258 



Further Ohservations upon the foregoing document. — By Sir Edward 

 Smirke, late Vice-Warden of the Stannaries. 



AT the meeting of this Society, in May, 1870, I had the 

 pleasure of introducing to the notice of the meeting a curious 

 document, or rather series of documents, relating to a well known 

 tax or charge on all tin produced and smelted for local use, or for 

 exportation, in the two western counties of England, in which that 

 metal has been immemorially worked. The origin of this tax, and 

 the ground of the claim to a perception of it by the Crown, or by 

 Earls or Dukes of Cornwall when those dignities became the 

 recipients of this ancient endowment by a grant from the Crown, 

 is very obscure ; and as we are now as well acquainted with the 

 history of it as we are ever likely to be, this obscurity is not likely 

 hereafter to become less. 



The document had been sent to the Society by Mr. (now. Sir 

 John) Maclean, with valuable comments, which are now partially 

 embodied in his pi-efatory notice of it. 



This impost, known down to as late a date as the first year of 

 the present reign, is, and always has been, known in those counties 

 as the " coinage " duty ; and derived its name from the " cuneus,^' or 

 stamp used by the royal or other authorized legal recipient of the 

 dues, and imprest upon the smelted metallic block or ingot, after 

 it had been fused in a proper mould, and assayed by the officer of 

 the Crown, or of the Eaii or the Prince, to Avhom that duty was 

 granted. The use of the word " cuneus " and of the word cunagium, 

 as applied to stamped coins, is familiar, and of undefined an- 

 tiquity ; but the use of it, as applied to such produce of tin in the 

 western mines, is, I think, only found in the public records of 

 England since the Conquest. The earliest occurrence of the word 

 in this sense has not been yet found in any original document 

 before the 12th century. The various charters of our early 

 sovereigns, whereby the community of the miners engaged in this 

 branch of local industry was organized, and the franchises which 

 were conferred upon them by those charters, have been elsewhere 

 described with sufficient fulness in a work printed by me in 1843, 



