Tin. 
381 
had expended their money in making the discovery ; but 
a patent being obtained by some others, the design was 
abandoned by the first projectors, and the patentees never 
made any plates ; so that the whole scheme seems to have 
been given up till the year .1720, when the fabricating of 
tin plates made one of the many very useful projects, 
(though they were mixed with some which were imprac- 
ticable) for which that year will ever be memorable. 
How soon after that year the manufacture of tin plates 
gained a lasting establishment, and where they were first 
made, are points on which I am not sufficiently informed ; 
an old Cambridge workman has told me, that he used 
them at Lynn, in Norfolk, in the year 1730, and that they 
came from PontypooL The tin men, at the first intro- 
duction of the English plates, were greatly delighted with 
them ; they had a better colour, and were more pliable 
than the foreign ones, which were then, and still continue 
to be hammered ; it being impossible to hammer either 
iron or copper to so uniform a thickness, as these metals 
are reduced to by being rolled* It is said, that a Cornish 
tin man flying out of England for a murder in 1243, dis- 
covered tin in Saxony, and that before that discovery, 
there was no tin in Europe, except in England ;* a Ro- 
mish priest, converted to be a Lutherian, carried the art 
of making tin plates from Bohemia into Saxony about the 
year 1620 ;f and Andrew Yarranton, as we have seen, 
brought it from Saxony into England about the year 
1670 ; Saxony at that time being the only place in which 
the plates were made. They are now made not only in 
England, but in France, Holland, Sweden, &c. though 
from the cheapness of our tin, and the excellency of some 
sorts of our iron, the greatest share of the tin plate trade 
must ever centre with ourselves. Our coal is another cir~ 
Hcylin’s Geo^. 
f Yarrantoty 
