A HISTORY OF SURREY 



pound with the masters and occupiers or iron 

 works in the country for all such offences 

 under these statutes as those of which infor- 

 mations had been lately exhibited and con- 

 sequent proceedings were then pending in 

 the Court of Star Chamber/ On 1 4 October 

 of the same year an oflSce of surveyor of 

 ironworks was created by Letters Patent. 

 The declared object of this office was to 

 bring about a reformation in the great waste 

 of timber and the prevention of such abuses 

 as the selling of ' colsheir ' or base iron fit 

 only for window bars and such purposes, for 

 which the iron was not required to be bent, 

 for iron of the better sort. The chief duty of 

 the surveyor was to mark all iron made into 

 pigs, for which office he was to receive from 

 the manufacturer a fee of id. for every 

 hundredweight thus marked. The office was 

 farmed to John Cupper and Grimbald Paunce- 

 fote for a term of twenty-one years on their 

 payment to the Crown of a sum of 100 

 marks.' On 29 July of the following year 

 a royal proclamation was issued to ensure due 

 respect being paid to the new office. The 

 surveyors either personally or by deputy were 

 authorized to visit not only the works in 

 which the iron was made but also every cellar, 

 warehouse, ship or the like, to which it was 

 possible that the iron might be taken from 

 the works. In cases where iron had been 

 removed before being marked, or where it 

 had been shipped for export without licence, 

 they were to bring the offenders to justice. 

 They could examine the books and scores 

 kept by manufacturers or merchants, and they 

 were to inspect all woods in which timber 

 was felled for use in ironworks and to satisfy 

 themselves that this was done in conformity 

 with the statutes.' These stringent measures 

 were short-lived. Both Cuningham's com- 

 mission and the creation of the surveyor's 

 office were revoked by a proclamation of 9 

 April 1639.* 



Of the Civil War and Commonwealth 

 periods there is little data that will help us 

 to learn how it fared with the Wealden in- 

 dustry.* 



> Pat. 12 Chas. I. pt. 2, No. 7, printed in 

 Rymer's FaeJera, xx. 68. 



2 S. P. Dom. Chas. I. case D. No. 9. 



' Pat. 13 Chas. I. pt. 15, No. I4d, printed in 

 Kjtaah Fadera, -EL. 161. 



* Pat. 15 Chas. I. pt. 23, No. gd, printed in 

 Fctdera, 3DC. 340. 



6 In 1643 Sir William Waller, in command of 

 the Parliamentary troops in the south-eastern 

 counties, destroyed the ironworks belonging to 

 the Crown and royalists in the western division of 

 Sussex (Lower, Sax/. Arch. Coll. ii. 200, quoting 



At the Restoration George Browne, a son 

 of John Browne who had held the appoint- 

 ment in the reigns of James L and Charles L, 

 became the king's gunfounder and gunstone- 

 maker.' He was a Surrey man, being of 

 Buckland, but his works as well as those of 

 his partner, Alexander Courthope, seem to 

 have lain for the most part in Kent. 



From this time particulars as to any of the 

 works in Surrey become scarce, so that we 

 have no means of gauging the exact extent of 

 the industry. Such notices as are found in 

 books of the nature of Aubrey's Perambulations 

 will be more fitly dealt with later in connec- 

 tion with the particular works to which they 

 refer.'' 



In Surrey the last positive notice we have 

 of the continued existence of the industry is 

 in 1767, when, in connection with a dispute 

 between the inhabitants of Guildford and 

 Godalming as to the position of a turnpike on 

 the Portsmouth road, it was stated amongst 

 other things that there was great traffic to and 

 from the forge or ironworks on Witley and 

 Thursley Heaths between Milford and Hind- 

 head. The contention did not go undisputed, 

 for on the other hand it was asserted that not 

 more than one carriage a week went with 

 material to the forge.® It is hardly probable 

 that the industry was carried on in the county 

 much after this. In 1809 W. Stevenson in 

 his General View of the Agriculture of the County 



Dalla way's Western Sussex). It is to be supposed 

 that the same policy would have been carried out 

 or at least attempted in the rest of the Weald, 

 although there are no returns amongst the State 

 Papers to show the extent of the destruction. In 

 the west of England the Parliament's measures 

 were yet more drastic, for the sheriff of Glouces- 

 tershire was directed to see that all the ironworks 

 in the Forest of Dean were destroyed by 10 

 February 1650, a policy which was actuated by 

 the desire to secure the preservation of the timber 

 in this forest, presumably in view of the require- 

 ments of the navy (S. P. Dom. Interregnum, I. 

 Ixiii. 465, 466). 



• Pat. 12 Chas. II. pt. 35, No. 16. 



' If we may judge by the condition of the in- 

 dustry in Sussex, probably the latter half of the 

 seventeenth century was the commencement of the 

 period of decline. 



8 The Proposal for removing the Godalming Turn- 

 pike considered (London, 1 767). An attempt how- 

 ever seems to have been made to smelt the iron 

 ore in the extreme south-east of the county by 

 Messrs. Raby at Felbridge Water some time pre- 

 vious to 1805, but with coal fuel and not charcoal. 

 The expense of carriage of the fuel proved too 

 great, and after a fair trial the works were aban- 

 doned (Malcolm, Compendium of Modem Husbandry, 

 i. 41). 



268 



