A HISTORY OF CORNWALL 



of the tools of the ancient and mediaeval 

 tinner which, as we have just seen, were of 

 wood and unfitted for piercing rock ; the fact 

 that whenever mention is made of the specific 

 nature of a tin work it is invariably described as 

 a moor or stream work and never as a mine 

 work 5 1 the mining customs of Cornwall which, 

 in their total lack of provision for the occurrence 

 of veins of mixed metals, are evidently adapted 

 only to stream-tin works all point to this as the 

 proper solution of the question. 



Similar conclusions may be drawn from the 

 continual complaints in which the landlords set 

 forth the destructiveness of the stannary works 

 to their crops. A single example will suffice. 

 In 1361 John of Treeures complains to the 

 prince and his council ' that, whereas the tin- 

 ners have warrant of the Prince to dig and raise 

 tin where they can find it, and have dug and 

 collected it for a long time on the moor waste of 

 the said John and his ancestors in the vill of 

 Treeures, who received from the tinners a third 

 part of the tin for toll, according to ancient 

 ordinance, for the damage done to the lord of 

 the place ; but now of late more than sixty tin- 

 ners have entered on his demesne and have con- 

 ducted water to the vill of Treeures over his 

 demesne and soil, so that by reason of the great 

 quantity of water they deluge the land there 

 where they work upon the moor, and nothing 

 remains of the good land there but stones and 

 gravel, so that corn will not grow there ; that 

 the tinners refuse to give more toll for waste done 

 to the demesne than for damage on the waste 

 moor; wherefore the said John prays, for the 

 love of Christ, that you may be pleased to ordain 

 a remedy, that is to increase the toll in the 

 demesne beyond the toll in the waste in propor- 

 tion to its greater value.' 2 Complaints of this 

 sort, so numerous during the Middle Ages, 3 

 could not have been occasioned by the driving of 

 shafts in rocky edges, but by the wholesale up- 

 turning of the soil by trenching and excavating 

 for alluvial deposits. 



Finally we may have recourse to a quasi- 

 mathematical argument. Stream tin, as we know 

 from the testimony of Thomas Beare, 4 was 

 considered far superior in quality to mine tin. 

 Three foot-fates of the former (about eight 

 quarts) 6 sufficed for 105 pounds of refined 



1 See Smirke, Vice v. Thomas, App. 26, citing from 

 the White Book of Cornwall, the complaint of Henry 

 Nanfan ; also Proceedings In the Chancery ofERzabtth, i, 

 p. xiii. It should be noted also that the statutes of 

 Henry VIII against the choking of the rivers with silt 

 from the tin mines, refers expressly to stream works 

 as the offenders (Stat. 23 Hen. VIII, c. 8 ; 27 Hen. 

 VIII, c. 23 ; P. R. O. Ct. R. bdle. 159, No. 26). 



* Smirke, Vice v. Thomas, App. 25, citing the White 

 Book of Cornwall. 



3 Par/. R. (Rec. Com.), i, 297, 312, 382 ; ii, 190. 



4 Harl. MS. 6380. 



6 Harl. MS. 6380, fol. 35. 



metal. If we turn now to the account given in 

 the sole surviving Pipe Roll of Edmund of 

 Cornwall of that earl's operations with regard to 

 the preemption of the black tin in 1297 6 we 

 find that, having purchased the black tin at i8</. 

 the foot-fate, to produce a thousand-weight of 

 white tin he used twenty-eight and one-half feet 

 of ore, figures which almost exactly tally with 

 the account of the stream tin given by Beare 

 three centuries later. The inference is that 

 Edmund's tin (and he seems to have preempted the 

 entire output) was obtained from stream works. 



With the progress of tin mining during the 

 Middle Ages the scene of operations shifted 

 steadily from the east to the west. During the 

 twelfth century the rich Devon stream works 

 produced almost all the tin used in Europe, and 

 Cornish mining, such as it was, lay near the 

 Devon boundary. In 1198 De Wrotham on 

 occasion of his reforms held two inquests, at 

 Exeter and at Launceston. In Devon he had 

 twenty-six witnesses and in Cornwall only 

 eighteen, 7 facts which indicate fairly clearly 

 about what centres most of the mining was con- 

 ducted. Devon tin however was soon exhausted, 

 and in the thirteenth century Cornwall came to 

 the forefront. 8 Devon, which in 1189 had 

 produced over 600 thousand-weight, 9 had pro- 

 duced only seventy-four in I243, 10 and although 

 in later centuries it sometimes exceeded this 

 amount, Cornwall never failed to maintain its 

 preeminence with the greatest ease. 



In the latter county the centres of activity 

 moved ever to the west. In 1305, out of a total 

 yield for Cornwall of 850 thousand-weight, the 

 tin coined at Lostwithiel and Bodmin, the two 

 eastern markets, amounted to 716 thousand 

 weight, while the western parts, represented by 

 Helston and Truro, produced only 134. 

 During the forty or fifty years of accounts 

 during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I, 12 

 however, the average annual product of the 

 two eastern stannaries, as represented by the 

 coinage at Lostwithiel and Liskeard, was but 

 135 thousand-weight as compared with 807 for 

 the west. 13 Penzance, in the Land's End district, 



6 Exch. K. R. Bailiffs' Accts. of Edmund of Cornwall, 

 24-25 Edw. I. 



7 Black Book of the Exchequer, No. i o. 



8 In 1 220 the Devon stannaries were farmed for 

 but 200 marks, while those of Cornwall brought 

 five times as much (Pat. 5 Hen. Ill, m. 4, 8 ; 

 Close, 5 Hen. Ill, m. 8, 9 ; 9 Hen. Ill, m. 4, 9 ; 

 10 Hen. Ill, m. 27 ; Fine R, 5 Hen. Ill, m. 7). 



' Pipe R. I Ric. I, Devon. 



10 Ibid. 27 Hen. Ill, Devon. 



11 P. R. O. Exch. K. R. Accts. bdle. 261, Nos. i 

 and 2. 



11 Receiver's Rolls. 



" An examination of the tribulage accounts (Mins. 

 Accts. Duchy of Cornw.) shows an enormous increase 

 in tinning in the Penwith and Kerrier district, and a 

 falling off in Blackmore in the east. 



542 



