318 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



charter was granted to them by Edward I., under which the 

 miners were exempt from all jurisdiction except that of the 

 Stannary Courts, save in cases affecting land, life, and limb. 

 The tinners agreed to pay to the grantor -|d. on every pound 

 weight of wrought ore. Then, the labouring tinner who might 

 discover tin in waste or uncultivated lands became entitled to 

 a certain interest in such land upon giving proper notice in 

 the Stannary Court to its proprietor. The laws and privileges 

 of the Cornish mines were further enlarged in the reign of 

 Edward III., and subsequent Acts passed during the sove- 

 reignty of Eichard II. and Edward IV. confirmed them. 

 Blackstone says, " The Stannary Courts of Devonshire and 

 Cornwall for the administration of justice among the tinners 

 therein are also Courts of record." These records, which 

 exist in great numbers among the rolls of the Exchequer, 

 record the usage of five centuries. The Stannary Parliament 

 in Cornwall, which enacted laws for the government of the 

 stannaries, consisted of twenty-four members. This As- 

 sembly elected its Speaker and proceeded regularly with its 

 business when meetings were necessary. It was also known 

 by the name of " Convocation." Tonkin asserts that the 

 charter of Henry VII. first regularly established the Cornish 

 Convocation. 



Camden, in his " Britannia," writing on the Cornish 

 mines, says, " After the coming-in of the Normans the Earls 

 of Cornwall had vast revenues from those mines, especially 

 Eichard, brother to Henry III. And no wonder, when 

 Europe was not supplied with tin from any other place, for, 

 as for the mines in Spain, the incursions of the Moors had 

 shut them up ; and the veins of tin in Germany were not 

 then discovered, nor opened before the year of Christ 1240, 

 at which time (as a writer of that age has it) ' the metal called 

 tin was found in Germany (by a certain Cornishman who was 

 banished his country) to the great damage of Eichard, Earl of 

 Cornwall.' " Further, Camden says, " The Dukes of Cornwall, 

 according to ancient custom, are to have forty shillings as 

 tribute for every thousand pounds of tin ; and it is provided 

 that whatever tin is made it shall be carried to one of the 

 four [now five] towns appointed for that purpose, where, twice 

 every year, it is weighed and stamped and the impost paid ; 

 and before that no man may sell or convey it away without 

 being liable to a severe fine " {I.e., vol. i., pp. 143, 145). 



Eeferring to the historical fact of the Phoenicians trading 

 for tin with the ancient Bi^itons, already intimated, I may 

 also bring before you what the early historians have left on 

 record concerning this primitive commercial transaction. The 

 first notice is by the celebrated Greek historian Herodotus, who 

 lived 450 years B.C., and who has been justly termed " the 



