mi 



30 History of the Efiglisk Landed Interest. ""^ 



jeopardised the safety of his Majesty's lieges passing along the 

 Northumbrian highways. Some -probi hominei< of the Third 

 Henry's reign applied to the king and obtained a grant to 

 dig coals and stones in the common soil of the town, without 

 the walls thereof, in the Castle Field, with powers to draw 

 forth and convert them to their own profit in aid of their own 

 fee farm rent of £100 per annum. ^ That it was an article of 

 export, or at any rate of transport by sea, is evident from the 

 allusions to it in inquisitions of the time as carho maris. To- 

 wards the end of the thirteenth century the coal trade in the 

 neighbourhood of Newcastle had doubled the revenue of the 

 town. Besides royal grants of coal presumably on the royal 

 demesnes, we have seignorial leases such as that of two col- 

 lieries near Elswick let by the Prior of Tynemouth to Ada 

 de Colewell for a rent of £5 per annum, and a third at six 

 merks per annum. About the same time, i.e. 1333, a coal 

 industry begins to be developed in Lancashire ; and Edward 

 III., the Bishop Bury, and other coal proprietors, are granting 

 and leasing the mineral to individuals in various parts of the 

 country throughout the fourteenth century. In the Bishop of 

 Durham's appointment of Nicholas Coke as supervisor over 

 the mines of Whickham and Gateshead in J.367, we have the 

 first mention of the colliery manager. 



The intricate legal machinery which regulates the rights of 

 ownership underground began to develop about the middle of 

 the sixteenth century. The most authentic of early records 

 is an indenture preserved in the Register of Dunfermline 

 between the Abbots of Dunfermline and Newbattle, which 

 regulated the working of coal lying along the marches of 

 their respective territories. The restitution of the surface 

 after the exhaustion of the mines is provided for as early as 

 1555 in the feu charter granted by George, Commendator of 

 Dunfermline Monastery,^ to certain tenants who were allowed 



' Green's Chronicles and Records of the Northern Coal Tradp hi the 

 Counties of Durham and J^orthrcniherland^ a.d. 852-18t)5, vol. xv. p. 176: 

 Transactions of North of England Mining Institute. 



^ Early Mining Records in Scotland, C. Patrick. 



