SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



coals were similarly claimed on Harwood Common in 1601,''*' and the lord 

 of the manor in this instance defended his alleged rights by bringing a suit for 

 trespass against the claimants. 



While these continual disputes and forcible entries made by tenantry 

 upon common and waste lands, which the lords of the manor were endeavour- 

 ing to inclose for their own possession, testify to the survival of the great 

 pastoral and grazing pursuits of Lancashire, they also offer highly important 

 evidence to the beginning of quite another character of enterprise — the great 

 mining industry. The continuous struggle for the possession of waste 

 grounds all over the county proves that the value of such land had become 

 enhanced in some striking way, as indeed it had. For some time past it had 

 been discovered that the great Lancashire wastes not merely abounded in peat — 

 which was increasingly sought as the demand for fuel grew with increasing 

 population — but were rich in minerals, and contained great slate or stone 

 quarries and, most important of all, valuable beds of coal. The digging of 

 turves, like the cutting of firewood, had from early times been the privilege 

 of the peasant, and the gradual merging of the villeins and bondmen into 

 small copyholders of the towns, as at Colne and Burnley, to quote two con- 

 stantly recurring instances, endowed these tenants with the so to speak 

 hereditary claims that had been accorded them centuries before, when they 

 ranked in a slightly lower and more dependent status. 



The gradual discovery of the value of waste lands containing rich coal- 

 beds brought these struggles between landlord and tenant to an acute issue in 

 the early sixteenth century. The exploitation of minerals, particularly of 

 coal, was undoubtedly the source of much of the keenness with which the 

 landowners sought to possess themselves of common lands. Of this the long 

 dispute about the Burnley waste at Broadhead is a conspicuous example. In 

 1526-7 Richard Townley was the farmer of the coal mines in the waste 

 ground there, and naturally, in his own interest, resented the claim of the 

 Burnley copyhold tenants to dig coals as freely as they had formerly been 

 accustomed to dig peat-fuel.^*' In 1528—9 a similar dispute was taking place 

 on another rich coalfield, the waste at Hindley Manor.^^" In 1546 the 

 dispute over Tottington and Rossendale Wastes was so acute that the king, as 

 plaintiff, issued a commission to inquire concerning the coal mines there.'" 



Here then we get the early stir and beginnings of the great coal-mining 

 industry of Lancashire, a source of latent wealth that was for the first 

 time beginning to be quietly exploited in the Tudor period. Some idea 

 of the potential wealth of the county seems to have got abroad, for under 

 Edward VI a commission was appointed to survey the coal mines, slate 

 quarries, and other hereditaments in Lancashire and in the precincts of Bow- 

 land Forest.'^' In 1567 there was a suit for trespass brought by the farmer 

 of the ' coal pits ' at Winstanley.**'^ At Blackburn Moor coals were being 

 dug from the waste,^^* and in 1576 the Townleys were still owners of the 

 Cliviger coal mines at Burnley. '^^ At about the same time coal mines were 



'*^ Duchy of Lane. Plead, cciv, M. 4. 



^" Duchy of Lane. Dep. (18 Hen. VIII), xix, T. 3. It should be remembered that whilst copyholders 

 had certain rights to get peats in surface workings, they had no rights in minerals lying beneath the surface. 

 Their tenure was of the surface soil only. 



'"^ Ibid, xxii, L. 3. "' Ibid, xlviii, R. 10. ''' Ibid. Ixi, R. 2. 



'" Ibid. Plead. Ixxiii, O. 5. "* Ibid. Ixxvili, A. 7 (11 Eliz.). ^" Ibid. C. G. 4. 



291 



