VOL. XIV. (1) THE PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS # 
Coal was burnt at the Coronation of Edward II. ata 
cost of ten shillings, and appears to have been the cause 
of a petition to Parliament complaining that the Clerk of 
the Palace declined to pay the bill. 
We are also told that the “ nice dames of London would 
not come into any house or room where sea-coal,” as it 
was then called, “was burned, nor willingly eat of the 
meat that was either sod or roasted with sea-coal fire.”* 
Iron ore was originally smelted with charcoal, with the 
result that as the iron industry increased alarm was created 
at the amount of wood consumed. So serious did the 
matter become that Parliament contemplated the suppres- 
sion of the iron trade as the only practical remedy. At 
the commencement of the seventeenth century Dudley 
tried to solve the difficulty by using coal in the 
place of charcoal; but the prejudice against coal, and the 
opposition of the charcoal iron-masters prevented the 
success of this effort. In 1735 iron was smelted with 
coke at Colebrook Dale Iron Works, and later on with 
coal; and from that time iron smelting in this country 
increased till, in the year 1801, some 170,000 tons, it is 
estimated, were smelted. 
Looked at from the present time point of view, it is 
probably to our advantage that our natural stores of coal 
were not more extensively drawn upon in the middle ages 
than they were, or our supply would have been so much 
the nearer exhaustion than it is. Therefore we are indebted 
to the prejudices against the use of coal. 
At the commencement of the nineteenth century there 
were various notions as to the formation of coal. The 
vegetable origin appears to have been generally accepted ; 
though the exact nature of the coal-forming vegetation was 
in dispute, and even now it cannot be said to be clearly 
_ defined. 
1 Stow’s Annals, by Homes, p. 1502; 1652. 
B 
