248 Mineral Trades 



performed by an officer known as "lede-reeve;" there were also 

 "Grand Jury" decrees which constituted the mining code.^ One of 

 these regulations appointed Tuesdays and Fridays as weigh-days. 

 No man dared buy or sell a piece of lead unweighed and unstamped 

 with the minery mark. This system facilitated trade by attesting 

 the purity and weight of the bars of lead. 



{d) Tin. 



Devon and Cornwall have been the seats of tin production through- 

 out the Christian Era. The activity of mining in these parts has 

 moved in cycles. Pestilence, war, discoveries, and government inter- 

 ference, and more recently, inventions have caused alternating periods 

 of depression and boom. Tin production was very active, for instance, 

 from 1305, until the Black Death 1348-9; this devastation was fol- 

 lowed by a depression, which continued through the reigns of Elizabeth 

 and the early Stuarts with but two temporary revivals about 1400 

 and 1508, respectively. After the Restoration there was a rapid 

 increase and capitalistic production on a large scale made headway. 

 The center of the mines moved westward: until the thirteenth century 

 Devon led Cornwall in output; Devon was displaced by Cornwall, 

 and then East Cornwall by West Cornwall, in relative importance. 

 The Devon coinage towns Chagford, Tavistock, Plympton, and Ash- 

 burton were relatively superseded by the Cornish towns Bodmin, 

 Liskeard, Lostwithiel, Helston and Truro. In Cornwall Lostwithiel 

 declined as Penzance arose in importance. 



Like the iron and coal mines of the Forest Dean, and the lead works 

 of Alston Moor in Cumberland, and of the Peak of Derbyshire, and of 

 the Mendips of Somerset, the Cornwall and Devon tin mines were 

 characterized by the prevalence of free-mining. Before an}^ royal 

 decrees or parliamentary legislation had been promulgated for the 

 administration of the tin industry and districts the tinners- of Devon 

 and Cornwall had evolved a system of customary laws which were 

 permeated by the principles of free-mining. The national legislation 



1 The revised customary code and later orders of the minery at Bath and Wells 

 is contained in a l7-century MS. knowTi as Browne's Book; excerpts of which are 

 given in V. C. H., Somerset, II, 369-72. 



2 The term "tinners" had a varying connotation: see the definitions cited by 

 Lewis, pp. 96-103, for the years 1198, 1305, 1376, 1507, 1524, 1588, 1608, 1627, 

 1631, 1641, and 1752. It appears to have undergone a broader inclusion of content 

 at the later dates and came to embrace all engaged directly in the production, 

 ownership and distribution of tin. 



