WILLIAM FAIRBAIRN.
Summary of progress in machine-tools
William Fairbairn's early years
His education
Life in the Highlands
Begins work at Kelso Bridge
An apprentice at Percy Main Colliery, North Shields
Diligent self-culture
Voyage to London
Adventures
Prevented obtaining work by the Millwrights' Union
Travels into the country, finds work, and returns to London
His first order, to make a sausage-chopping machine
Wanderschaft
Makes nail-machinery for a Dublin employer
Proceeds to Manchester, where he settles and marries
Begins business
His first job
Partnership with Mr. Lillie
Employed by Messrs. Adam Murray and Co.
Employed by Messrs. MacConnel and Kennedy
Progress of the Cotton Trade
Memoir of John Kennedy
Mr. Fairbairn introduces great improvements in the gearing, &c.
of mill machinery
Increasing business Improvements in water-wheels
Experiments as to the law of traction of boats
Begins building iron ships
Experiments on the strength of wrought iron
Britannia and Conway Tubular Bridges
Reports on iron
On boiler explosions
Iron construction
Extended use of iron
Its importance in civilization
Opinion of Mr. Cobden
Importance of modern machine-tools
Conclusion
INDUSTRIAL BIOGRAPHY.
CHAPTER I.
IRON AND CIVILIZATION.
"Iron is not only the soul of every other manufacture, but the main
spring perhaps of civilized society."--FRANCIS HORNER.
"Were the use of iron lost among us, we should in a few ages be
unavoidably reduced to the wants and ignorance of the ancient savage
Americans; so that he who first made known the use of that contemptible
mineral may be truly styled the father of Arts and the author of
Plenty."--JOHN LOCKE.
When Captain Cook and the early navigators first sailed into the South
Seas on their voyages of discovery, one of the things that struck them
with most surprise was the avidity which the natives displayed for
iron. "Nothing would go down with our visitors," says Cook, "but
metal; and iron was their beloved article." A nail would buy a
good-sized pig; and on one occasion the navigator bought some four
hundred pounds weight of fish for a few wretched knives improvised out
of an old hoop.
"For iron tools," says Captain Carteret, "we might have purchased
everything upon the Freewill Islands that we could have brought away.
A few pieces of old iron hoop presented to one of the natives threw him
into an ecstasy little short of distraction." At Otaheite the people
were found generally well-behaved and honest; but they were not proof
against the fascinations of iron. Captain Cook says that one of them,
after resisting all other temptations, "was at length ensnared by the
charms of basket of nails." Another lurked about for several days,
watching the opportunity to steal a coal-rake.
The navigators found they could pay their way from island to island
merely with scraps of iron, which were as useful for the purpose as
gold coins would have been in Europe. The drain, however, being
continuous, Captain Cook became alarmed at finding his currency almost
exhausted; and he relates his joy on recovering an old anchor which the
French Captain Bougainville had lost at Bolabola, on which he felt as
an English banker would do after a severe run upon him for gold, when
suddenly placed in possession of a fresh store of bullion.
The avidity for iron displayed by these poor islanders will not be
wondered at when we consider that whoever among them was so fortunate
as to obtain possession of an old nail, immediately became a man of
greater power than his fellows, and assumed the rank of a capitalist.
"An Otaheitan chief," says Cook, "who had got two nails in his
possession, received no small emolument by letting out the use of them
to his neighbours for the purpose of boring holes when their own
methods failed, or were thought too tedious."
The native methods referred to by Cook were of a very clumsy sort; the
principal tools of the Otaheitans being of wood, stone, and flint.
Their adzes and axes were of stone. The gouge most commonly used by
them was made out of the bone of the human forearm. Their substitute
for a knife was a shell, or a bit of flint or jasper. A shark's tooth,
fixed to a piece of wood, served for an auger; a piece of coral for a
file; and the skin of a sting-ray for a polisher. Their saw was made
of jagged fishes' teeth fixed on the convex edge of a piece of hard
wood. Their weapons were of a similarly rude description; their clubs
and axes were headed with stone, and their lances and arrows were
tipped with flint. Fire was another agency employed by them, usually
in boat-building. Thus, the New Zealanders, whose tools were also of
stone, wood, or bone, made their boats of the trunks of trees hollowed
out by fire.
The stone implements were fashioned, Captain Cook says, by rubbing one
stone upon another until brought to the required shape; but, after all,
they were found very inefficient for their purpose. They soon became
blunted and useless; and the laborious process of making new tools had
to be begun again. The delight of the islanders at being put in
possession of a material which was capable of taking a comparatively
sharp edge and keeping it, may therefore readily be imagined; and hence
the remarkable incidents to which we have referred in the experience of
the early voyagers. In the minds of the natives, iron became the
representative of power, efficiency, and wealth; and they were ready
almost to fall down and worship their new tools, esteeming the axe as a
deity, offering sacrifices to the saw, and holding the knife in
especial veneration.
In the infancy of all nations the same difficulties must have been
experienced for want of tools, before the arts of smelting and working
in metals had become known; and it is not improbable that the
Phoenician navigators who first frequented our coasts found the same
avidity for bronze and iron existing among the poor woad-stained
Britons who flocked down to the shore to see their ships and exchange
food and skins with them, that Captain Cook discovered more than two
thousand years later among the natives of Otaheite and New Zealand.
For, the tools and weapons found in ancient burying-places in all parts
of Britain clearly show that these islands also have passed through the
epoch of stone and flint.
There was recently exhibited at the Crystal Palace a collection of
ancient European weapons and implements placed alongside a similar
collection of articles brought from the South Seas; and they were in
most respects so much alike that it was difficult to believe that they
did not belong to the same race and period, instead of being the
implements of races sundered by half the globe, and living at periods
more than two thousand years apart. Nearly every weapon in the one
collection had its counterpart in the other,--the mauls or celts of
stone, the spearheads of flint or jasper, the arrowheads of flint or
bone, and the saws of jagged stone, showing how human ingenuity, under
like circumstances, had resorted to like expedients. It would also
appear that the ancient tribes in these islands, like the New
Zealanders, used fire to hollow out their larger boats; several
specimens of this kind of vessel having recently been dug up in the
valleys of the Witham and the Clyde, some of the latter from under the
very streets of modern Glasgow.[1] Their smaller boats, or coracles,
were made of osiers interwoven, covered with hides, and rigged with
leathern sails and thong tackle.
It will readily be imagined that anything like civilization, as at
present understood, must have been next to impossible under such
circumstances. "Miserable indeed," says Carlyle, "was the condition of
the aboriginal savage, glaring fiercely from under his fleece of hair,
which with the beard reached down to his loins, and hung round them
like a matted cloak; the rest of his body sheeted in its thick natural
fell. He loitered in the sunny glades of the forest, living on wild
fruits; or, as the ancient Caledonians, squatted himself in morasses,
lurking for his bestial or human prey; without implements, without
arms, save the ball of heavy flint, to which, that his sole possession
and defence might not be lost, he had attached a long cord of plaited
thongs; thereby recovering as well as hurling it with deadly, unerring
skill."
The injunction given to man to "replenish the earth and subdue it"
could not possibly be fulfilled with implements of stone. To fell a
tree with a flint hatchet would occupy the labour of a month, and to
clear a small patch of ground for purposes of culture would require the
combined efforts of a tribe. For the same reason, dwellings could not
be erected; and without dwellings domestic tranquillity, security,
culture, and refinement, especially in a rude climate, were all but
impossible. Mr. Emerson well observes, that "the effect of a house is
immense on human tranquillity, power, and refinement. A man in a cave
or a camp--a nomad--dies with no more estate than the wolf or the horse
leaves. But so simple a labour as a house being achieved, his chief
enemies are kept at bay. He is safe from the teeth of wild animals,
from frost, sunstroke, and weather; and fine faculties begin to yield
their fine harvest. Inventions and arts are born, manners, and social
beauty and delight." But to build a house which should serve for
shelter, for safety, and for comfort--in a word, as a home for the
family, which is the nucleus of society--better tools than those of
stone were absolutely indispensable.
Hence most of the early European tribes were nomadic: first hunters,
wandering about from place to place like the American Indians, after
the game; then shepherds, following the herds of animals which they had
learnt to tame, from one grazing-ground to another, living upon their
milk and flesh, and clothing themselves in their skins held together by
leathern thongs. It was only when implements of metal had been
invented that it was possible to practise the art of agriculture with
any considerable success. Then tribes would cease from their
wanderings, and begin to form settlements, homesteads, villages, and
towns. An old Scandinavian legend thus curiously illustrates this last
period:--There was a giantess whose daughter one day saw a husbandman
ploughing in the field. She ran and picked him up with her finger and
thumb, put him and his plough and oxen into her apron, and carried them
to her mother, saying, "Mother, what sort of beetle is this that I have
found wriggling in the sand?" But the mother said, "Put it away, my
child; we must begone out of this land, for these people will dwell in
it."
M. Worsaae of Copenhagen, who has been followed by other antiquaries,
has even gone so far as to divide the natural history of civilization
into three epochs, according to the character of the tools used in
each. The first was the Stone period, in which the implements chiefly
used were sticks, bones, stones, and flints. The next was the Bronze
period, distinguished by the introduction and general use of a metal
composed of copper and tin, requiring a comparatively low degree of
temperature to smelt it, and render it capable of being fashioned into
weapons, tools, and implements; to make which, however, indicated a
great advance in experience, sagacity, and skill in the manipulation of
metals. With tools of bronze, to which considerable hardness could be
given, trees were felled, stones hewn, houses and ships built, and
agriculture practised with comparative facility. Last of all came the
Iron period, when the art of smelting and working that most difficult
but widely diffused of the minerals was discovered; from which point
the progress made in all the arts of life has been of the most
remarkable character.
Although Mr. Wright rejects this classification as empirical, because
the periods are not capable of being clearly defined, and all the three
kinds of implements are found to have been in use at or about the same
time,[2] there is, nevertheless, reason to believe that it is, on the
whole, well founded. It is doubtless true that implements of stone
continued in use long after those of bronze and iron had been invented,
arising most probably from the dearness and scarcity of articles of
metal; but when the art of smelting and working in iron and steel had
sufficiently advanced, the use of stone, and afterwards of bronze tools
and weapons, altogether ceased.
