Minerals and Mines. 21 



Here we read that- 



" By custom old in Wirksworth "Wapentake, 

 If any of this nation find a Eake 

 Or Sign, or leading to the same ; may set 

 In any Ground, and there lead ore may get." 



But not everywhere, for 



" Churches, houses, gardens, all are free 

 From this strange custom of the Minery." 



And hence we find that frequent additional charm to the 

 landscape of the Derbyshire uplands — viz., the garden or 

 orchard — since freeholders, in order to protect their privacy 

 and keep the miner out, had merely to plant a few common 

 fruit trees, and the popular rights lapsed. 



We also read in the same author that the miners' title to 

 possession could not be made good without certain conditions, 

 which guaranteed the })ona-f.de nature of the operations under- 

 taken. 



" A cross and hole a good possession is 

 But for 3 days, and then the cvistom's this 

 To set down Stowes, timbered in all men's sight, 

 The such possession stands for 3 weeks right." 



After that period further proofs of the presence of the ore 

 and its actual working were necessary, or the site had to be 

 made good again and surrendered. 



Nor were even these popular rights retained without frequent 

 struggles between the industrial and the seignorial classes. 



In 1287 the miners petitioned Edward I. to put an end to 

 the attempts of freeholders to prevent the trespass on their 

 demesnes. The king took their petition into consideration, 

 and commissioned the county sheriff to convene a meeting of 

 experts to inquire into the matter.^ This inquisition con- 

 firmed the rights of the miners, the jury finding that all they 

 claimed was due, not by charter, but by immemorial custom. 

 In 1681, The Compleat Miner, by Thomas Haughton,^ embodied 



* Vi\'kmg,tori's, Derby shire, 2nd ed., p. 100. 



- These works have been handed down as heirlooms from generation 

 to generation of miners. I purchased one myself from a miner of Long- 

 stone, whose use for it had been dispelled by the Acts of 1851, 1852. 



