TINNING, PLATING, &C. 311 



years in different parts of England and Wales. Saxony a>d part 

 of Bohemia formerly supplied all the known world with the com. 

 nodity ; but England now exports large quantities of it to Holland, 

 Flanders, France, Spain, Italy, and other places. About the 

 year 1670, Andrew Yarrington, (he deserves a statue for the at. 

 tempt) undertook, at the expence of some enterprizing persons, a 

 journey into Saxony, in order to discover the art of making tin 

 plates : he succeeded to his utmost wishes ; and, on his return, 

 several parcels of tin plates were made, which met the approbation 

 of the tin-men in London and Worcester*. Upon this success, 

 preparations were made for setting up a manufactory, by the same 

 persons who had expended their money in making the discovery ; 

 but a patent being obtained by some others, the design was aban- 

 doned by the first projectors, and the patentees never made any 

 plates ; so that the whole scheme seems to have been given up till 

 the year 1720, when the fabricating of tin plates made one of the 

 many very useful projects (though they were mixed with some 

 which were impracticable) for which that year will ever be memo, 

 rable. How soon after that year the manufacture of tin plates 

 gained a lasting establishment, and where they were first made, are 

 points on which I am not sufficiently informed ; an old Cambridge 

 workman has told me, that he used them at Lynn, in Norfolk, in 

 the year 1 730, aud that they came from Pontypool. The tin. men, 

 at the first introduction of the English plates, were greatly delighted 

 with them ; tKy had a better colour, and were more pliable than 

 the foreign ones, which were then, and still continue to be ham. 

 mered ; it being impossible to hammer either iron or copper to so 

 uniform a thickness, as these metals are reduced to by being rolled. 

 It is said that a Cornish tin.man flying out of England for a mur. 

 der in 1243, discovered tin in Saxony, and that before that disco- 

 very, there was no tin in Europe, except in England i ; a Romish 

 priest, converted to be a Lutheran, carried the art of making tin 

 plates from Bohemia into Saxony, about the year 1620 J ; and An. 

 drew Yarrington, as we have seen, brought it from Saxony into 

 England about the year 1670 ; Saxony at that time being the only 

 place in which the plates were made. They are now made not 



* England's Improvement by Sea and Land, by Andrew Yarrington, 

 Gent. 1698. 



+ Heylin's Gtof . t Yairinfton. 



x4 



