INDUSTRIES 



won, and ^23 2s. dd. paid to the hewers, barrow- 

 men, and drawers thus employed. For several 

 weeks probably during the hottest weather" no 

 coal was raised, and the miners were sometimes 

 €mployed on work other than the actual handling 

 of coal, both above and below ground, and for 

 ■such tasks payments were separately entered. 

 Thomas Hode cut down a wain-load of timber in 

 Evenwood Park, and Henry Stevenson carted it 

 to ihe pit both for the repair of the'draght' 

 and for the mending of the sides of the pit 

 ■{putet) as necessity required. The payment for 

 this work was 2id. And on another day John 

 Harper and eight of his fellows and ten other 

 persons, working with this timber and other 

 ituffura mending the sides of the pit and mak- 

 ing a certain stone wall at the bottom of the said 

 pit to hold up the earth {terram), which was 

 utterly unsafe {fere perantea in cam ruine), earned 

 75. lod., at the rate of ^d. a day each. John 

 Taillour too got 413'. for labour at the woodwork, 

 and William Paterson, smith, dd. for mending 

 the worn-out and broken ironwork of the 

 * draght.' Again, we hear of the repair by John 

 Taylor and Henry Aleynson of a certain old shed 

 [logium) above the pit of the mine [puteum mi- 

 nere) and also the building another ' new shed for 

 the tools and other things necessary for the afore- 

 said work,' while a great clades or clada (wattled 

 screen ?) was bought 'ad ponendum ante os putei 

 minere predicte ad removendum ventum ab 

 eodem.' 



Candles for the miners were a heavy expense — 

 no less than 760 lb. being used at a cost of 

 ;^3 iQi. 2d., while three forty-one fathom ropes 

 {cordis canabi) were bought from William Roper 

 of Darlington at 35. a rope, and twenty-one dozen 

 corfes at ibd. a dozen. A barrow*^ {semivec- 

 toria) cost i^d., and the same price was paid for 

 a measure {modio ferro Hgato) for the coal pro 

 majori commodo domini. Mention is also made of 

 the mending of two barrow-ways {vie semivectorie 

 suhtus terram). That one which John Harper 

 undertook was stopped with earth and stone and 

 gave him a day's work to clear it, for which he 

 was paid 5^. Amongst other repairs we hear of the 

 mending of a 'vase ligni vocate le synkyngtubbe ' 

 which was used ' pro aqua infiaurianda extra 

 puteum,' while John Patenson was entrusted with 



" The clerk who drew up the account has appar- 

 ently made certain mistakes in numbers and in the 

 nomenclature of the months, and unless ' August ' is 

 emended to ' September ' in four instances the entries 

 are contradictory. If this is done the cessation of 

 hewing coal was between the 14 July and 24 August. 

 It may be noted that the choke-damp was apt to prove 

 more troublesome in the hot weather. 



" In an almost contemporary account of Hertkeld 

 mine we read : ' Et sol. pro ij sennevectorias cum 

 rotis emptis ad ponendum carbones ibidem subtus 

 terram ac cum lez gorions et pLitez pro eisdem emptis 

 per tempus compoti precii utriusque ic^\d.-2s. jd.' 

 Eccl. Com. Mins. Accts. 190023. 



the sharpening {exasperatione) of nine score ' pikkis ' 

 broken or blunted in the course of the work. 

 Some of the workmen were also occasionally em- 

 ployed at the pit-brow in loading wains and pack- 

 horses with coals. As the result of coal sales 

 during the year some j^4i 141. 2d. was paid to the 

 receiver-general of Durham and apparently thirty- 

 eight wain-loads of coal were sent to Auckland 

 for use at the bishop's house {hospiciuni). It is 

 impossible in the space at our disposal to give 

 any detailed account of the coal-mines of Durham 

 during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 

 and the reader must be referred to Mr. Galloway's 

 Annals if Coal Mining, which presents an ex- 

 cellent rhumi of the chief facts of importance. 

 When Wolsey was translated to Durham the best 

 days of the Palatinate had passed, and the mer- 

 chants of Newcastle were again claiming exclu- 

 sive rights of shipment on the Tyne. Franklin 

 his chancellor put the case ^' very clearly to the 

 new bishop: 



It is no reason that they shuld enforce your grace to 

 sell your colls only unto theym at their own prices 

 and they to utter the same ayen at their own libertie 

 bothe to Englishmen and straungers at prises onreason- 

 able as they have doon heretofore, 



and he clinches the argument ; 



If your grace will stik to your liberties (as in conscience 

 your grace is bownde to do), the bishopriche will be 

 better than it is by a 1,000 marks a yere only in cole 

 and led. 



Wolsey probably never found time to enter the 

 Palatinate during his tenure of the see, but he 

 directed " Dr. Strangways, surveyor of Durham, 

 and Richard Bellysis, esq., to survey all lead, 

 coal, and other mines within his bishopric, and 

 make them as profitable as possible, as well as to 

 finish the new house and furnace which he had 

 ordered to be built at Gateshead for melting and 

 trying lead with sea-coals. With the fall of 

 Wolsey, however, the Newcastle traders had no 

 longer anything to fear from the prestige and 

 business ability of the great cardinal, and an Act 

 of 1530 practically gave them a monopoly of the 

 northern export trade, which was only for a brief 

 space interrupted by a withdrawal of their privi- 

 leges in the time of Queen Mary.^* 



All through the sixteenth century the working 

 of coal was actively prosecuted in the county of 

 Durham, and allusions to mines already mentioned 

 are frequent in the leases, surveys, and accounts of 

 the Palatinate ; many of these are cited by Mr. 

 Galloway. A few additional notices are preserved 

 in the survey *^ of the possessions of the earl of 

 Westmorland made on the occasion of his attainder 

 after the Northern Rising in 1569. The royal 

 commissioners returned amongst other sums j^22 a 



" Hutchinson, Hist. ofDur. 404 w. et seq. 

 " L. and P. Hen. Fill, iv (2), 2241. 

 " Galloway, op. cit. 86. 

 *'^ Exch. Misc. Bks. 37. 



325 



