40 The Coal Commissioner’s Report. [January, 
There is but Jittle reason for doubting that British coal was 
used in small quantities in the days of the Roman occupa- 
tion of these islands, as it has been found amidst the 
remains of Roman civilisation in the city of Ut1iconium 
and elsewhere. Statements respecting the use of coal 
before the twelfth century are, however, exceedingly frag- 
mentary ; since that period there is tolerably ample infor- 
mation to be obtained respecting the coal trade from the 
rivers Tyne and Wear, but very little relative to the produc- 
tion at this period of coal in other parts of the kingdom. 
The first record dates back to the year 1180, when Bishop 
Pudsey, of Durham, granted some land to a collier, to pro- 
vide coals for a smith at Coundon, in the county of 
Durham ; similar grants being also made at Sedgefield and 
Bishop Wearmouth. In 1213, a charter was granted by 
King John to the men of Newcastle to dig coal. The 
earliest record of coal being used in the South of England 
is in 1279, when coal was purchased at Dover for the use of 
the castle. In the year 1300, coal was used in quantity by 
the brewers and smiths of London; which was, however, 
prohibited in 1306, on the ground of its being an into- 
lerable nuisance, but fifteen years afterwards it was used in 
the royal palace. The first Government tax was laid on 
coal as early as 1379, amounting to two-pence for every 
chalder ;* but in the reign of Elizabeth it was raised to 
twelve-pence per chalder, which was regularly enforced to the 
time of Charles II. Duties were laid on sea-borne coal 
to assist in building St. Paul’s church and fifty parish 
churches after the great fire of London; and in 1677, 
Charles II. granted to his natural son, Charles Lennox, 
Duke of Richmond, and his heirs, a duty of one shilling a 
chaldron on coals, which continued in the family until 
it was purchased by Government in 1799, for the sum 
of £400,000. This impost was known as the ‘‘ Richmond 
shilling,” and produced soon after it came into the hands of 
the Government £25,000 a year. 
The practice of coal mining had arrived at such a degree 
of importance at the beginning of the eighteenth century, 
that we find treatises published as guides to the system of 
exploration. Many of the collieries were then extensive, 
and accidents were not unfrequent. An account is given 
by one authort of a “blast” which occurred in October, 
* This was probably the Newcastle chalder, containing 53 cwts. of coal. 
+ The Compleat Collier: or the whole Art of Mining and Working Coal 
Mines, &c., as is now used in the Northern Parts, especially about Sunderland 
and Newcastle. 1708. 