The views of M. Worsaae, and the other Continental antiquarians who
follow his classification, have indeed received remarkable confirmation
of late years, by the discoveries which have been made in the beds of
most of the Swiss lakes.[3] It appears that a subsidence took place in
the waters of the Lake of Zurich in the year 1854, laying bare
considerable portions of its bed. The adjoining proprietors proceeded
to enclose the new land, and began by erecting permanent dykes to
prevent the return of the waters. While carrying on the works, several
rows of stakes were exposed; and on digging down, the labourers turned
up a number of pieces of charred wood, stones blackened by fire,
utensils, bones, and other articles, showing that at some remote
period, a number of human beings had lived over the spot, in dwellings
supported by stakes driven into the bed of the lake.
The discovery having attracted attention, explorations were made at
other places, and it was shortly found that there was scarcely a lake
in Switzerland which did not yield similar evidence of the existence of
an ancient Lacustrine or Lake-dwelling population. Numbers of their
tools and implements were brought to light--stone axes and saws, flint
arrowheads, bone needles, and such like--mixed with the bones of wild
animals slain in the chase; pieces of old boats, portions of twisted
branches, bark, and rough planking, of which their dwellings had been
formed, the latter still bearing the marks of the rude tools by which
they had been laboriously cut. In the most ancient, or lowest series
of deposits, no traces of metal, either of bronze or iron, were
discovered; and it is most probable that these lake-dwellers lived in
as primitive a state as the South Sea islanders discovered by Captain
Cook, and that the huts over the water in which they lived resembled
those found in Papua and Borneo, and the islands of the Salomon group,
to this day.
These aboriginal Swiss lake-dwellers seem to have been succeeded by a
race of men using tools, implements, and ornaments of bronze. In some
places the remains of this bronze period directly overlay those of the
stone period, showing the latter to have been the most ancient; but in
others, the village sites are altogether distinct. The articles with
which the metal implements are intermixed, show that considerable
progress had been made in the useful arts. The potter's wheel had been
introduced. Agriculture had begun, and wild animals had given place to
tame ones. The abundance of bronze also shows that commerce must have
existed to a certain extent; for tin, which enters into its
composition, is a comparatively rare metal, and must necessarily have
been imported from other European countries.
The Swiss antiquarians are of opinion that the men of bronze suddenly
invaded and extirpated the men of flint; and that at some still later
period, another stronger and more skilful race, supposed to have been
Celts from Gaul, came armed with iron weapons, to whom the men of
bronze succumbed, or with whom, more probably, they gradually
intermingled. When iron, or rather steel, came into use, its
superiority in affording a cutting edge was so decisive that it seems
to have supplanted bronze almost at once;[4] the latter metal
continuing to be employed only for the purpose of making scabbards or
sword-handles. Shortly after the commencement of the iron age, the
lake-habitations were abandoned, the only settlement of this later
epoch yet discovered being that at Tene, on Lake Neufchatel: and it is
a remarkable circumstance, showing the great antiquity of the
lake-dwellings, that they are not mentioned by any of the Roman
historians.
That iron should have been one of the last of the metals to come into
general use, is partly accounted for by the circumstance that iron,
though one of the most generally diffused of minerals, never presents
itself in a natural state, except in meteorites; and that to recognise
its ores, and then to separate the metal from its matrix, demands the
exercise of no small amount of observation and invention. Persons
unacquainted with minerals would be unable to discover the slightest
affinity between the rough ironstone as brought up from the mine, and
the iron or steel of commerce. To unpractised eyes they would seem to
possess no properties in common, and it is only after subjecting the
stone to severe processes of manufacture that usable metal can be
obtained from it. The effectual reduction of the ore requires an
intense heat, maintained by artificial methods, such as furnaces and
blowing apparatus.[5] But it is principally in combination with other
elements that iron is so valuable when compared with other metals.
Thus, when combined with carbon, in varying proportions, substances are
produced, so different, but each so valuable, that they might almost be
regarded in the light of distinct metals,--such, for example, as
cast-iron, and cast and bar steel; the various qualities of iron
enabling it to be used for purposes so opposite as a steel pen and a
railroad, the needle of a mariner's compass and an Armstrong gun, a
surgeon's lancet and a steam engine, the mainspring of a watch and an
iron ship, a pair of scissors and a Nasmyth hammer, a lady's earrings
and a tubular bridge.
The variety of purposes to which iron is thus capable of being applied,
renders it of more use to mankind than all the other metals combined.
Unlike iron, gold is found pure, and in an almost workable state; and
at an early period in history, it seems to have been much more
plentiful than iron or steel. But gold was unsuited for the purposes
of tools, and would serve for neither a saw, a chisel, an axe, nor a
sword; whilst tempered steel could answer all these purposes. Hence we
find the early warlike nations making the backs of their swords of gold
or copper, and economizing their steel to form the cutting edge. This
is illustrated by many ancient Scandinavian weapons in the museum at
Copenhagen, which indicate the greatest parsimony in the use of steel
at a period when both gold and copper appear to have been comparatively
abundant.
The knowledge of smelting and working in iron, like most other arts,
came from the East. Iron was especially valued for purposes of war, of
which indeed it was regarded as the symbol, being called "Mars" by the
Romans.[6] We find frequent mention of it in the Bible. One of the
earliest notices of the metal is in connexion with the conquest of
Judea by the Philistines. To complete the subjection of the
Israelites, their conquerors made captive all the smiths of the land,
and carried them away. The Philistines felt that their hold of the
country was insecure so long as the inhabitants possessed the means of
forging weapons. Hence "there was no smith found throughout all the
land of Israel; for the Philistines said, Lest the Hebrews make them
swords or spears. But the Israelites went down to the Philistines, to
sharpen every man his share, and his coulter, and his axe, and his
mattock." [7]
At a later period, when Jerusalem was taken by the Babylonians, one of
their first acts was to carry the smiths and other craftsmen captives
to Babylon.[8] Deprived of their armourers, the Jews were rendered
comparatively powerless.
It was the knowledge of the art of iron-forging which laid the
foundation of the once great empire of the Turks. Gibbon relates that
these people were originally the despised slaves of the powerful Khan
of the Geougen. They occupied certain districts of the mountain-ridge
in the centre of Asia, called Imaus, Caf, and Altai, which yielded iron
in large quantities. This metal the Turks were employed by the Khan to
forge for his use in war. A bold leader arose among them, who
persuaded the ironworkers that the arms which they forged for their
masters might in their own hands become the instruments of freedom.
Sallying forth from their mountains, they set up their standard, and
their weapons soon freed them. For centuries after, the Turkish nation
continued to celebrate the event of their liberation by an annual
ceremony, in which a piece of iron was heated in the fire, and a
smith's hammer was successively handled by the prince and his nobles.
We can only conjecture how the art of smelting iron was discovered.
Who first applied fire to the ore, and made it plastic; who discovered
fire itself, and its uses in metallurgy? No one can tell. Tradition
says that the metal was discovered through the accidental burning of a
wood in Greece. Mr. Mushet thinks it more probable that the discovery
was made on the conversion of wood into charcoal for culinary or
chamber purposes. "If a mass of ore," he says, "accidentally dropped
into the middle of the burning pile during a period of neglect, or
during the existence of a thorough draught, a mixed mass, partly earthy
and partly metallic, would be obtained, possessing ductility and
extension under pressure. But if the conjecture is pushed still
further, and we suppose that the ore was not an oxide, but rich in
iron, magnetic or spicular, the result would in all probability be a
mass of perfectly malleable iron. I have seen this fact illustrated in
the roasting of a species of iron-stone, which was united with a
considerable mass of bituminous matter. After a high temperature had
been excited in the interior of the pile, plates of malleable iron of a
tough and flexible nature were formed, and under circumstances where
there was no fuel but that furnished by the ore itself." [9]
The metal once discovered, many attempts would be made to give to that
which had been the effect of accident a more unerring result. The
smelting of ore in an open heap of wood or charcoal being found tedious
and wasteful, as well as uncertain, would naturally lead to the
invention of a furnace; with the object of keeping the ore surrounded
as much as possible with fuel while the process of conversion into iron
was going forward. The low conical furnaces employed at this day by
some of the tribes of Central and Southern Africa, are perhaps very
much the same in character as those adopted by the early tribes of all
countries where iron was first made. Small openings at the lower end
of the cone to admit the air, and a larger orifice at the top, would,
with charcoal, be sufficient to produce the requisite degree of heat
for the reduction of the ore. To this the foot-blast was added, as
still used in Ceylon and in India; and afterwards the water-blast, as
employed in Spain (where it is known as the Catalan forge), along the
coasts of the Mediterranean, and in some parts of America.
It is worthy of remark, that the ruder the method employed for the
reduction of the ore, the better the quality of the iron usually is.
Where the art is little advanced, only the most tractable ores are
selected; and as charcoal is the only fuel used, the quality of the
metal is almost invariably excellent. The ore being long exposed to
the charcoal fire, and the quantity made small, the result is a metal
having many of the qualities of steel, capable of being used for
weapons or tools after a comparatively small amount of forging. Dr.
Livingstone speaks of the excellent quality of the iron made by the
African tribes on the Zambesi, who refuse to use ordinary English iron,
which they consider "rotten." [10] Du Chaillu also says of the Fans,
that, in making their best knives and arrow-heads, they will not use
European or American iron, greatly preferring their own. The
celebrated wootz or steel of India, made in little cakes of only about
two pounds weight, possesses qualities which no European steel can
surpass. Out of this material the famous Damascus sword-blades were
made; and its use for so long a period is perhaps one of the most
striking proofs of the ancient civilization of India.
The early history of iron in Britain is necessarily very obscure. When
the Romans invaded the country, the metal seems to have been already
known to the tribes along the coast. The natives had probably smelted
it themselves in their rude bloomeries, or obtained it from the
Phoenicians in small quantities in exchange for skins and food, or tin.
We must, however, regard the stories told of the ancient British
chariots armed with swords or scythes as altogether apocryphal. The
existence of iron in sufficient quantity to be used for such a purpose
is incompatible with contemporary facts, and unsupported by a single
vestige remaining to our time. The country was then mostly forest, and
the roads did not as yet exist upon which chariots could be used;
whilst iron was too scarce to be mounted as scythes upon chariots, when
the warriors themselves wanted it for swords. The orator Cicero, in a
letter to Trebatius, then serving with the army in Britain,
sarcastically advised him to capture and convey one of these vehicles
to Italy for exhibition; but we do not hear that any specimen of the
British war-chariot was ever seen in Rome.
It is only in the tumuli along the coast, or in those of the
Romano-British period, that iron implements are ever found; whilst in
the ancient burying places of the interior of the country they are
altogether wanting. Herodian says of the British pursued by Severus
through the fens and marshes of the east coast, that they wore iron
hoops round their middles and their necks, esteeming them as ornaments
and tokens of riches, in like manner as other barbarous people then
esteemed ornaments of silver and gold. Their only money, according to
Caesar, consisted of pieces of brass or iron, reduced to a certain
standard weight.[11] It is particularly important to observe, says M.
