FOREST OF DEAN. 257 



Cromwell also had been engaged in association with 

 Major Wildman, Captain Birch, and other of his officers 

 in an enterprise of the same kind ; and large works were 

 set up in the Forest for this purpose, but without any 

 success. From the beginning of the eighteenth century 

 the working of the coal mines rapidly increased, and they 

 eventually became far more important and valuable than 

 the iron mines. The timber of the Forest was essential 

 to the working of these mines ; and the coal was 

 ultimately substituted for wood in the manufacture 

 of iron. 



The Crown had from an early date recognised the 

 rights of the Free Miners, as they were called, to search 

 for and work both iron and coal mines. It is very doubt- 

 ful whether this custom would have been acknowledged as 

 a legal right, if it had been questioned in the Law Courts, 

 owing to the technical rule laid down in " Grateward's 

 case " as to customs and prescriptions of the inhabitants 

 of a district. In a case which turned indirectly upon the 

 rights of miners,* Mr. Justice Byles laid down, that but 

 for the Act of 1838, in which the rights of the Free 

 Miners were confirmed, they could not have been sus- 

 tained, on the ground that a custom could not be main- 

 tained to take profits out of another man's land. 



" It seems to me," he said, "first, that the Free Miners 

 themselves could, in point of law, have had no such right as 

 the defendants' claim assumes them to have had. The claim 

 of the Free Miners is to subvert the soil, and carry away the 

 substratum of stone without stint or limit of any kind. This 



* Attorney-General v. Mathias. 4 K. k J., 579. 

 R 



