A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



year due from the bishop of Durham to the earl 

 for coal-mines leased in 'Cockfield, Mawefeldes, 

 Wodyfeldes and Fulcye.' To this, however, 

 the bishop demurred, and his reasons were to the 

 point : ' the pyttes and mynes are wrought out 

 and no coales there to be gotten nor eny pyttes 

 in worke within those places at this present.' 

 Again, at Thornley near Brancepeth, Christo- 

 pher Danyell paid i6j. 8d. a year at Pente- 

 cost and Martinmas for a coal-mine, holding at 

 the will of the lord. The famous Westmorland 

 Colliery^' at Winlaton had been granted on a 

 thirty years' lease dated 30 September, 5 Eliz., to 

 Cuthbert Blunt, with ' free wayleave, grandleave, 

 staythleave and waterleve.' He sub-leased the 

 mines to Christopher Cooke, and we learn from 

 the depositions in a suit of 1587 that apparently 

 Cooke's mining operations had been interfered 

 with by certain persons who had acquired the 

 manor of Winlaton. In these depositions mention 

 is made of scarcity of labour, and we hear that 

 women had been enlisted ' for lack of men.' 



It is incontestable that the second half of the 

 sixteenth century witnessed an enormous develop- 

 ment of the northern coal trade. Wood was 

 becoming rapidly more scarce and dearer to pur- 

 chase, while the great increase of house chimneys 

 removed some of the more obvious drawbacks to 

 the use of fossil fuel. Harrison in his Description 

 of England *^ published about ten years before the 

 coming of the Armada, noted that 'theyr greatest 

 trade beginneth nowe to growe from the forge 

 into the kitchin and hall,' and with this exten- 

 sion of traffic in coals there synchronized an in- 

 crease of chimneys marvellous to old men, 



whereas in their yoong dayes there were not above 

 two or three if so many in most uplandish townes of 

 the realme (the religious houses and mannour places 

 of the lordes alwayes excepted, and peradventure some 

 great personages), but eache one made his fire against 

 a reredosse in the hall where he dined and dressed his 



The increased demand for coal called forth the 

 shrewd financier — in this case, Sutton, master of 

 the ordnance at Berwick in 1569, who shortly 

 after obtained a long lease of the mines of Whick- 

 ham and Gateshead. In 1580 he was said to be 

 worth j^5o,ooo. This apparently was the be- 

 ginning of the famous ' Grand Lease,' ^' which 

 ultimately passed into the hands of the merchants 

 of Newcastle, who had already acquired several 

 lesser collieries, and put them in a position to 

 regulate still more effectively the price of coal. 

 Consequently in 1590, the Lord Mayor of London 

 complained to Lord Burghley ' of the monopoly 

 and extortion of the owners of Newcastle coals.' 



*' ' Omnia mineria carbonum infra totum manerium 

 de Wynlayton.' 



'^ Holinshed, Cirou. (1577). 



'" For the intricatehistory of the ' Grand Lease ' see 

 Galloway, op. cit. 93 et seq. The earlier accounts 

 are incorrect in important particulars. 



The Lord Mayor's complaint was echoed by 

 contemporary writers. No doubt the increased 

 demand was responsible in part for the advance 

 in prices, but the sufferers therefrom were prob- 

 ably correct in judging that the Newcastle 

 monopoly aggravated the evil. The history of 

 the famous Society of Hostmen and the part they 

 played in the control of the export trade from 

 Newcastle belongs rather to the history of North- 

 umberland than that of Durham, but we may 

 mention here their charter of incorporation 

 granted by Queen Elizabeth. These hostmen 

 or fitters acted as intermediaries between coal- 

 owners and merchants frequenting the port, and 

 provided keels for carrying coals from the staiths 

 to the sea-going ships.^" Some idea of the prob- 

 able average production of the northern collieries 

 towards the end of the sixteenth and in the first 

 decade of the seventeenth century may be derived 

 from the quantity of coal exported from the Tyne 

 in 1609, which amounted to 239,261 tons, of 

 which 24,956 tons were sent abroad. The 

 corresponding figures for the Wear are stated to 

 have been 11,648 tons and 2,383 tons.'' 



As early at least as the fifteenth century, choke 

 damp had been a recognized impediment to the 

 work of the miners in the deeper pits of the Palati- 

 nate, but in the year 1621 we meet with the first 

 record of what was in all probability an explosion 

 of fire-damp in an entry of the register of 

 St. Mary's Church, Gateshead : 



' Richard Backus, burnt in a pit.' 



About this time too we meet with records of 

 pits being drowned out, and various accidents 

 from drowning and burning are recorded at 

 Whickham in the first half of the seventeenth 

 century. The next half-century was a period of 

 considerable disturbance, the Plague, the Great 

 Fire of London, and the civil wars all contribut- 

 ing to upset the regular course of trade. It is 

 interesting to note that the first allusion to coke- 

 making appears during this period, coke being 

 mentioned as having been made in Derbyshire in 

 1644 for drying malt. An interesting item is 

 the first record of railways and wagons being 

 used, namely, in 167 1, at Sir Thomas Liddell's 

 railway at Ravensworth, the rails being made of 

 wood, and one horse drawing about four or five 

 chaldrons from the colliery to the staiths, which 

 were situated near the present Dunston staiths. 

 In 1675 the output of the Tyne appears to have 

 been increased to about 570,000 tons of coal ; 

 but there is no certainty as to the exact value of 

 the weights and measures used, until, in 1678, 

 Parliament passed an Act to regulate the weights 

 and measures in the coal trade. 



In 1 68 1 the Grand Lease previously referred 

 to expired, and Bishop Crewe granted a renewal 

 of the lease to Colonel Liddell and his partners. 



^'' Galloway, op. cit. 99. 



" Proc. Arch. Inst. (Newcastle, 1852), i, 178. 



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