OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 39 



In the second place, let us take a review of the coal trade ; and on 

 this subject we find ' the first notice of coal, in a paj-ment, in kind, to 

 the Abbey of Peterborough, A.D. 8o2. viz., " twelve cart loads of fossil, 

 or pit coal." Henry III. granted a charter to the freemen of Newcastle 

 for liberty to dig coals, A.D. 1239. In 1350, towards the end of the 

 reign of Edward I., the merchants and artizans began to use coal, wood 

 becoming scarce. In consequence of an application from the nobility 

 and gentry, a royal proclamation was published against the use of it, 

 as a public nuisance and injurious to the health. A commission was 

 issued to punish those who burnt it, and to destroy the furnaces and 

 kilns. "■ It was not until the latter part of the sixteenth century that 

 the use of coal became pretty general for manufacturing and culinarj- 

 purposes, but not for domestic fires. Harrison observes, in 1577, that 

 "it crept from the forge into the kitchen and hall." He also says, 

 "an infinite deal of wood hath been destroyed within these few 

 years," and " I dare aflirm that if woods do go so fast into decay in 

 the next hundred years of grace as they have done, or are likely to do, 

 in this, it is to be feared that sea coal will be good merchandize, even 

 in the City of London." This evidently shows that the coal trade 

 had not been a particularly profitable investment up to his time. 



"We are told also by Gray, in his Chorocjraphia, published in 1649, 

 that " the coal trade began not past four score years since," i.e. about 

 the year 1560 or 1570; coals in former days being, as he explains, 

 only used for smiths and for burning lime, but " woods decaying and 

 cities and towns growing populous, made the tirade increase greatly." 

 At that time Whittington had been dead nearly 150 years. With the 

 strong prejudice against the use of coal, its only partial use at any 

 rate, and with the uni-epealed royal proclamation against it, there docs 

 not seem much probability of Whittington's having made his fortune 

 by that trade. Besides M'hich, we have no account of merchants 

 travelling out of their own legitimate business in those days, for they 

 were not general merchants, as became the custom at a later date. That 



t' Memoir Illustrative of th^ History and Antiquities of Korthumberland, com- 

 municated to the annual meeting of the Aichseological Institute of Great Britain 

 and Ireland, held at Newcastle, Aug. 1852, p. 166. 



to Evelyn, wi-iting in 1661, proposed to rescue the citj- from that ''hellish 

 cloude" — Fumifugixm, a curious tract. 