Worsaae, that all the antiquities which have hitherto been found in the
large burying places of the Iron period, in Switzerland, Bavaria,
Baden, France, England, and the North, exhibit traces more or less of
Roman influence.[12] The Romans themselves used weapons of bronze when
they could not obtain iron in sufficient quantity, and many of the
Roman weapons dug out of the ancient tumuli are of that metal. They
possessed the art of tempering and hardening bronze to such a degree as
to enable them to manufacture swords with it of a pretty good edge; and
in those countries which they penetrated, their bronze implements
gradually supplanted those which had been previously fashioned of
stone. Great quantities of bronze tools have been found in different
parts of England,--sometimes in heaps, as if they had been thrown away
in basketfuls as things of little value. It has been conjectured that
when the Romans came into Britain they found the inhabitants,
especially those to the northward, in very nearly the same state as
Captain Cook and other voyagers found the inhabitants of the South Sea
Islands; that the Britons parted with their food and valuables for
tools of inferior metal made in imitation of their stone ones; but
finding themselves cheated by the Romans, as the natives of Otaheite
have been cheated by Europeans, the Britons relinquished the bad tools
when they became acquainted with articles made of better metal.[13]
The Roman colonists were the first makers of iron in Britain on any
large scale. They availed themselves of the mineral riches of the
country wherever they went. Every year brings their extraordinary
industrial activity more clearly to light. They not only occupied the
best sites for trade, intersected the land with a complete system of
well-constructed roads, studded our hills and valleys with towns,
villages, and pleasure-houses, and availed themselves of our medicinal
springs for purposes of baths to an extent not even exceeded at this
day, but they explored our mines and quarries, and carried on the
smelting and manufacture of metals in nearly all parts of the island.
The heaps of mining refuse left by them in the valleys and along the
hill-sides of North Derbyshire are still spoken of by the country
people as "old man," or the "old man's work." Year by year, from
Dartmoor to the Moray Firth, the plough turns up fresh traces of their
indefatigable industry and enterprise, in pigs of lead, implements of
iron and bronze, vessels of pottery, coins, and sculpture; and it is a
remarkable circumstance that in several districts where the existence
of extensive iron beds had not been dreamt of until within the last
twenty years, as in Northamptonshire and North Yorkshire, the remains
of ancient workings recently discovered show that the Roman colonists
were fully acquainted with them.
But the principal iron mines worked by that people were those which
were most conveniently situated for purposes of exportation, more
especially in the southern counties and on the borders of Wales. The
extensive cinder heaps found in the--Forest of Dean--which formed the
readiest resource of the modern iron-smelter when improved processes
enabled him to reduce them--show that their principal iron manufactures
were carried on in that quarter.[14] It is indeed matter of history,
that about seventeen hundred years since (A.D. 120) the Romans had
forges in the West of England, both in the Forest of Dean and in South
Wales; and that they sent the metal from thence to Bristol, where it
was forged and made into weapons for the use of the troops. Along the
banks of the Wye, the ground is in many places a continuous bed of iron
cinders, in which numerous remains have been found, furnishing
unmistakeable proofs of the Roman furnaces. At the same time, the iron
ores of Sussex were extensively worked, as appears from the cinder
heaps found at Maresfield and several places in that county, intermixed
with Roman pottery, coins, and other remains. In a bed of scoriae
several acres in extent, at Old Land Farm in Maresfield, the Rev. Mr.
Turner found the remains of Roman pottery so numerous that scarcely a
barrow-load of cinders was removed that did not contain several
fragments, together with coins of the reigns of Nero, Vespasian, and
Dioclesian.[15] In the turbulent infancy of nations it is to be
expected that we should hear more of the Smith, or worker in iron, in
connexion with war, than with more peaceful pursuits. Although he was
a nail-maker and a horse-shoer--made axes, chisels, saws, and hammers
for the artificer--spades and hoes for the farmer--bolts and fastenings
for the lord's castle-gates, and chains for his draw-bridge--it was
principally because of his skill in armour-work that he was esteemed.
He made and mended the weapons used in the chase and in war--the
gavelocs, bills, and battle-axes; he tipped the bowmen's arrows, and
furnished spear-heads for the men-at-arms; but, above all, he forged
the mail-coats and cuirasses of the chiefs, and welded their swords, on
the temper and quality of which, life, honour, and victory in battle
depended. Hence the great estimation in which the smith was held in
the Anglo-Saxon times. His person was protected by a double penalty.
He was treated as an officer of the highest rank, and awarded the first
place in precedency. After him ranked the maker of mead, and then the
physician. In the royal court of Wales he sat in the great hall with
the king and queen, next to the domestic chaplain; and even at that
early day there seems to have been a hot spark in the smith's throat
which needed much quenching; for he was "entitled to a draught of every
kind of liquor that was brought into the hall."
The smith was thus a mighty man. The Saxon Chronicle describes the
valiant knight himself as a "mighty war-smith." But the smith was
greatest of all in his forging of swords; and the bards were wont to
sing the praises of the knight's "good sword" and of the smith who made
it, as well as of the knight himself who wielded it in battle. The
most extraordinary powers were attributed to the weapon of steel when
first invented. Its sharpness seemed so marvellous when compared with
one of bronze, that with the vulgar nothing but magic could account for
it. Traditions, enshrined in fairy tales, still survive in most
countries, illustrative of its magical properties. The weapon of
bronze was dull; but that of steel was bright--the "white sword of
light," one touch of which broke spells, liberated enchanted
princesses, and froze giants' marrow. King Arthur's magic sword
"Excalibur" was regarded as almost heroic in the romance of
chivalry.[16] So were the swords "Galatin" of Sir Gawain, and
"Joyeuse" of Charlemagne, both of which were reputed to be the work of
Weland the Smith, about whose name clusters so much traditional glory
as an ancient worker in metals.[17] The heroes of the Northmen in like
manner wielded magic swords. Olave the Norwegian possessed the sword
"Macabuin," forged by the dark smith of Drontheim, whose feats are
recorded in the tales of the Scalds. And so, in like manner,
traditions of the supernatural power of the blacksmith are found
existing to this day all over the Scottish Highlands.[18] When William
the Norman invaded Britain, he was well supplied with smiths. His
followers were clad in armour of steel, and furnished with the best
weapons of the time. Indeed, their superiority in this respect is
supposed to have been the principal cause of William's victory over
Harold; for the men of both armies were equal in point of bravery. The
Normans had not only smiths to attend to the arms of the knights, but
farriers to shoe their horses. Henry de Femariis, or Ferrers,
"prefectus fabrorum," was one of the principal officers entrusted with
the supervision of the Conqueror's ferriery department; and long after
the earldom was founded his descendants continued to bear on their coat
of arms the six horse-shoes indicative of their origin.[19] William
also gave the town of Northampton, with the hundred of Fackley, as a
fief to Simon St. Liz, in consideration of his providing shoes for his
horses.[20] But though the practice of horse-shoeing is said to have
been introduced to this country at the time of the Conquest, it is
probably of an earlier date; as, according to Dugdale, an old Saxon
tenant in capite of Welbeck in Nottinghamshire, named Gamelbere, held
two carucates of land by the service of shoeing the king's palfrey on
all four feet with the king's nails, as oft as the king should lie at
the neighbouring manor of Mansfield.
Although we hear of the smith mostly in connexion with the fabrication
of instruments of war in the Middle Ages, his importance was no less
recognized in the ordinary affairs of rural and industrial life. He
was, as it were, the rivet that held society together. Nothing could
be done without him. Wherever tools or implements were wanted for
building, for trade, or for husbandry, his skill was called into
requisition. In remote places he was often the sole mechanic of his
district; and, besides being a tool-maker, a farrier, and agricultural
implement maker, he doctored cattle, drew teeth, practised phlebotomy,
and sometimes officiated as parish clerk and general newsmonger; for
the smithy was the very eye and tongue of the village. Hence
Shakespeare's picture of the smith in King John:
"I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus,
The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool,
With open mouth swallowing a tailor's news."
The smith's tools were of many sorts; but the chief were his hammer,
pincers, chisel, tongs, and anvil. It is astonishing what a variety of
articles he turned out of his smithy by the help of these rude
implements. In the tooling, chasing, and consummate knowledge of the
capabilities of iron, he greatly surpassed the modern workman; for the
mediaeval blacksmith was an artist as well as a workman. The numerous
exquisite specimens of his handicraft which exist in our old gateways,
church doors, altar railings, and ornamented dogs and andirons, still
serve as types for continual reproduction. He was, indeed, the most
"cunninge workman" of his time. But besides all this, he was an
engineer. If a road had to be made, or a stream embanked, or a trench
dug, he was invariably called upon to provide the tools, and often to
direct the work. He was also the military engineer of his day, and as
late as the reign of Edward III. we find the king repeatedly sending
for smiths from the Forest of Dean to act as engineers for the royal
army at the siege of Berwick.
The smith being thus the earliest and most important of mechanics, it
will readily be understood how, at the time when surnames were adopted,
his name should have been so common in all European countries.
"From whence came Smith, all be he knight or squire,
But from the smith that forgeth in the fire?" [21]
Hence the multitudinous family of Smiths in England, in some cases
vainly disguised under the "Smythe" or "De Smijthe;" in Germany, the
Schmidts; in Italy, the Fabri, Fabricii, or Fabbroni; in France, the Le
Febres or Lefevres; in Scotland, the Gows, Gowans, or Cowans. We have
also among us the Brownsmiths, or makers of brown bills; the Nasmyths,
or nailsmiths; the Arrowsmiths, or makers of arrowheads; the
Spearsmiths, or spear makers; the Shoosmiths, or horse shoers; the
Goldsmiths, or workers in gold; and many more. The Smith proper was,
however, the worker in iron--the maker of iron tools, implements, and
arms--and hence this name exceeds in number that of all the others
combined.
In course of time the smiths of particular districts began to
distinguish themselves for their excellence in particular branches of
iron-work. From being merely the retainer of some lordly or religious
establishment, the smith worked to supply the general demand, and
gradually became a manufacturer. Thus the makers of swords, tools,
bits, and nails, congregated at Birmingham; and the makers of knives
and arrowheads at Sheffield. Chaucer speaks of the Miller of
Trompington as provided with a Sheffield whittle:--
"A Shefeld thwytel bare he in his hose." [22]
The common English arrowheads manufactured at Sheffield were long
celebrated for their excellent temper, as Sheffield iron and steel
plates are now. The battle of Hamildon, fought in Scotland in 1402,
was won mainly through their excellence. The historian records that
they penetrated the armour of the Earl of Douglas, which had been three
years in making; and they were "so sharp and strong that no armour
could repel them." The same arrowheads were found equally efficient
against French armour on the fields of Crecy and Agincourt.
