176 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



of timber at the usual sources of supply was sufficient to prompt 

 public outcry and legislation. There were very real and acute 

 shortages from time to time : we hear of veritable famines of 

 fuel in London, due, doubtless, to local and temporary causes 

 but terrible enough to the poor. ^ By the sixteenth century the 

 coal trade was well established in the principal coal-fields, and 

 the sea-borne trade was considerable : ^ but coal was much 

 disliked as a household fuel, partly perhaps because the 

 mediaeval house was ill-adapted to burning coal, ^ and certainly 

 because men were not reconciled to the smoke-laden atmosphere 

 and the obscured heavens of modern industrial towns : and so 

 it was only by slow degrees that coal became an effective 

 competitor of wood, and then displaced it as a household fuel. ■* 

 It is instructive to note how, in the wills of the fifteenth and 

 sixteenth centuries, legacies are left for providing coal for the 

 poor. At first it is clear that charcoal is intended, ^ but 

 sea-coal is specifically mentioned in 1544.^ From early in the 

 seventeenth century the city of London maintained a stock of 

 4000 chaldrons of Newcastle coal for the use of the poor. ^ 

 The interruption of the Newcastle trade in 1643-4 occasioned 

 great distress, and the inhabitants of London began to help 

 themselves from the woods and hedgerows of the surrounding 

 country. The Government forbade unauthorised persons to cut 

 and carry away wood, and endeavoured to regularise the position 

 so as to secure " an orderly and reasonable supply of fellable 

 wood for fewell, without destroying any Timber-trees." with the 



' Such famines began certainly as early as the fifteenth century. During the 

 great frost in the winter of 1436-7, which lasted from 7th December to 22nd 

 February, " much people died in that time for cold and scarcity of wood and 

 coal" ; The Brut (E. E T.S.), p. 470. A similar famine is noted in the Grey 

 Friars'' Chronicle in the winter of 1542-3 : Monumenta Franciscana. ii. 205. 



- Salzman, English Industries of the Middle Ages, pp. 6 ff. : Letters and 

 Papers, xiv. i. 610 ; xv. 409, 560, 564, 566 ; xvi. 727 ; xvii. 105 ; xviii. i. 

 286. 537, 552 ; xix. i. 82 ; xx. i. 327, 676, 679, ii. 228 ; xxi. ii. 166, 441 : 

 Cochran-Patrick, Early Records relating to Alining in Scotland, pp. xliii. ff. 



^ "The multitude of chimneys lately erected" is another of the great 

 changes remarked by Harrison, loc. cit. 



^ In the middle of the seventeenth century, charcoal (small coal) was still em- 

 ployed to kindle coal fires: Sea-Coale, Char-Coale and Small-Coale {i6^'^), p. 6. 



^ Herbert, Livery Companies, i. 131, 286 fT. et passim: Stow, Suivey of 

 London (ed. Kingsford), i. 148, 302. 



* Ibid., p. 112. 



' Index to Remembrancia, pp. 84, 87. Later this duty, on a larger scale, 

 was imposed upon the City companies : Herbert, op. cit., i. 130. 



