A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



malignants, or popish owners. No sooner were 

 they rebuilt than in 1648 the Commonwealth 

 offered for sale all church lands, and the unfor- 

 tunate owners had to buy their own property at 

 a high rate. Then the friendly relations between 

 England and Scotland during the Commonwealth 

 led to the increased importation of Scotch salt, 

 which ruined the Shields trade. As the petition 

 for an imposition on Scotch imported salt urged, 

 the encouragement of the Scotch salt trade meant 

 the overthrow of them (the Shields owners) and their 

 ffamilyes, who have spent their Estate in bringing 

 such a Native and good Manufacture to perfecon, and 

 another Nacon now like to enjoy the bencfitt of their 

 said Purchase and industry. That in South and 

 North Sheels, Sunderland, Blith, there are above 

 100 owners of salt woorks who will be utterly undone 

 together with their Families and many thousand 

 Labourers, that depend thereon to inrich some in 

 Scotland, for the Salt woorks there are in very few 

 hands." 



But the salt industry was not settled at South 

 Shields without much opposition. A crisis came 

 in 1617, and the salters were summoned to 

 Durham to defend themselves against various 

 charges of destroying the vegetation and render- 

 ing the place uninhabitable. The plaintiffs' case 

 was stated with much eloquence ; their complaint 

 was that the dean and chapter had let to the 

 defendants some land 



upon which waist grounds, they the defendants and 

 many others have builded and erected a great number 

 of houses and buildings wherein they have placed salt- 

 panns for making of salt, and thereby have sett up a 

 new trade for making and boyling of salt of salt water, 

 wherein they use great and extraordinary fires made 

 of sea cole, and thereupon doe raise of every pann to 

 themselves an annuall and yearly benefitt of forty or 

 fifty pounds at the least by reason of which new- 

 erected saltpans, used to the purpose aforesaid, such 

 abondance of thicke smoake doth rise from the said 

 panns as all or the most parte of the grasse growing 

 upon the ox-pasture within twenty score yards of the 

 topp of the said banke next to the said panns is alto- 

 gether burnt up and waisted, as not one greene grasse 

 feild doth grow of all that parte of the said pasture 

 adjoyning to the said panns, and all the residue of the 

 said pasture is by the same smoake also soe corrupted, 

 poysoned and decayed in the spring season, when the 

 grasse is tender and should begin to grow, as that the 

 plaintiffs and presedent farmers usually keeping eight 

 oxen for every farme to depasture, and to be well fed 

 and kept, can keep now but foure oxen at the most, 

 for every farme, and that very leane and scarce able 

 to worke, and that likewise, whereas a part of that 

 pasture was preserved for meadow whereupon every 

 of the said farmers had yearly three loads of hay, for 

 releife of their oxen in the winter season, now the 

 same is soe corrupted and burnt up with the said 



55 B.M. Lansd. MSS. cclviii, fols. 252-261. (Printed 

 in Richardson's Rare Tracts, iii) Newcastle Hostmen's 

 Books. Petition, 19 Dec. 1654 ; Hunter MSS. 

 Dean and Chapter Lib. Dur. No. 1 1, fol. 59, ' Reasons 

 for ye Preservation and Encouragement of ye Manu- 

 facture of Salt at Shields.' 



298 



smoake, as noe meadow at all will grow upon the 

 same, as also that their hedges are soe consumed with 

 the said smoake, as noe green leafe will grow therein, 

 and the quicke hedges there be dryed up, and also 

 their corne yearly growing in the said fields is thereby 

 soe decayed and impaired as the plaintiffs are scarce 

 able to pay their rents. 



A committee was appointed by Sir Richard 

 Hutton, keeper of the great seal for the County 

 Palatine, consisting of Mr. Francis Burgaine and 

 Mr. Peter Smarte, prebendaries, and Thomas 

 Chambers and Thomas Palleson, gentlemen, who 

 were to call witnesses before them and then 

 settle the amount of compensation due to the 

 plaintiffs. The award was given 25 March, 

 1618, and the defendants had to pay an annual 

 sum of 13 6s. 8d. to the tenants of Westoe. 36 



Nor was this picture of the horrors of the 

 smoke in the neighbourhood of Shields exagger- 

 ated ; every writer dwells on it with astonishment. 

 There is an old story that the wife of Patrick 

 Wall, incumbent of South Shields in 1666, on 

 riding down Churton Bank, where they got their 

 first view of Shields, reproached her husband ' for 

 bringing her from Norham, frae the bonny banks 

 o' Tweed, to Sodom and Gomorrah.' 37 Marma- 

 duke Rawdon writes in 1664 that the salt trade 

 causes such ' a smooke that one would thinke the 

 town were on fire.' 38 Thoresby, Defoe, and 

 Dibdin all dwell on the volumes of smoke seen 

 arising from the salt and glass-works miles away 

 from the town itself. 



The salt-makers seem to have been a some- 

 what godless set of men ; even in the rollicking 

 days of the Restoration they incurred the dis- 

 pleasure of those in authority. 



John Cook, Saltmaker, for working at his panns 

 ordinary in the lord's day in time of service and being 

 reproved by churchwardens he did abuse and work 

 several days after. Cook appeared and submitted and 

 confessed his crime before the minister and church- 

 wardens. 39 



Nor was John Cook a solitary offender. The 

 July previous it had been considered necessary to 

 legislate on the subject, for the Salters of South 

 Shields, as usually upon every Lord's Day 



follow their ordinary Labour at working at their 

 Panns about the making of salt, to the great dishonour 

 of God and the constant profanation of the Lord's day. 40 



It was accordingly ordered that the salters 

 should not work upon 



the lord's day and that their fires about the Salt Panns 

 may soak upon every Sunday from six o'clock in the 

 morning till six o'clock at night, and that they shall 

 not draw their panns, nor burn lime, nor put in coles. 



" Cosin's Lib. Dur. Mickleton MSS. 91, 26. 

 17 Brockie, Hist, of Shields, 76. 

 58 Life ofMarmadukc Ravidon of York (Camd. Soe.), 

 1863, p. 143. 



39 Dur. Book of Acts, 6 Oct. 1664. 



40 Court of Quarter Sessions for the county of Dur. 

 13 July, 1664. 