Although Scotland is now one of the principal sources from which our
supplies of iron are drawn, it was in ancient times greatly distressed
for want of the metal. The people were as yet too little skilled to be
able to turn their great mineral wealth to account. Even in the time
of Wallace, they had scarcely emerged from the Stone period, and were
under the necessity of resisting their iron-armed English adversaries
by means of rude weapons of that material. To supply themselves with
swords and spearheads, they imported steel from Flanders, and the rest
they obtained by marauding incursions into England. The district of
Furness in Lancashire--then as now an iron-producing district--was
frequently ravaged with that object; and on such occasions the Scotch
seized and carried off all the manufactured iron they could find,
preferring it, though so heavy, to every other kind of plunder.[23]
About the same period, however, iron must have been regarded as almost
a precious metal even in England itself; for we find that in Edward the
Third's reign, the pots, spits, and frying-pans of the royal kitchen
were classed among his Majesty's jewels.[24]
The same famine of iron prevailed to a still greater extent in the
Highlands, where it was even more valued, as the clans lived chiefly by
hunting, and were in an almost constant state of feud. Hence the smith
was a man of indispensable importance among the Highlanders, and the
possession of a skilful armourer was greatly valued by the chiefs. The
story is told of some delinquency having been committed by a Highland
smith, on whom justice must be done; but as the chief could not
dispense with the smith, he generously offered to hang two weavers in
his stead!
At length a great armourer arose in the Highlands, who was able to
forge armour that would resist the best Sheffield arrow-heads, and to
make swords that would vie with the best weapons of Toledo and Milan.
This was the famous Andrea de Ferrara, whose swords still maintain
their ancient reputation. This workman is supposed to have learnt his
art in the Italian city after which he was called, and returned to
practise it in secrecy among the Highland hills. Before him, no man in
Great Britain is said to have known how to temper a sword in such a way
as to bend so that the point should touch the hilt and spring back
uninjured. The swords of Andrea de Ferrara did this, and were
accordingly in great request; for it was of every importance to the
warrior that his weapon should be strong and sharp without being
unwieldy, and that it should not be liable to snap in the act of
combat. This celebrated smith, whose personal identity[25] has become
merged in the Andrea de Ferrara swords of his manufacture, pursued his
craft in the Highlands, where he employed a number of skilled workmen
in forging weapons, devoting his own time principally to giving them
their required temper. He is said to have worked in a dark cellar, the
better to enable him to perceive the effect of the heat upon the metal,
and to watch the nicety of the operation of tempering, as well as
possibly to serve as a screen to his secret method of working.[26]
Long after Andrea de Ferrara's time, the Scotch swords were famous for
their temper; Judge Marshal Fatten, who accompanied the Protector's
expedition into Scotland in 1547, observing that "the Scots came with
swords all broad and thin, of exceeding good temper, and universally so
made to slice that I never saw none so good, so I think it hard to
devise a better." The quality of the steel used for weapons of war was
indeed of no less importance for the effectual defence of a country
then than it is now. The courage of the attacking and defending forces
being equal, the victory would necessarily rest with the party in
possession of the best weapons.
England herself has on more than one occasion been supposed to be in
serious peril because of the decay of her iron manufactures. Before
the Spanish Armada, the production of iron had been greatly discouraged
because of the destruction of timber in the smelting of the ore--the
art of reducing it with pit coal not having yet been invented; and we
were consequently mainly dependent upon foreign countries for our
supplies of the material out of which arms were made. The best iron
came from Spain itself, then the most powerful nation in Europe, and as
celebrated for the excellence of its weapons as for the discipline and
valour of its troops. The Spaniards prided themselves upon the
superiority of their iron, and regarded its scarcity in England as an
important element in their calculations of the conquest of the country
by their famous Armada. "I have heard," says Harrison, "that when one
of the greatest peers of Spain espied our nakedness in this behalf, and
did solemnly utter in no obscure place, that it would be an easy matter
in short time to conquer England because it wanted armour, his words
were not so rashly uttered as politely noted." The vigour of Queen
Elizabeth promptly supplied a remedy by the large importations of iron
which she caused to be made, principally from Sweden, as well as by the
increased activity of the forges in Sussex and the Forest of Dean;
"whereby," adds Harrison, "England obtained rest, that otherwise might
have been sure of sharp and cruel wars. Thus a Spanish word uttered by
one man at one time, overthrew, or at the leastwise hindered sundry
privy practices of many at another." [27] Nor has the subject which
occupied the earnest attention of politicians in Queen Elizabeth's time
ceased to be of interest; for, after the lapse of nearly three hundred
years, we find the smith and the iron manufacturer still uppermost in
public discussions. It has of late years been felt that our
much-prized "hearts of oak" are no more able to stand against the prows
of mail which were supposed to threaten them, than the sticks and
stones of the ancient tribes were able to resist the men armed with
weapons of bronze or steel. What Solon said to Croesus, when the
latter was displaying his great treasures of gold, still holds
true:--"If another comes that hath better iron than you, he will be
master of all that gold." So, when an alchemist waited upon the Duke
of Brunswick during the Seven Years' War, and offered to communicate
the secret of converting iron into gold, the Duke replied:--"By no
means: I want all the iron I can find to resist my enemies: as for
gold, I get it from England." Thus the strength and wealth of nations
depend upon coal and iron, not forgetting Men, far more than upon gold.
Thanks to our Armstrongs and Whitworths, our Browns and our Smiths, the
iron defences of England, manned by our soldiers and our sailors,
furnish the assurance of continued security for our gold and our
wealth, and, what is infinitely more precious, for our industry and our
liberty.
[1] "Mr. John Buchanan, a zealous antiquary, writing in 1855, informs
us that in the course of the eight years preceding that date, no less
than seventeen canoes had been dug out of this estuarine silt [of the
valley of the Clyde], and that he had personally inspected a large
number of them before they were exhumed. Five of them lay buried in
silt under the streets of Glasgow, one in a vertical position with the
prow uppermost, as if it had sunk in a storm.... Almost every one of
these ancient boats was formed out of a single oak-stem, hollowed out
by blunt tools, probably stone axes, aided by the action of fire; a few
were cut beautifully smooth, evidently with metallic tools. Hence a
gradation could be traced from a pattern of extreme rudeness to one
showing great mechanical ingenuity.... In one of the canoes a
beautifully polished celt or axe of greenstone was found; in the bottom
of another a plug of cork, which, as Mr. Geikie remarks, 'could only
have come from the latitudes of Spain, Southern France, or
Italy.'"--Sir C. LYELL, Antiquity of Man, 48-9.
[2] THOMAS WRIGHT, F.S.A., The Celt, The Roman, and The Saxon, ed. 1861.
[3] Referred to at length in the Antiquity of Man, by Sir C. Lyell, who
adopts M. Worsaae's classification.
[4] Mr. Mushet, however, observes that "the general use of hardened
copper by the ancients for edge-tools and warlike instruments, does not
preclude the supposition that iron was then comparatively plentiful,
though it is probable that it was confined to the ruder arts of life.
A knowledge of the mixture of copper, tin, and zinc, seems to have been
among the first discoveries of the metallurgist. Instruments
fabricated from these alloys, recommended by the use of ages, the
perfection of the art, the splendour and polish of their surfaces, not
easily injured by time and weather, would not soon be superseded by the
invention of simple iron, inferior in edge and polish, at all times
easily injured by rust, and in the early stages of its manufacture
converted with difficulty into forms that required proportion or
elegance."--(Papers on Iron and Steel, 365-6.) By some secret method
that has been lost, perhaps because no longer needed since the
invention of steel, the ancients manufactured bronze tools capable of
taking a fine edge. In our own time, Chantrey the sculptor, in his
reverence for classic metallurgy, had a bronze razor made with which he
martyred himself in shaving; but none were found so hardy and devoted
as to follow his example.
[5] It may be mentioned in passing, that while Zinc is fusible at 3
degrees of Wedgwood's pyrometer, Silver at 22 degrees, Copper at 27
degrees, and Gold at 32 degrees, Cast Iron is only fusible at 130
degrees. Tin (one of the constituents of the ancient bronze) and Lead
are fusible at much lower degrees than zinc.
[6] The Romans named the other metals after the gods. Thus Quicksilver
was called Mercury, Lead Saturn, Tin Jupiter, Copper Venus, Silver
Luna, and so on; and our own language has received a colouring from the
Roman nomenclature, which it continues to retain.
[7] I. Samuel xiii. 19, 20.
[8] II. Kings xxiv. 16.
[9] Papers on Iron and Steel, 363-4.
[10] Dr. Livingstone brought with him to England a piece of the Zambesi
iron, which he sent to a skilled Birmingham blacksmith to test. The
result was, that he pronounced the metal as strongly resembling Swedish
or Russian; both of which kinds are smelted with charcoal. The African
iron was found "highly carbonized," and "when chilled it possessed the
properties of steel."
[11] HOLINSHED, i. 517. Iron was also the currency of the Spartans,
but it has been used as such in much more recent times. Adam Smith, in
his Wealth of Nations (Book I. ch. 4, published in 1776), says, "there
is at this day a village in Scotland where it is not uncommon, I am
told, for a workman to carry nails, instead of money, to the baker's
shop or the alehouse."
[12] Primeval Antiquities of Denmark. London, 1849, p. 140.
[13] See Dr. Pearson's paper in the Philosophical Transactions, 1796,
relative to certain ancient arms and utensils found in the river Witham
between Kirkstead and Lincoln.
[14] "In the Forest of Dean and thereabouts the iron is made at this
day of cinders, being the rough and offal thrown by in the Roman time;
they then having only foot-blasts to melt the ironstone; but now, by
the force of a great wheel that drives a pair of Bellows twenty feet
long, all that iron is extracted out of the cinders which could not be
forced from it by the Roman foot-blast. And in the Forest of Dean and
thereabouts, and as high as Worcester, there ave great and infinite
quantities of these cinders; some in vast mounts above ground, some
under ground, which will supply the iron works some hundreds of years;
and these cinders ave they which make the prime and best iron, and with
much less charcoal than doth the ironstone."--A. YARRANTON, England's
Improvement by Sea and Land. London, 1677.
