158 TWO OLD MINING PATENTS. - 
do melt the same, supposing thereby to avoid the slaunder and to 
blind the world; and to every hundredweight of tin put 30 lbs. 
of lead—sometimes more.” Therefore it was ordered that Sir 
Francis Walsingham should have a twenty-one years’ lease for 
trying, melting, and casting, in order that either kind of fraud 
might be prevented. It is but fair to the Elizabethan smelters, 
however, to state that they were not: the only black sheep in the 
tin trade in those days. Another of the Cottonian MSS. [Julius, 
F. 6], on the “ Pre-emption of tin,” bitterly assails the tin farmers, 
declaring that they themselves became merchants “and pretend a 
scarcity of tinn, and themselves stopp the vent of purpose to keep 
' up the price in forraine countries.” So much for interfering with 
the natural course of trade. 
