* 



♦ 



in Brigantia and other parts of Britain. 261 



was thrown down from the tired cabal] as by the side of the an- 

 cient mining road, on Matlock Moor in Derbyshire, and Dacre 

 Pasture in Yorkshire. 



This fact of the discovery of the Roman lead, not at the mines, 

 but at a distance of some miles from them on a track leading to- 

 wards a Roman or rather a Pre-Roman station, is of much impor- 

 tance in archaeology. For thus we arrive, in the first place, at 

 the conviction of the existence of very ancient mining roads not 

 of Roman work, nor probably of Roman but of earlier date, lead- 

 ing toward Cataractonium, Isurium, Eburacum, Mancunium, Der- 

 ventio, or rather to the Brigantian towns or centres of trade, on 

 which the Romans following their wont in Africa, Spain, and 

 Gaul, fixed their attention and established their war camps and 

 their colonies. The politic lords of the world broke up no na- 

 tional industry, set no legionaries to supplant the native miners, 

 but stationing a few cohorts on the ancient roads, in or close to 

 the mining district, as at Hope and Bainbridge, to control a rude 

 population, received regularly the fruits of the industry which 

 they might direct, but did not personally share. Viewed in this 

 light, how complete appears the grasp of the Roman treasury on 

 the mining fields of Britain ! The Fossway from the Ocrynian 

 promontory crosses the Mendip Hills — the road from Mancunium 

 to Bremetonacum traverses the Calamine district of Bowland 

 the road from Derventio or Tutbury to Mancunium runs along 

 the west of the great Derbyshire field, and the legionary path 

 trom Carlisle to York goes right across the metalliferous country 



of Yorkshire and Durham. 



"We may even ask with some confidence, whether the line of 

 the Hadrian wall, which cuts off from the north all the richest 

 mines of the Derwent, the Allen, and the Tyne, but abandons 

 the mossy dales of bleak Northumbria, was not drawn with espe- 

 cial reference to the mining wealth of the districts. 



May we not regard, as a confirmation of all that has been ad- 

 vanced touching the antiquity of our mining processes, the fact of 

 the existence to this day, though impaired by recent acts of par- 

 liament, of peculiar rights and privileges in the mining districts? 

 These rights are sometimes guaranteed by and appear to emanate 

 from royal charters, as in the stanneries of Cornwall and Devon, 

 out they are probably of far earlier date, and have merely been 

 confirmed as old customs by John and his successors. In Mendip, 

 the Forest of Dean and Derbyshire, the miners' rights were pre- 

 served by royal officers, but the rights themselves transcend all 

 history and tradition. To sink a pit or drive a level in any field ; 

 to cover the rich herbage with barren ore-stuff; to cut a way to 

 the public road ; to divert, employ, and waste the running waters ; 

 and to do all this without consent of owner, and without com- 

 pensati 



