SOME REMARKS ON BRITISH FOREST HISTORY. 1 77 



express object of serving the poor first. ^ This ordinance 

 appears to have achieved little, and the distress continued. '■^ 

 The Lord Mayor was driven to issue a proclamation " to give 

 incouragement to all those that shall out of their good affection 

 and charity towards this City, adventure to bring Sea-coales, 

 Pit-coales, or any other manner of Fewell from any part of this 

 kingdome, into the Port of London, for the use and benefit of 

 the Inhabitants thereof, and parts adiacent, especially of the 

 poore and needy, which heretofore were yeerely provided for by 

 the provident care of this City, from Newcastle."^ There was, 

 however, no alternative source of supply : even when com- 

 munications were uninterrupted the plight of the poor was bad 

 enough;^ and now anything that was capable of burning was 

 likely to find its way into the fire. ■'* 



Queen Elizabeth had found " hersealfe greately greved and 

 anoyed with the taste and smoke of the sea cooles,"'"' and sixty 

 years later citizens' wives still considered it a point of good 

 breeding to affect an objection to coal smoke: "O Husband," 

 they were wont to say (or so their traducer declared), "we shall 

 never bee well, wee, nor our Children, whilst we live in the smell 

 of this Cities Seacoale smoke ; Pray, a Countrey house for our 

 health, that we may get out of this stinking Seacoale smell." ^ 



But by the middle of the seventeenth century, wood in London 

 was clearly the fuel of the wealthy and delicate : ^ coal was the 



^ Ordinance, 2 Oct. 1643 : Acts and Ordinances of Interregnum, i. 303 ff : 

 ■Order of Committee of Lords and Commons, /^Oc\.. 1643 [B.M. 10350, g. 11(2)]. 



- Sea-Coale, Char-Coale and Small-Coale, p. 6. 



•' Proclamation by Mayor, 27 June 1644 [B.M. 669, f.9 (9)]. 



■* Standish, New Directions of Experience, p. 3: "London, where wood 

 is pretious, and too deare for the poorer sort ; by meanes thereof, they are 

 constrained to breake hedges, to the great decaying of wood, and to the 

 grieuance of euery man that hath woods and hedges." 



^ Artificial Fire : " The great want of Fewell for fire, makes many a poore 

 Creature cast about how to passe over this cold Winter to come, hut finding 

 small redresse for so cruell an enemy, as the cold makes some turne Thieves 

 that never stole before, steale Posts, Seats, Benches from doores, Railes, nay, 

 the very Stocks that should punish them, and all to keep cold Winter away." 



" Cal. State Papers {Domestic), 1547-80, p. 612. 



' Artificial Fire. 



^ The Two Grand Ingrossers of Coles (1653), p. lO : "none comes into our 

 Purlews at lesse than one or two Chaldron, besides Billets and Chamber-faggots 

 for their Wives lying in." Petty, Political Arithmetic (c. 1676), in Economic 

 Writings, p. 304: coals "were heretofore seldom used in chambers as now 

 they are." 



