CHAPTER XX 

 COAL 



COAL is so much "a matter of course" in our daily 

 life that most people are only now, when its supply 

 is becoming precarious, anxious to know something 

 of its nature and history. By the word " coal," or " coles," 

 our ancestors understood what we now distinguish as 

 " charcoal," prepared from wood by the " charcoal-burner," 

 or " charbonnier," as the French call him. What we 

 now call "coal "was known to them as "sea-coal," and, 

 later, as " black " or " stone cole," to distinguish it from 

 " brown coal," known nowadays as " lignite," though the 

 name " stone coal " is locally applied in England to that 

 very hard kind of black coal also called " anthracite," of 

 which jet is only an extremely hard and dense variety 

 found in small quantities in the oolitic strata of Whitby, 

 Spain, and other localities. 



It is on record that in the year 1306 a citizen of 

 London was tried, condemned, and executed for burning 

 " sea-coal." This severe treatment was held to be justified 

 by the poisonous and otherwise injurious nature of the 

 smoke produced by fires of sea-coal. I have not met 

 with any records of the earliest digging for and trade in 

 " sea-coal," but presumably it was obtained near the 

 coast in the North of England and brought to London by 

 ship hence its name. The coal-trade of Newcastle 

 began in the thirteenth century, but, owing to an Act of 

 Parliament in the reign of Edward I forbidding the use 



317 



