Minerals and Mines, 25 



under man's industrial control at later dates. Save that the 

 Forest was exempted from taxation by Edward the Confessor, 

 there is no record of any exercise of the royal prerogative 

 till Norman times. Then William the Conqueror frequently 

 visited it for sporting purposes, and it is supposed that on one 

 of these occasions he established by law the popular claims in 

 granting the miners their " customes and franchises." The 

 history of the Dean Forest mining is henceforth in many re- 

 spects almost a repetition of the history of the Derbyshire 

 lead-mining. During the reign of Edward I. popular claims 

 were the cause of a similar agitation in this Gloucestershire 

 district as occurred in the Peak district. The Miners' Laws 

 and Privileges of 1282 was as much the Magna Chart a of the 

 western county's miners as the confirmation of their rights by 

 the inquisition appointed in 1287 was of the midland county's 

 miners. The Crown's seignorial claims were henceforth estab- 

 lished by a right to one-third of all profits of mining, by the 

 charge of seven shillings for licensing each of the seventy 

 forgece errantes then in use, by the commission paid to every 

 miner of one penny per load of ore brought to the king's iron- 

 works, and by the charge of forty-six shillings whenever a 

 forge was farmed. Just about the same time as the Derby- 

 shire miners were utilising the printing press to perpetuate 

 their traditional rights and customs, we find a book appearing 

 which embodied the Dean Forest Miners' Laws and Privileges. 

 It appears from its postscript that in 1673 a manuscript pre- 

 served in the office of the deputy gaveller was placed in the 

 hands of the printer,^ and that in 1687 the book itself came 

 out, which, according to the wording of its short introduc- 

 tion, purported to contain a perpetual remembrance " what ye 

 Customes and Franchises hath been that were granted tyme 

 out of Minde, and after in tyme of the Excellent and redoubted 

 Prince, King Edward, unto the Miners of the Forrest of Deane 

 and the Castle of St. Briavells." The book is very similar to 

 those in use in the Derbyshire lead-mining district, and con- 

 tains the old laws and customs in forty-two sections. These 

 furnished a guide to the officials of the Miners' Court — an 

 * William Cooper, at the Pelican, Little Britain. 



