INDUSTRIES 



Stannaries, a hierarchy ot mine officials, wardens, 

 vice-wardens, stewards, receivers, controllers, and 

 others, for the administration of the courts and 

 the collection of taxes, we find the former duty 

 carried on by the Constable of St. Briavel's Castle, 

 while the king's gaveller, or his deputies, attended 

 to such things as the collection of mining dues 

 and the installation of new mines. Nor is there 

 anything in the laws of the Dean miners to 

 show that the forest miners were exempted from 

 ordinary taxation, while it is a matter of record 

 that they might be impressed by the king's 

 officers for service in mines elsewhere. 1 The 

 mine courts of the Forest of Dean were con- 

 stituted of free miners, and were probably rudi- 

 mentary in the extreme, such appeal as existed 

 being to successive inquests of the miners from 

 twelve to twenty-four, and then to forty-eight, 

 when a final judgement was given. 1 



On the other hand, however, the constitution 

 of the Dean miners went much farther than that 

 of the Stannaries, the Mendip and Derbyshire 

 lead miners, or those of Alston Moor. These 

 latter bodies formed corporations quite distinct 

 from the town gilds. In the latter the chief 

 aim was the suppression of competition among 

 members by means of regulations to check pro- 

 duction and to restrict membership. On the 

 other hand, the ordinary free miner was member 

 of an organization which resembled rather the 

 regulated trading company of the sixteenth and 

 seventeenth centuries. No restrictions were laid 

 upon output. Every miner might work in his 

 own way and on whatsoever scale he might 

 choose, and might sell his product for whatever 

 price he pleased. The sole rules which bound 

 him were those designed to facilitate the col- 

 lection of the special royalties of the crown. 

 Again, we find that the mining was free to all 

 comers, foreigners' excepted, each man as he staked 

 his claim becoming, ipso facto, a member of the 

 community, and entitled to all the rights of a 

 free miner. The elasticity of this simple con- 

 stitution was undoubtedly the factor which pre- 

 served the early mine organizations throughout 

 the centuries down to the present day, in spite 

 of every change in industrial organization and 

 tendencies. 



To this state of affairs the Dean miners 

 formed a strong exception. In the first place, 

 the so-called free miners and their descendants 

 residing in the forest constituted a close cor- 

 poration. They and they alone, save for their 

 apprentices, might work the coal and iron. 4 

 What the earlier regulations were concerning 

 apprentices it is impossible to say, but by an 

 order in 1668 no young man, although born in 



1 Cf. Cat. Close (1319), p. 117. 



' Nicholls, Iron-making in the Forest of Dean, 78. 



' i.e. those not born in the forest. 



4 Cf. Houghton, Comfleat Miner, pt. ii, art. 30, 36, 



the hundred, might work at coal or iron unless 

 he had already worked a year and a day, or had 

 been for five years an apprentice to a miner.* 

 In 1737 the order was modified to the effect 

 that no foreigner's son, even though born in the 

 hundred, might become a miner unless he had 

 undergone a seven years' apprenticeship.* It 

 should be added that apprentices were rarely 

 taken, the miners contenting themselves with 

 the aid of their sons. 7 



This fact is the more readily understood 

 when one recalls the petty size of the mines 

 themselves. Strict custom required that the 

 mines be worked by companies of four per- 

 sons called 'verns' or partners, 8 the king being 

 considered a fifth, by virtue of the fact that he 

 was entitled in each mine to a seam of ore called 

 the law acre,* besides another share if he chanced 

 to be lord of the soil as well. 10 The verns must 

 be free miners and must proceed in driving and 

 working the level or sinking and working the 

 water-pit by their own labour or that of their 

 sons and apprentices ; " and a further limitation, 

 which applied only to coal carriers, was that 

 they must rent land and keep their own houses. 1 * 

 Under these laws machinery could be erected 

 only upon the express permission of the owner 

 of the soil. 13 To these facts we must add the 

 law applicable only to shallow mines, that the 

 workings of a mine might be carried to an 

 indefinite extent unless interrupted by another 

 work. 14 



Another rule, equally restrictive of competi- 

 tion, was that passed in 1668 by the miners' 

 parliament, giving to the free miners the sole 

 privilege of carrying ore and coal ; w and a 

 supplementary regulation, designed to prevent 

 the concentration of the business in the hands 

 of a few, limited free miners to the use of four 

 horses each, 16 and forbade wagons." With these 

 went another regulation which fixed the prices 

 at which the ore and coal might be carried, 18 

 and in 1676, when the monopoly of cartage 

 was abandoned, it was enacted that free miners 

 were always to have a preference in loading 

 at the pit. In the sale of ore and coal to out- 



Nicholls, Forest of Dean, 45-6. 



Award of Dean Forest Commri. 13. 



' Fourth Ref. of Dean Forest Commrs. 6. 



Cf. ibid. 8. 



' Houghton, Comfleat Miner, pt. ii, art. 1 6. 



10 Ibid. art. 14. As a matter of fact the king is 

 referred to as owner of several iron-mines in Dean 

 (Cal. due, 1320, p. 278; 1328, p. 296; 1332, 



P- 443)- 



11 Fourth Ref. 8. 



" Award, 1 7 ; Nicholls, Forest of Dean, 46. 

 11 Award, 24. "Ibid. 13. 



15 Ibid. I. 



"Ibid. 14. Nicholls, Forest of Dean, 45. 

 " Galloway, Annals of Coal Mining and the Coal 

 Trade, 109 ; Nicholls, Forest of Dean, 45. 

 " Award of Dean Forest Comma . 13. 



223 



