178 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



fuel of all classes from the noble to the pauper; and we have 

 the earliest suggestion for the nationalisation of the coal-mines 

 of the country as a safeguard against what we now know as 

 profiteering.^ 



We must not imagine that the conquest of coal was universal : 

 its conquest depended, like all conquests, upon transport, and 

 until well into the eighteenth century transport was very 

 defective. Where it could be brought by water, coal gradually 

 became the common fuel ; but only when available wood 

 supplies were deficient or precarious : although there is some 

 evidence that the greater calorific value of coal caused it to be 

 used even when wood-fuel was available. - 



The influence of easy water communications is admirably 

 illustrated also by the export trade in fuel. In the first half of 

 the sixteenth century, wood-fuel was supplied from Sussex, 

 Kent, and even Essex, to the cross-Channel ports : to Calais and 

 Boulogne, of course, as to part of the realm, ^ but to the 

 Dunkirkers as a favour and under licence,'* and to the French 

 surreptitiously.'' English wood-fuel, indeed, in negotiations with 

 the Emperor assumed considerable diplomatic importance. Nor 

 should this circumstance occasion surprise, for a narrow sea, 

 like a broad river, is as often as not a means of communication 

 rather than of division : it links the supplier and the consumer 

 and creates an economic unit. The Weald, with its ample stocks 

 of fuel, was becoming the great foundry — the Black Country,. 

 to use an anachronism — of England : and it was because the 

 trade in fuel was well organised that export was possible : the 

 local demand actually made export more practicable : a bulky 

 cargo like wood-fuel would bear the short cross-Channel journey, 

 when transport coastwise to London might be too long and 

 difficult to make it possible to sell the fuel at a profit. London 



' The Two Grand Ing}-ossers, pp. 10, 14. 



" Sea-Coale, Char-Coale and Small-Coale, p. 7. Yarranton, England's 

 Improvement by Sea and Land (1677), P- 61 : " Pit Coal in all these places, 

 considering the duration and cheapness thereof, is not so chargeable to the 

 Owner of the Woods as cutting and carrying the Woods home to his 

 House." 



* Letters and Papers, xiv. i. 384 ; xv. 67, 83, 99, 283 ; xvii. 324 ; xviii. 

 86, 327 ; xix. i. 424 ; xx. i. 551, ii. 193 ; xxi. i. 373. 



'' Lbid., ix. 86 ; xiv. i. 75, 544 ; xv. 67 ; xvi. 78, 84, 466, 50S K ; xvii. 32 ;. 

 xviii. i. 363, 522, ii. 52. 



■' Ibid., xvii. 672, 679. 