[15] M. A. LOWER, Contributions to Literature, Historical, Antiquarian,
and Metrical. London, 1854, pp. 88-9.
[16] This famous sword was afterwards sent by Richard I. as a present
to Tancred; and the value attached to the weapon may be estimated by
the fact that the Crusader sent the English monarch, in return for it,
"four great ships and fifteen galleys."
[17] Weland was the Saxon Vulcan. The name of Weland's or Wayland's
Smithy is still given to a monument on Lambourn Downs in Wiltshire.
The place is also known as Wayland Smith's Cave. It consists of a rude
gallery of stones.
[18] Among the Scythians the iron sword was a god. It was the image of
Mars, and sacrifices were made to it. "An iron sword," says Mr.
Campbell, "really was once worshipped by a people with whom iron was
rare. Iron is rare, while stone and bronze weapons are common, in
British tombs, and the sword of these stories is a personage. It
shines, it cries out--the lives of men are bound up in it. And so this
mystic sword may, perhaps, have been a god amongst the Celts, or the
god of the people with whom the Celts contended somewhere on their long
journey to the west. It is a fiction now, but it may be founded on
fact, and that fact probably was the first use of iron." To this day an
old horse-shoe is considered a potent spell in some districts against
the powers of evil; and for want of a horse-shoe a bit of a rusty
reaping-hook is supposed to have equal power, "Who were these powers of
evil who could not resist iron--these fairies who shoot STONE arrows,
and are of the foes to the human race? Is all this but a dim, hazy
recollection of war between a people who had iron weapons and a race
who had not--the race whose remains are found all over Europe? If these
were wandering tribes, they had leaders; if they were warlike, they had
weapons. There is a smith in the Pantheon of many nations. Vulcan was
a smith; Thor wielded a hammer; even Fionn had a hammer, which was
heard in Lochlann when struck in Eirinn. Fionn may have borrowed his
hammer from Thor long ago, or both may have got theirs from Vulcan, or
all three may have brought hammers with them from the land where some
primeval smith wielded the first sledge-hammer; but may not all these
'smith-gods be the smiths who made iron weapons for those who fought
with the skin-clad warriors who shot flint-arrows, and who are now
bogles, fairies, and demons? In any case, tales about smiths seem to
belong to mythology, and to be common property."--CAMPBELL, Popular
Tales of the West Highlands, Preface, 74-6.
[19] BROOK, Discovery of Errors in the Catalogue of the Nobility, 198.
[20] MEYRICK, i. 11.
[21] GILBERT, Cornwall.
[22] Before table-knives were invented, in the sixteenth century, the
knife was a very important article; each guest at table bearing his
own, and sharpening it at the whetstone hung up in the passage, before
sitting down to dinner, Some even carried a whetstone as well as a
knife; and one of Queen Elizabeth's presents to the Earl of Leicester
was a whetstone tipped with gold.
[23] The early scarcity of iron in Scotland is confirmed by Froissart,
who says,--"In Scotland you will never find a man of worth; they are
like savages, who wish not to be acquainted with any one, are envious
of the good fortune of others, and suspicious of losing anything
themselves; for their country is very poor. When the English make
inroads thither, as they have very frequently done, they order their
provisions, if they wish to live, to follow close at their backs; for
nothing is to be had in that country without great difficulty. There
is neither iron to shoe horses, nor leather to make harness, saddles,
or bridles: all these things come ready made from Flanders by sea; and
should these fail, there is none to be had in the country."
[24] PARKER'S English Home, 77
[25] The precise time at which Andrea de Ferrara flourished cannot be
fixed with accuracy; but Sir Waiter Scott, in one of the notes to
Waverley, says he is believed to have been a foreign artist brought
over by James IV. or V. of Scotland to instruct the Scots in the
manufacture of sword-blades. The genuine weapons have a crown marked
on the blades.
[26] Mr. Parkes, in his Essay on the Manufacture of Edge Tools, says,
"Had this ingenious artist thought of a bath of oil, he might have
heated this by means of a furnace underneath it, and by the use of a
thermometer, to the exact point which he found necessary; though it is
inconvenient to have to employ a thermometer for every distinct
operation. Or, if he had been in the possession of a proper bath of
fusible metal, he would have attained the necessary certainty in his
process, and need not have immured himself in a subterranean
apartment.--PARKES' Essays, 1841, p. 495.
[27] HOLINSHED, History of England. It was even said to have been one
of the objects of the Spanish Armada to get the oaks of the Forest of
Dean destroyed, in order to prevent further smelting of the iron. Thus
Evelyn, in his Sylva, says, "I have heard that in the great expedition
of 1588 it was expressly enjoined the Spanish Armada that if, when
landed, they should not be able to subdue our nation and make good
their conquest, they should yet be sure not to leave a tree standing in
the Forest of Dean."--NICHOLS, History of the Forest of Dean, p. 22.
CHAPTER II.
EARLY ENGLISH IRON MANUFACTURE.
"He that well observes it, and hath known the welds of Sussex, Surry,
and Kent', the grand nursery especially of oake and beech, shal find
such an alteration, within lesse than 30 yeeres, as may well strike a
feare, lest few yeeres more, as pestilent as the former, will leave
fewe good trees standing in those welds. Such a heate issueth out of
the many forges and furnaces for the making of iron, and out of the
glasse kilnes, as hath devoured many famous woods within the
welds,"--JOHN NORDEN, Surveyors' Dialogue (1607).
Few records exist of the manufacture of iron in England in early times.
After the Romans left the island, the British, or more probably the
Teutonic tribes settled along the south coast, continued the smelting
and manufacture of the metal after the methods taught them by the
colonists. In the midst of the insecurity, however, engendered by
civil war and social changes, the pursuits of industry must necessarily
have been considerably interfered with, and the art of iron-forging
became neglected. No notice of iron being made in Sussex occurs in
Domesday Book, from which it would appear that the manufacture had in a
great measure ceased in that county at the time of the Conquest, though
it was continued in the iron-producing districts bordering on Wales.
In many of the Anglo-Saxon graves which have been opened, long iron
swords have been found, showing that weapons of that metal were in
common use. But it is probable that iron was still scarce, as ploughs
and other agricultural implements continued to be made of wood,--one of
the Anglo-Saxon laws enacting that no man should undertake to guide a
plough who could not make one; and that the cords with which it was
bound should be of twisted willows. The metal was held in esteem
principally as the material of war. All male adults were required to
be provided with weapons, and honour was awarded to such artificers as
excelled in the fabrication of swords, arms, and defensive armour.[1]
Camden incidentally states that the manufacture of iron was continued
in the western counties during the Saxon era, more particularly in the
Forest of Dean, and that in the time of Edward the Confessor the
tribute paid by the city of Gloucester consisted almost entirely of
iron rods wrought to a size fit for making nails for the king's ships.
An old religious writer speaks of the ironworkers of that day as
heathenish in their manners, puffed up with pride, and inflated with
worldly prosperity. On the occasion of St. Egwin's visit to the
smiths of Alcester, as we are told in the legend, he found then given
up to every kind of luxury; and when he proceeded to preach unto them,
they beat upon their anvils in contempt of his doctrine so as
completely to deafen him; upon which he addressed his prayers to
heaven, and the town was immediately destroyed.[2]
But the first reception given to John Wesley by the miners of the
Forest of Dean, more than a thousand years later, was perhaps scarcely
more gratifying than that given to St. Egwin.
That working in iron was regarded as an honourable and useful calling
in the Middle Ages, is apparent from the extent to which it was
followed by the monks, some of whom were excellent craftsmen. Thus St.
Dunstan, who governed England in the time of Edwy the Fair, was a
skilled blacksmith and metallurgist. He is said to have had a forge
even in his bedroom, and it was there that his reputed encounter with
Satan occurred, in which of course the saint came off the victor.
There was another monk of St. Alban's, called Anketil, who flourished
in the twelfth century, so famous for his skill as a worker in iron,
silver, gold, jewelry, and gilding, that he was invited by the king of
Denmark to be his goldsmith and banker. A pair of gold and silver
candlesticks of his manufacture, presented by the abbot of St. Alban's
to Pope Adrian IV., were so much esteemed for their exquisite
workmanship that they were consecrated to St. Peter, and were the
means of obtaining high ecclesiastical distinction for the abbey.
We also find that the abbots of monasteries situated in the iron
districts, among their other labours, devoted themselves to the
manufacture of iron from the ore. The extensive beds of cinders still
found in the immediate neighbourhood of Rievaulx and Hackness, in
Yorkshire, show that the monks were well acquainted with the art of
forging, and early turned to account the riches of the Cleveland
ironstone. In the Forest of Dean also, the abbot of Flaxley was
possessed of one stationary and one itinerant forge, by grant from
Henry II, and he was allowed two oaks weekly for fuel,--a privilege
afterwards commuted, in 1258, for Abbot's Wood of 872 acres, which was
held by the abbey until its dissolution in the reign of Henry VIII. At
the same time the Earl of Warwick had forges at work in his woods at
Lydney; and in 1282, as many as 72 forges were leased from the Crown by
various iron-smelters in the same Forest of Dean.
There are numerous indications of iron-smelting having been conducted
on a considerable scale at some remote period in the neighbourhood of
Leeds, in Yorkshire. In digging out the foundations of houses in
Briggate, the principal street of that town, many "bell pits" have been
brought to light, from which ironstone has been removed. The new
cemetery at Burmandtofts, in the same town, was in like manner found
pitted over with these ancient holes. The miner seems to have dug a
well about 6 feet in diameter, and so soon as he reached the mineral,
he worked it away all round, leaving the bell-shaped cavities in
question. He did not attempt any gallery excavations, but when the pit
was exhausted, a fresh one was sunk. The ore, when dug, was
transported, most probably on horses' backs, to the adjacent districts
for the convenience of fuel. For it was easier to carry the mineral to
the wood--then exclusively used for smelting'--than to bring the wood
to the mineral. Hence the numerous heaps of scoriae found in the
neighbourhood of Leeds,--at Middleton, Whitkirk, and Horsforth--all
within the borough. At Horsforth, they are found in conglomerated
masses from 30 to 40 yards long, and of considerable width and depth.
The remains of these cinder-beds in various positions, some of them
near the summit of the hill, tend to show, that as the trees were
consumed, a new wind furnace was erected in another situation, in order
to lessen the labour of carrying the fuel. There are also deposits of
a similar kind at Kirkby Overblow, a village a few miles to the
north-east of Leeds; and Thoresby states that the place was so called
because it was the village of the "Ore blowers,"--hence the corruption
of "Overblow." A discovery has recently been made among the papers of
the Wentworth family, of a contract for supplying wood and ore for iron
"blomes" at Kirskill near Otley, in the fourteenth century;[3] though
the manufacture near that place has long since ceased.
