin once obtained, there must intervene a long series of 

 trials and errors before its effect in combination with lead, brass, 

 silver, &c., could be known ; before the mode of conquering the 

 tendency to rust in the act of soldering could be discovered ; 

 (oil being in this respect as valuable to the tinner as artificial 

 Chrysocolla was to the jeweller and goldsmith, (xxxiii. p. 621. 

 Hard.) From all this it follows that the smelting of tin might 

 be, and probably was performed by the inhabitants of the Cor- 

 nish Peninsula. This art they may have brought from the far 

 east ; Phoenicians may have taught it them ; but all the accounts 

 of the antient tin trade represent the metal and not the ore as 

 being carried away from the Cassiterides. Diodorus mentions 

 the weight and cubical form of the tin in blocks, carried from 

 Ictis to Marseilles and Narbonne, and Pliny says of the Galli- 

 cian tin that it was melted on the spot. 



Did the Cornish or Gallician miners make bronze ? For this is 

 generally the compound indicated by the Roman ceris metalla, 

 though it is undoubted that they also knew of, and distinguished 

 zinc brass. There is, I believe, no instance of a single bit of 

 pure tin, or pure copper being found with the numerous * celts,' 



* De la Beche, in Report on Geolopry of Cornwall. 



