354 HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING. 



death designates the Anglo-Saxons as ' the ilkistrious 

 smiths of war!' The Dooms-day Book, though com- 

 posed in the reign of the first Norman king of England, 

 may be said, for our present purpose, to be Saxon : it 

 often alludes to workers in iron. For instance, we find 

 that in the City of Hereford there were six smiths, who 

 paid one penny each for his forge, and who made one 

 hundred and twenty pieces of iron from the king s ore. 

 To each of them threepence was paid as a custom, and 

 they were freed from all other services. It would appear 

 that the iron-mines of England were well worked in Saxon 

 times. Iron-ore was obtained in several counties, and 

 there were furnaces for smelting. The mines of Glou- 

 cestershire, in particular, are alluded to by Giraldus Cam- 

 brensis as producing an abundance of this valuable metal ; 

 and there is every reason for supposing that these mines 

 were wrought by the Saxons, as they had been by their 

 predecessors, the Romans.' 



The Anglo-Saxon monks were, as already hinted, like 

 the Druid priests, skilful workers in iron, and the Venerable 

 Bede describes one of these people as well skilled in 

 smithcraft. Speaking of Easterwin, Abbot of Were- 

 mouth, he says : ' This abbot, being a strong man, and 

 of a humble disposition, used to assist his monks in their 

 rural labours, sometimes guiding the plough by its stilt 

 or handle, sometimes winnowing corn, and sometimes 

 forging instruments of husbandry with a hammer upon 

 the anvil.' ^ 



King Edgar even enacted that the clergy should 



' Pictorial History of England, Bookii. chap. 6. 

 ' Hist. Abbat. Weremath., p. 296. 