Although the making of iron was thus carried on in various parts of
England in the Middle Ages, the quantity produced was altogether
insufficient to meet the ordinary demand, as it appears from our early
records to have long continued one of the principal articles imported
from foreign countries. English iron was not only dearer, but it was
much inferior in quality to that manufactured abroad; and hence all the
best arms and tools continued to be made of foreign iron. Indeed the
scarcity of this metal occasionally led to great inconvenience, and to
prevent its rising in price Parliament enacted, in 1354, that no iron,
either wrought or unwrought, should be exported, under heavy penalties.
For nearly two hundred years--that is, throughout the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries--the English market was principally supplied with
iron and steel from Spain and Germany; the foreign merchants of the
Steelyard doing a large and profitable trade in those commodities.
While the woollen and other branches of trade were making considerable
progress, the manufacture of iron stood still. Among the lists of
articles, the importation of which was prohibited in Edward IV.'s
reign, with a view to the protection of domestic manufactures, we find
no mention of iron, which was still, as a matter of necessity, allowed
to come freely from abroad.
The first indications of revival in the iron manufacture showed
themselves in Sussex, a district in which the Romans had established
extensive works, and where smelting operations were carried on to a
partial extent in the neighbourhood of Lewes, in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, where the iron was principally made into nails
and horse-shoes. The county abounds in ironstone, which is contained
in the sandstone beds of the Forest ridge, lying between the chalk and
oolite of the district, called by geologists the Hastings sand. The
beds run in a north-westerly direction, by Ashburnham and Heathfield,
to Crowborough and thereabouts. In early times the region was covered
with wood, and was known as the Great Forest of Anderida. The Weald,
or wild wood, abounded in oaks of great size, suitable for smelting
ore; and the proximity of the mineral to the timber, as well as the
situation of the district in the neighbourhood of the capital,
sufficiently account for the Sussex iron-works being among the most
important which existed in England previous to the discovery of
smelting by pit-coal.
The iron manufacturers of the south were especially busy during the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Their works were established near
to the beds of ore, and in places where water-power existed, or could
be provided by artificial means. Hence the numerous artificial ponds
which are still to be found all over the Sussex iron district. Dams of
earth, called "pond-bays," were thrown across watercourses, with
convenient outlets built of masonry, wherein was set the great wheel
which worked the hammer or blew the furnace. Portions of the adjoining
forest-land were granted or leased to the iron-smelters; and the many
places still known by the name of "Chart" in the Weald, probably mark
the lands chartered for the purpose of supplying the iron-works with
their necessary fuel. The cast-iron tombstones and slabs in many
Sussex churchyards,--the andirons and chimney backs[4] still found in
old Sussex mansions and farm-houses, and such names as Furnace Place,
Cinder Hill, Forge Farm, and Hammer Pond, which are of very frequent
occurrence throughout the county, clearly mark the extent and activity
of this ancient branch of industry.[5] Steel was also manufactured at
several places in the county, more particularly at Steel-Forge Land,
Warbleton, and at Robertsbridge. The steel was said to be of good
quality, resembling Swedish--both alike depending for their excellence
on the exclusive use of charcoal in smelting the ore,--iron so produced
maintaining its superiority over coal-smelted iron to this day.
When cannon came to be employed in war, the nearness of Sussex to
London and the Cinque Forts gave it a great advantage over the remoter
iron-producing districts in the north and west of England, and for a
long time the iron-works of this county enjoyed almost a monopoly of
the manufacture. The metal was still too precious to be used for
cannon balls, which were hewn of stone from quarries on Maidstone
Heath. Iron was only available, and that in limited quantities, for
the fabrication of the cannon themselves, and wrought-iron was chiefly
used for the purpose. An old mortar which formerly lay on Eridge
Green, near Frant, is said to have been the first mortar made in
England;[6] only the chamber was cast, while the tube consisted of bars
strongly hooped together. Although the local distich says that
"Master Huggett and his man John
They did cast the first cannon,"
there is every reason to believe that both cannons and mortars were
made in Sussex before Huggett's time; the old hooped guns in the Tower
being of the date of Henry VI. The first cast-iron cannons of English
manufacture were made at Buxtead, in Sussex, in 1543, by Ralph Hogge,
master founder, who employed as his principal assistant one Peter
Baude, a Frenchman. Gun-founding was a French invention, and Mr. Lower
supposes that Hogge brought over Baude from France to teach his workmen
the method of casting the guns. About the same time Hogge employed a
skilled Flemish gunsmith named Peter Van Collet, who, according to
Stowe, "devised or caused to be made certain mortar pieces, being at
the mouth from eleven to nine inches wide, for the use whereof the said
Peter caused to be made certain hollow shot of cast-iron to be stuffed
with fyrework, whereof the bigger sort for the same has screws of iron
to receive a match to carry fyre for to break in small pieces the said
hollow shot, whereof the smallest piece hitting a man would kill or
spoil him." In short, Peter Van Collet here introduced the manufacture
of the explosive shell in the form in which it continued to be used
down to our own day.
Baude, the Frenchman, afterwards set up business on his own account,
making many guns, both of brass and iron, some of which are still
preserved in the Tower.[7] Other workmen, learning the trade from him,
also began to manufacture on their own account; one of Baude's
servants, named John Johnson, and after him his son Thomas, becoming
famous for the excellence of their cast-iron guns. The Hogges
continued the business for several generations, and became a wealthy
county family. Huggett was another cannon maker of repute; and Owen
became celebrated for his brass culverins. Mr. Lower mentions, as a
curious instance of the tenacity with which families continue to follow
a particular vocation, that many persons of the name of Huggett still
carry on the trade of blacksmith in East Sussex. But most of the early
workmen at the Sussex iron-works, as in other branches of skilled
industry in England during the sixteenth century, were
foreigners--Flemish and French--many of whom had taken refuge in this
country from the religious persecutions then raging abroad, while
others, of special skill, were invited over by the iron manufacturers
to instruct their workmen in the art of metal-founding.[8]
As much wealth was gained by the pursuit of the revived iron
manufacture in Sussex, iron-mills rapidly extended over the
ore-yielding district. The landed proprietors entered with zeal into
this new branch of industry, and when wood ran short, they did not
hesitate to sacrifice their ancestral oaks to provide fuel for the
furnaces. Mr. Lower says even the most ancient families, such as the
Nevilles, Howards, Percys, Stanleys, Montagues, Pelhams, Ashburnhams,
Sidneys, Sackvilles, Dacres, and Finches, prosecuted the manufacture
with all the apparent ardour of Birmingham and Wolverhampton men in
modern times. William Penn, the courtier Quaker, had iron-furnaces at
Hawkhurst and other places in Sussex. The ruins of the Ashburnham
forge, situated a few miles to the north-east of Battle, still serve to
indicate the extent of the manufacture. At the upper part of the
valley in which the works were situated, an artificial lake was formed
by constructing an embankment across the watercourse descending from
the higher ground,[9] and thus a sufficient fall of water was procured
for the purpose of blowing the furnaces, the site of which is still
marked by surrounding mounds of iron cinders and charcoal waste. Three
quarters of a mile lower down the valley stood the forge, also provided
with water-power for working the hammer; and some of the old buildings
are still standing, among others the boring-house, of small size, now
used as an ordinary labourer's cottage, where the guns were bored. The
machine was a mere upright drill worked by the water-wheel, which was
only eighteen inches across the breast. The property belonged, as it
still does, to the Ashburnham family, who are said to have derived
great wealth from the manufacture of guns at their works, which were
among the last carried on in Sussex. The Ashburnham iron was
distinguished for its toughness, and was said to be equal to the best
Spanish or Swedish iron.
Many new men also became enriched, and founded county families; the
Fuller family frankly avowing their origin in the singular motto of
Carbone et forcipibus--literally, by charcoal and tongs.[10]
Men then went into Sussex to push their fortunes at the forges, as they
now do in Wales or Staffordshire; and they succeeded then, as they do
now, by dint of application, industry, and energy. The Sussex
Archaeological Papers for 1860 contain a curious record of such an
adventurer, in the history of the founder of the Gale family. Leonard
Gale was born in 1620 at Riverhead, near Sevenoaks, where his father
pursued the trade of a blacksmith. When the youth had reached his
seventeenth year, his father and mother, with five of their sons and
daughters, died of the plague, Leonard and his brother being the only
members of the family that survived. The patrimony of 200L. left them
was soon spent; after which Leonard paid off his servants, and took to
work diligently at his father's trade. Saving a little money, he
determined to go down into Sussex, where we shortly find him working
the St. Leonard's Forge, and afterwards the Tensley Forge near
Crawley, and the Cowden Iron-works, which then bore a high reputation.
After forty years' labour, he accumulated a good fortune, which he left
to his son of the same name, who went on iron-forging, and eventually
became a county gentleman, owner of the house and estate of Crabbett
near Worth, and Member of Parliament for East Grinstead.
Several of the new families, however, after occupying a high position
in the county, again subsided into the labouring class, illustrating
the Lancashire proverb of "Twice clogs, once boots," the sons
squandering what the father's had gathered, and falling back into the
ranks again. Thus the great Fowles family of Riverhall disappeared
altogether from Sussex. One of them built the fine mansion of
Riverhall, noble even in decay. Another had a grant of free warren
from King James over his estates in Wadhurst, Frant, Rotherfield, and
Mayfield. Mr. Lower says the fourth in descent from this person kept
the turnpike-gate at Wadhurst, and that the last of the family, a
day-labourer, emigrated to America in 1839, carrying with him, as the
sole relic of his family greatness, the royal grant of free warren
given to his ancestor. The Barhams and Mansers were also great
iron-men, officiating as high sheriffs of the county at different
times, and occupying spacious mansions. One branch of these families
terminated, Mr. Lower says, with Nicholas Barham, who died in the
workhouse at Wadhurst in 1788; and another continues to be represented
by a wheelwright at Wadhurst of the same name.
