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VIL—Two Old Mining Patents—By BR. N. Worru, Plymouth, 
Corresponding Member of the Institution. 
Read at the Spring Meeting, May 18, 1872. 
A LIMITED acquaintance with the history of Cornish mining 
is sufficient to enable us to recognise the fact that at a very 
early period it was deemed a most important industry, to be fos- 
tered heedfully by those who had the power. Undoubtedly the 
means taken to promote its success were not always those which 
would approve themselves to our modern ideas, but the object was 
mostly unexceptionable. During the sixteenth century a great 
advance took place in the practice of the arts and sciences in this 
country, due in the main to an impulse from the Continent, given 
by the scholars and artificers of France and the Low Countries, 
who fled therefrom and took asylum in England to escape religious 
persecution. To this date, then, there is no reason to doubt, many 
improvements in our mining and metallurgical processes are trace- 
able. As a rule, our monarchs were quite alive to the expediency 
of encouraging skilful foreigners to settle in this country, and 
Elizabeth was not one whit behind any of her predecessors. There 
are extant a number of patents granted by her to miners from the 
Continent, giving them powers, under certain conditions, to search 
for metalliferous ores in various parts of the kingdom, generally 
exclusive of the Stannaries. Of the incorporations thus created, 
the most important appears to have been one known as the Battery 
Company, which seems to have worked with a certain degree of 
success. 
