_Burning the Hill_ (Vol. ii., pp. 441. 498.).--The provision for _burning
out_ a delinquent miner, contained in the Mendip mine laws, called Lord
C. J. Choke's laws, first appeared in print in 1687; at least I can find no
earlier notice of them in any _book_; but as the usages sanctioned by them
are incidentally mentioned in proceedings in the Exchequer in 21 and 22
Elizabeth, they are no doubt of early date. Article 6. certainly has a very
sanguinary aspect; but as the thief, whose hut and tools are to be burnt,
is himself to be "_banished_ from his occupation before the miners for
ever," it cannot be intended that he should be himself burnt also. If any
instance of the exercise of a {124} custom or law so clearly illegal had
ever occurred within recent times, we should have assuredly found some
record of it in the annals of criminal justice, as the executioner would
infallibly have been hanged. The regulations are probably an attempt by
some private hand to embody the local customs of the district, so far as
regards lead mining; and they contain the substance of the usual customs
prevalent in most metallic regions, where mines have been worked _ab
antiquo_. The first report of the Dean Forest Commission, 1839, f. 12.,
adverts to a similar practice among the coal and iron miners in that
forest. It seems to be an instance of the _Droit des arsins_, or right of
arson, formerly claimed and exercised to a considerable extent, and with
great solemnity, in Picardy, Flanders, and other places; but I know of no
instance in which this wild species of metallifodine justice has been
claimed to apply to anything but the culprit's local habitation and tools
of trade. I need not add that the custom, even with this limitation, would
now be treated by the courts as a vulgar error, and handed over to the
exclusive jurisdiction of the legal antiquaries and collectors of the Juris
amoenitates.