The iron manufacture of Sussex reached its height towards the close of
the reign of Elizabeth, when the trade became so prosperous that,
instead of importing iron, England began to export it in considerable
quantities, in the shape of iron ordnance. Sir Thomas Leighton and Sir
Henry Neville had obtained patents from the queen, which enabled them
to send their ordnance abroad, the consequence of which was that the
Spaniards were found arming their ships and fighting us with guns of
our own manufacture. Sir Walter Raleigh, calling attention to the
subject in the House of Commons, said, "I am sure heretofore one ship
of Her Majesty's was able to beat ten Spaniards, but now, by reason of
our own ordnance, we are hardly matcht one to one." Proclamations were
issued forbidding the export of iron and brass ordnance, and a bill was
brought into Parliament to put a stop to the trade; but, not
withstanding these prohibitions, the Sussex guns long continued to be
smuggled out of the country in considerable numbers. "It is almost
incredible," says Camden, "how many guns are made of the iron in this
county. Count Gondomar (the Spanish ambassador) well knew their
goodness when he so often begged of King James the boon to export
them." Though the king refused his sanction, it appears that Sir
Anthony Shirley of Weston, an extensive iron-master, succeeded in
forwarding to the King of Spain a hundred pieces of cannon.
So active were the Sussex manufacturers, and so brisk was the trade
they carried on, that during the reign of James I. it is supposed
one-half of the whole quantity of iron produced in England was made
there. Simon Sturtevant, in his 'Treatise of Metallica,' published in
1612, estimates the whole number of iron-mills in England and Wales at
800, of which, he says, "there are foure hundred milnes in Surry, Kent,
and Sussex, as the townsmen of Haslemere have testified and numbered
unto me." But the townsmen of Haslemere must certainly have been
exaggerating, unless they counted smiths' and farriers' shops in the
number of iron-mills. About the same time that Sturtevant's treatise
was published, there appeared a treatise entitled the 'Surveyor's
Dialogue,' by one John Norden, the object of which was to make out a
case against the iron-works and their being allowed to burn up the
timber of the country for fuel. Yet Norden does not make the number of
iron-works much more than a third of Sturtevant's estimate. He says,
"I have heard that there are or lately were in Sussex neere 140 hammers
and furnaces for iron, and in it and Surrey adjoining three or four
glasse-houses." Even the smaller number stated by Norden, however,
shows that Sussex was then regarded as the principal seat of the
iron-trade. Camden vividly describes the noise and bustle of the
manufacture--the working of the heavy hammers, which, "beating upon the
iron, fill the neighbourhood round about, day and night, with continual
noise." These hammers were for the most part worked by the power of
water, carefully stored in the artificial "Hammer-ponds" above
described. The hammer-shaft was usually of ash, about 9 feet long,
clamped at intervals with iron hoops. It was worked by the revolutions
of the water-wheel, furnished with projecting arms or knobs to raise
the hammer, which fell as each knob passed, the rapidity of its action
of course depending on the velocity with which the water-wheel
revolved. The forge-blast was also worked for the most part by
water-power. Where the furnaces were small, the blast was produced by
leather bellows worked by hand, or by a horse walking in a gin. The
foot-blasts of the earlier iron-smelters were so imperfect that but a
small proportion of the ore was reduced, so that the iron-makers of
later times, more particularly in the Forest of Dean, instead of
digging for ironstone, resorted to the beds of ancient scoriae for
their principal supply of the mineral.
Notwithstanding the large number of furnaces in blast throughout the
county of Sussex at the period we refer to, their produce was
comparatively small, and must not be measured by the enormous produce
of modern iron-works; for while an iron-furnace of the present day will
easily turn out 150 tons of pig per week, the best of the older
furnaces did not produce more than from three to four tons. One of the
last extensive contracts executed in Sussex was the casting of the iron
rails which enclose St. Paul's Cathedral. The contract was thought
too large for one iron-master to undertake, and it was consequently
distributed amongst several contractors, though the principal part of
the work was executed at Lamberhurst, near Tunbridge Wells. But to
produce the comparatively small quantity of iron turned out by the old
works, the consumption of timber was enormous; for the making of every
ton of pig-iron required four loads of timber converted into charcoal
fuel, and the making of every ton of bar-iron required three additional
loads. Thus, notwithstanding the indispensable need of iron, the
extension of the manufacture, by threatening the destruction of the
timber of the southern counties, came to be regarded in the light of a
national calamity. Up to a certain point, the clearing of the Weald of
its dense growth of underwood had been of advantage, by affording
better opportunities for the operations of agriculture. But the
"voragious iron-mills" were proceeding to swallow up everything that
would burn, and the old forest growths were rapidly disappearing. An
entire wood was soon exhausted, and long time was needed before it grew
again. At Lamberhurst alone, though the produce was only about five
tons of iron a-week, the annual consumption of wood was about 200,000
cords! Wood continued to be the only material used for fuel
generally--a strong prejudice existing against the use of sea-coal for
domestic purposes.[11] It therefore began to be feared that there
would be no available fuel left within practicable reach of the
metropolis; and the contingency of having to face the rigorous cold of
an English winter without fuel naturally occasioning much alarm, the
action of the Government was deemed necessary to remedy the apprehended
evil.
To check the destruction of wood near London, an Act was passed in 1581
prohibiting its conversion into fuel for the making of iron within
fourteen miles of the Thames, forbidding the erection of new ironworks
within twenty-two miles of London, and restricting the number of works
in Kent, Surrey, and Sussex, beyond the above limits. Similar
enactments were made in future Parliaments with the same object, which
had the effect of checking the trade, and several of the Sussex
ironmasters were under the necessity of removing their works elsewhere.
Some of them migrated to Glamorganshire, in South Wales, because of the
abundance of timber as well as ironstone in that quarter, and there set
up their forges, more particularly at Aberdare and Merthyr Tydvil. Mr.
Llewellin has recently published an interesting account of their
proceedings, with descriptions of their works,[12] remains of which
still exist at Llwydcoed, Pontyryns, and other places in the Aberdare
valley. Among the Sussex masters who settled in Glamorganshire for the
purpose of carrying on the iron manufacture, were Walter Burrell, the
friend of John Ray, the naturalist, one of the Morleys of Glynde in
Sussex, the Relfes from Mayfield, and the Cheneys from Crawley.
Notwithstanding these migrations of enterprising manufacturers, the
iron trade of Sussex continued to exist until the middle of the
seventeenth century, when the waste of timber was again urged upon the
attention of Parliament, and the penalties for infringing the statutes
seem to have been more rigorously enforced. The trade then suffered a
more serious check; and during the civil wars, a heavy blow was given
to it by the destruction of the works belonging to all royalists, which
was accomplished by a division of the army under Sir William Waller.
Most of the Welsh ironworks were razed to the ground about the same
time, and were not again rebuilt. And after the Restoration, in 1674,
all the royal ironworks in the Forest of Dean were demolished, leaving
only such to be supplied with ore as were beyond the forest limits; the
reason alleged for this measure being lest the iron manufacture should
endanger the supply of timber required for shipbuilding and other
necessary purposes.
From this time the iron manufacture of Sussex, as of England generally,
rapidly declined. In 1740 there were only fifty-nine furnaces in all
England, of which ten were in Sussex; and in 1788 there were only two.
A few years later, and the Sussex iron furnaces were blown out
altogether. Farnhurst, in western, and Ashburnham, in eastern Sussex,
witnessed the total extinction of the manufacture. The din of the iron
hammer was hushed, the glare of the furnace faded, the last blast of
the bellows was blown, and the district returned to its original rural
solitude. Some of the furnace-ponds were drained and planted with hops
or willows; others formed beautiful lakes in retired pleasure-grounds;
while the remainder were used to drive flour-mills, as the streams in
North Kent, instead of driving fulling-mills, were employed to work
paper-mills. All that now remains of the old iron-works are the
extensive beds of cinders from which material is occasionally taken to
mend the Sussex roads, and the numerous furnace-ponds, hammer-posts,
forges, and cinder places, which mark the seats of the ancient
manufacture.
[1] WILKINS, Leges Sax. 25.
[2] Life of St. Egwin, in Capgrave's Nova Legenda Anglioe. Alcester
was, as its name indicates, an old Roman settlement (situated on the
Icknild Street), where the art of working in iron was practised from an
early period. It was originally called Alauna, being situated on the
river Alne in Warwickshire. It is still a seat of the needle
manufacture.
[3] The following is an extract of this curious document, which is
dated the 26th Dec. 1352: "Ceste endenture fait entre monsire Richard
de Goldesburghe, chivaler, dune part, et Robert Totte, seignour, dautre
tesmoigne qe le dit monsire Richard ad graunte et lesse al dit Robert
deuz Olyveres contenaunz vynt quatre blomes de la feste seynt Piere ad
vincula lan du regne le Roi Edward tierce apres le conqueste vynt
sysme, en sun parke de Creskelde, rendant al dit monsire Richard
chesqune semayn quatorzse soutz dargent duraunt les deux Olyvers avaunt
dist; a tenir et avoir al avaunt dit Robert del avaunt dit monsire
Richard de la feste seynt Piere avaunt dist, taunque le bois soit ars
du dit parke a la volunte le dit monsire Richard saunz interrupcione [e
le dicte monsieur Richard trovera a dit Robert urre suffisaunt pur lez
ditz Olyvers pur le son donaunt: these words are interlined]. Et fait
a savoir qe le dit Robert ne nule de soens coupard ne abatera nule
manere darbre ne de boys put les deuz olyvers avaunt ditz mes par la
veu et la lyvere le dit monsire Richard, ou par ascun autre par le dit
monsire Richard assigne. En tesmoigaunz (sic) de quenx choses a cestes
presentes endentures les parties enterchaungablement ount mys lour
seals. Escript a Creskelde le meskerdy en le semayn de Pasque lan
avaunt diste."
It is probable that the "blomes" referred to in this agreement were the
bloomeries or fires in which the iron was made; and that the "olyveres"
were forges or erections, each of which contained so many bloomeries,
but were of limited durability, and probably perished in the using.
[4] The back of a grate has recently been found, cast by Richard
Leonard at Brede Furnace in 1636. It is curious as containing a
representation of the founder with his dog and cups; a drawing of the
furnace, with the wheelbarrow and other implements for the casting, and
on a shield the pincers and other marks of the blacksmith. Leonard was
tenant of the Sackville furnace at Little Udimore.--Sussex
Archaeological Collections, vol. xii.
[5] For an interesting account of the early iron industry of Sussex see
M. A. LOWER'S Contributions to Literature, Historical, Antiquarian, and
Metrical. London, 1854.
[6] Archaeologia, vol. x. 472.
[7] One of these, 6 1/2 feet long, and of 2 1/2 inches bore,
manufactured in 1543, bears the cast inscription of Petrus Baude Gallus
operis artifex.
[8] Mr. Lower says, "Many foreigners were brought over to carry on the
works; which perhaps may account for the number of Frenchmen and
Germans whose names appear in our parish registers about the middle of
the sixteenth century ."--Contributions to Literature, 108.
