A HISTORY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE 



' Mitcheldeane, Little Deane, and Riverdeane ' 

 (i.e. Ruardean), delivered to the king every week 

 when at work ' twelve charges of mine by a 

 certaine measure if they have soe much gotten 

 by the week,' for which they were to be paid 

 izd. Mention is also made of the contribution 

 to the king known as ' Lawe oare,' while on his 

 side timber was to be allowed from the royal 

 forest for the works of the miners. A considera- 

 tion of this last proviso throws a welcome light 

 on a presentment of the jurors at the regard l of 

 1282 that the 'foresters take the branches or 

 rafters (coporones lignorum) delivered (liberatorum) 

 to the miners, to the oppression of the miners, 

 and make their profit of them ' (et faciunt inde 

 commodum suum). Indeed a comparison of the 

 fragmentary notices relating to the mines in the 

 'Verdict' of 1244 (?) or the Regard of 1282 

 with the claims of the Book of Laws must inevit- 

 ably lead to the conclusion that the main outlines 

 at least of the mining customs of Dean were 

 fixed as early as the reign of Edward I if not 

 of Henry III, and that their origin possibly goes 

 back to remote antiquity. 



Besides the provisions already alluded to the 

 Book of Laws laid down the well-known restric- 

 tion that only persons born and abiding within 

 the metes of the forest were to frequent the 

 mines, while the rule as to the distances between 

 the pits ' that noe man shall come within so much 

 space that the miner may stand and cast ridding 2 

 and stones soe farr from him with a bale as the 

 manner is ' not only recalls the ' throw of the 

 hache ' 3 of the Mendip miners, but also suggests 

 what we otherwise know to have existed, the 

 open-cast and bell-pit systems of working. Again, 

 the clause as to the miner's testamentary rights 

 that he ' in his last days and at all tymes may 

 bequeath and give his dole of the mine to whom 

 he will as his own catele ' is of interest from a 

 legal standpoint when we consider the mediaeval 

 testamentary practice, and may be compared with 

 the rule existing in the Stannaries of Cornwall 

 where the dormant liberty of mining was re- 

 garded as personal property. 4 Reference is also 

 made in this compilation of the mining customs 

 of Dean to the forest ' court of the wod ' 

 before the verderers at the ' Speech,' the proce- 

 dure for the recovery of debts at St. Briavel's 

 castle or gate where the creditor swore to the 

 debt by his faith holding a stick of holly, and to 

 the Court of Mine Law, consisting of the 

 constable, gaveller, 6 the castle clerk, and the 



1 Forest Proc. Tr. of Rec. No. 31. 

 ' i.e. the surface material to be removed before the 

 ore or coal was reached. 



5 Or ' hacke.' The Ancient Law of the Miners of 

 Mendip (1687), 4. 



4 Nicholls, Iron-making in the Forest of Dean, 79 . 



6 In the seventeenth century there were two gavel- 

 lers, or gaolers, acting as deputies for the chief 

 gaveller. Exch. Dep. under Com. 27-28 Chas. II. 

 Hilary, No. 21, Glouc. (P.R.O.). 



miners themselves. 6 An attentive perusal of the 

 account given of these legal formalities will induce 

 a strong conviction in any reader acquainted 

 with the legal phraseology of the Middle Ages 

 that part at least of this Book of Laws was 

 originally drawn up in Latin, though the English 

 translation may be far older than the seventeenth 

 century. And finally the prohibition of carts 

 and wains, the allusions to a standard measure 

 or ' bill'yes,' r and to the miners' clothes and 

 light, are all of interest and illustrate the extreme 

 conservatism which has marked the usages and 

 customs of the free-miners of the Forest of 

 Dean. 



The general purport of the laws of the Dean 

 miners has now been given, but before closing 

 this sketch of the mediaeval history of the mines 

 it will be of interest to examine more carefully 

 the constitution under which the work was 

 carried on. 



We have already seen in the' case of the 

 tinners of Cornwall 8 that the miners enjoyed 

 peculiar forms of judiciary exemption from 

 ordinary taxation, and miners' parliaments for 

 legislative action, thus constituting, as it were, 

 a state within a state, although subject, in the 

 last resort, to the approval of the crown. All 

 this, of course, was in addition to the basic 

 privilege of free mining, with rights to wood and 

 water. Now in the Forest of Dean the miners, 

 both of coal and of iron, constituted a much 

 less complex organization. Instead of, as in the 



* Two Chancery bills of the fifteenth century con- 

 tain references to a court held at St. Briavel's Castle 

 and may be noted here. In the first of these (Early 

 Chanc. Proc. bdle. 12, No. 41), which may be dated 

 about 1 1 Hen. VI, John Luke of Gloucester com- 

 plained of the arrest of goods and merchandise to the 

 value of ^20 at Mitcheldean by Thomas and Harry 

 White, who carried them to the ' Castell of St. Bre- 

 vell,' where they were withheld from the owner until 

 'your said suppliant hadde found sufficient suerte to 

 apere in his propere person in the courte holden there 

 fro iij wokes to iij wokes,' while by 'favour of the 

 court he was denied the right to make attornay in 

 no wyse which is agayn the lawe.' He accordingly 

 begs for writs of subpoena. About half a century after 

 (Early Chanc. Proc. bdle. 60, No. 200) Richard Bassh 

 and Thomas Bassh complained of one John Laurens 

 who was alleged to have wrongfully 'affermyd a pleynt 

 of detinue ayenst the seid Richard Bassh in the Court 

 of Seynt Briavell . . . before the bailiffs theer which 

 is the kinges court of record as it is and alwey hath 

 byn pretended to be ' concerning lands and tenements 

 at Pyrton ' oute of the jurisdicion of the seid courte.' 

 Further grievances were that within this court ' they 

 dayly make new lawes at ther willes and call them 

 from thensforth [cujstomes,' and that no challenge of 

 the jury was permitted. 



7 Nicholls, Iron-mating, ut supra, 80. The official 

 MS. copy reads ' belleye ' (ex inform. Mr. Philip 

 Baylis). Probably the measure contained in the 

 miner's hod. Cf. term 'billy-boy' employed with 

 regard to hod-carriers in the iron mines of Dean. 



8 V.C.H. Cornw. i, ' Tin Mining.' 



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