Alterations in the Te7mre of Land. 2 1 1 



without either a struggle or a quid pro quo the grasp that they 

 still retained on a portion of the soil. How far both parties 

 considered that those rights extended is a moot question. It is 

 not so long ago that we were tracing primeval man's limits of 

 ownership to the herbage of the plain, or the wild animals of 

 the chase which it supported. Now, however, his sense of 

 proprietorship had grown into a claim which comprehended 

 the very bowels of the earth. Minerals were becoming an 

 item in the national profits. Besides the early industry of the 

 tin miner, lead was being exported from "Welsh lodes, iron 

 worked in Sussex forges, and coal dug in the neighbourhood of 

 Newcastle to such an extent that the jury presented to a thir- 

 teenth-century assize that the way from Newcastle to Core- 

 brigg was much damaged " per fossas et mineras," and that 

 people travelling by night were much endangered. 



But we have little evidence as to the terms on which these 

 minerals were got. The cinder heaps in the Forest of Dean 

 and their recalcining in after ages prove little beyond the 

 scanty knowledge possessed by Roman ironfounders. A coalpit 

 at Preston in Haddingtonshire had been granted to the monks 

 of Newbattle in 1219 ; Henry HI. gave a licence to dig coal in 

 1234, and the monks of Dunfermline in Scotland had been 

 granted liberty, in 1291, by "William of Oberwell, to get it for 

 their own use in his lands of Pittenberg. In 1325 the monks 

 of Tynemouth were granting leases varying from £2 to £5 per 

 annum to mining tenants ; and though, at the end of the 

 thirteenth century. Parliament had petitioned the king to pro- 

 hibit its use, a good deal of the mineral was carried by ship 

 from Newcastle to London, whence arose its name of seacoal.^ 



Nor does Professor Rogers enlighten us beyond giving the 

 prices of thirteenth-century iron and steel. The former, he 

 states, was sold by the piece, twenty-five of which were equal 

 to the hundredweight ; and the latter by the garb or sheaf 

 containing thirty esperducts or gads.^ 



Scant though these evidences are, they establish the rights 



' We sliall discuss tlie History of English Mining more fully in Part 

 II. of this work. 



^ Eogers, Prices and Agric, vol. ii. 