[9] The embankment and sluices of the furnace-pond at the upper part of
the valley continue to be maintained, the lake being used by the
present Lord Ashburnham as a preserve for fish and water-fowl.
[10] Reminding one of the odd motto assumed by Gillespie, the
tobacconist of Edinburgh, founder of Gillespie's Hospital, on whose
carriage-panels was emblazoned a Scotch mull, with the motto,
"Wha wad ha' thocht it,
That noses could ha' bought it!"
It is just possible that the Fullers may have taken their motto from
the words employed by Juvenal in describing the father of Demosthenes,
who was a blacksmith and a sword-cutler--
"Quem pater ardentis massae fuligine lippus,
A carbone et forcipibus gladiosque parante
Incude et luteo Vulcano ad rhetora misit."
[11] It was then believed that sea or pit-coal was poisonous when burnt
in dwellings, and that it was especially injurious to the human
complexion. All sorts of diseases were attributed to its use, and at
one time it was even penal to burn it. The Londoners only began to
reconcile themselves to the use of coal when the wood within reach of
the metropolis had been nearly all burnt up, and no other fuel was to
be had.
[12] Archaeologia Cambrensis, 3rd Series, No. 34, April, 1863. Art.
"Sussex Ironmasters in Glamorganshire."
CHAPTER III.
IRON-SMELTING BY PIT-COAL--DUD DUDLEY.
"God of his Infinite goodness (if we will but take notice of his
goodness unto this Nation) hath made this Country a very Granary for
the supplying of Smiths with Iron, Cole, and Lime made with cole, which
hath much supplied these men with Corn also of late; and from these men
a great part, not only of this Island, but also of his Majestie's other
Kingdoms and Territories, with Iron wares have their supply, and Wood
in these parts almost exhausted, although it were of late a mighty
woodland country."--DUDLEY's Metallum Martis, 1665.
The severe restrictions enforced by the legislature against the use of
wood in iron-smelting had the effect of almost extinguishing the
manufacture. New furnaces ceased to be erected, and many of the old
ones were allowed to fall into decay, until it began to be feared that
this important branch of industry would become completely lost. The
same restrictions alike affected the operations of the glass
manufacture, which, with the aid of foreign artisans, had been
gradually established in England, and was becoming a thriving branch of
trade. It was even proposed that the smelting of iron should be
absolutely prohibited: "many think," said a contemporary writer, "that
there should be NO WORKS ANYWHERE--they do so devour the woods."
The use of iron, however, could not be dispensed with. The very
foundations of society rested upon an abundant supply of it, for tools
and implements of peace, as well as for weapons of war. In the dearth
of the article at home, a supply of it was therefore sought for abroad;
and both iron and steel came to be imported in largely-increased
quantities. This branch of trade was principally in the hands of the
Steelyard Company of Foreign Merchants, established in Upper Thames
Street, a little above London Bridge; and they imported large
quantities of iron and steel from foreign countries, principally from
Sweden, Germany, and Spain. The best iron came from Spain, though the
Spaniards on their part coveted our English made cannons, which were
better manufactured than theirs; while the best steel came from Germany
and Sweden.[1]
Under these circumstances, it was natural that persons interested in
the English iron manufacture should turn their attention to some other
description of fuel which should serve as a substitute for the
prohibited article. There was known to be an abundance of coal in the
northern and midland counties, and it occurred to some speculators more
than usually daring, to propose it as a substitute for the charcoal
fuel made from wood. But the same popular prejudice which existed
against the use of coal for domestic purposes, prevented its being
employed for purposes of manufacture; and they were thought very
foolish persons indeed who first promulgated the idea of smelting iron
by means of pit-coal. The old manufacturers held it to be impossible
to reduce the ore in any other way than by means of charcoal of wood.
It was only when the wood in the neighbourhood of the ironworks had
been almost entirely burnt up, that the manufacturers were driven to
entertain the idea of using coal as a substitute; but more than a
hundred years passed before the practice of smelting iron by its means
became general.
The first who took out a patent for the purpose was one Simon
Sturtevant, a German skilled in mining operations; the professed object
of his invention being "to neale, melt, and worke all kind of metal
oares, irons, and steeles with sea-coale, pit-coale, earth-coale, and
brush fewell." The principal end of his invention, he states in his
Treatise of Metallica,[2] is to save the consumption and waste of the
woods and timber of the country; and, should his design succeed, he
holds that it "will prove to be the best and most profitable business
and invention that ever was known or invented in England these many
yeares." He says he has already made trial of the process on a small
scale, and is confident that it will prove equally successful on a
large one. Sturtevant was not very specific as to his process; but it
incidentally appears to have been his purpose to reduce the coal by an
imperfect combustion to the condition of coke, thereby ridding it of
"those malignant proprieties which are averse to the nature of
metallique substances." The subject was treated by him, as was
customary in those days, as a great mystery, made still more mysterious
by the multitude of learned words under which he undertook to describe
his "Ignick Invention" All the operations of industry were then treated
as secrets. Each trade was a craft, and those who followed it were
called craftsmen. Even the common carpenter was a handicraftsman; and
skilled artisans were "cunning men." But the higher branches of work
were mysteries, the communication of which to others was carefully
guarded by the regulations of the trades guilds. Although the early
patents are called specifications, they in reality specify nothing.
They are for the most part but a mere haze of words, from which very
little definite information can be gleaned as to the processes
patented. It may be that Sturtevant had not yet reduced his idea to
any practicable method, and therefore could not definitely explain it.
However that may be, it is certain that his process failed when tried
on a large scale, and Sturtevant's patent was accordingly cancelled at
the end of a year.
The idea, however, had been fairly born, and repeated patents were
taken out with the same object from time to time. Thus, immediately on
Sturtevant's failure becoming known, one John Rovenzon, who had been
mixed up with the other's adventure, applied for a patent for making
iron by the same process, which was granted him in 1613. His 'Treatise
of Metallica'[3] shows that Rovenzon had a true conception of the
method of manufacture. Nevertheless he, too, failed in carrying out
the invention in practice, and his patent was also cancelled. Though
these failures were very discouraging, like experiments continued to be
made and patents taken out,--principally by Dutchmen and
Germans,[4]--but no decided success seems to have attended their
efforts until the year 1620, when Lord Dudley took out his patent "for
melting iron ore, making bar-iron, &c., with coal, in furnaces, with
bellows." This patent was taken out at the instance of his son Dud
Dudley, whose story we gather partly from his treatise entitled
'Metallum Martis,' and partly from various petitions presented by him
to the king, which are preserved in the State Paper Office, and it runs
as follows:--
Dud Dudley was born in 1599, the natural son of Edward Lord Dudley of
Dudley Castle in the county of Worcester. He was the fourth of eleven
children by the same mother, who is described in the pedigree of the
family given in the Herald's visitation of the county of Stafford in
the year 1663, signed by Dud Dudley himself, as "Elizabeth, daughter of
William Tomlinson of Dudley, concubine of Edward Lord Dudley." Dud's
eldest brother is described in the same pedigree as Robert Dudley,
Squire, of Netherton Hall; and as his sisters mostly married well,
several of them county gentlemen, it is obvious that the family,
notwithstanding that the children were born out of wedlock, held a good
position in their neighbourhood, and were regarded with respect. Lord
Dudley, though married and having legitimate heirs at the time, seems
to have attended to the up-bringing of his natural children; educating
them carefully, and afterwards employing them in confidential offices
connected with the management of his extensive property. Dud describes
himself as taking great delight, when a youth, in his father's
iron-works near Dudley, where he obtained considerable knowledge of the
various processes of the manufacture.
The town of Dudley was already a centre of the iron manufacture, though
chiefly of small wares, such as nails, horse-shoes, keys, locks, and
common agricultural tools; and it was estimated that there were about
20,000 smiths and workers in iron of various kinds living within a
circuit of ten miles of Dudley Castle. But, as in the southern
counties, the production of iron had suffered great diminution from the
want of fuel in the district, though formerly a mighty woodland
country; and many important branches of the local trade were brought
almost to a stand-still. Yet there was an extraordinary abundance of
coal to be met with in the neighbourhood--coal in some places lying in
seams ten feet thick--ironstone four feet thick immediately under the
coal, with limestone conveniently adjacent to both. The conjunction
seemed almost providential--"as if," observes Dud, "God had decreed the
time when and how these smiths should be supplied, and this island
also, with iron, and most especially that this cole and ironstone
should give the first and just occasion for the invention of smelting
iron with pit-cole;" though, as we have already seen, all attempts
heretofore made with that object had practically failed.
Dud was a special favourite of the Earl his father, who encouraged his
speculations with reference to the improvement of the iron manufacture,
and gave him an education calculated to enable him to turn his
excellent practical abilities to account. He was studying at Baliol
College, Oxford, in the year 1619, when the Earl sent for him to take
charge of an iron furnace and two forges in the chase of Pensnet in
Worcestershire. He was no sooner installed manager of the works, than,
feeling hampered by the want of wood for fuel, his attention was
directed to the employment of pit-coal as a substitute. He altered his
furnace accordingly, so as to adapt it to the new process, and the
result of the first trial was such as to induce him to persevere. It
is nowhere stated in Dud Dudley's Treatise what was the precise nature
of the method adopted by him; but it is most probable that, in
endeavouring to substitute coal for wood as fuel, he would subject the
coal to a process similar to that of charcoal-burning. The result
would be what is called Coke; and as Dudley informs us that he followed
up his first experiment with a second blast, by means of which he was
enabled to produce good marketable iron, the presumption is that his
success was also due to an improvement of the blast which he contrived
for the purpose of keeping up the active combustion of the fuel.
Though the quantity produced by the new process was comparatively
small--not more than three tons a week from each furnace--Dudley
anticipated that greater experience would enable him to increase the
quantity; and at all events he had succeeded in proving the
practicability of smelting iron with fuel made from pit-coal, which so
many before him had tried in vain.
Immediately after the second trial had been made with such good issue,
Dud wrote to his father the Earl, then in London, informing him what he
had done, and desiring him at once to obtain a patent for the invention
from King James. This was readily granted, and the patent (No. 18),
dated the 22nd February, 1620, was taken out in the name of Lord Dudley
himself.
Dud proceeded with the manufacture of iron at Pensnet, and also at
Cradley in Staffordshire, where he erected another furnace; and a year
after the patent was granted he was enabled to send up to the Tower, by
the King's command, a considerable quantity of the new iron for trial.
Many experiments were made with it: its qualities were fairly tested,
and it was pronounced "good merchantable iron." Dud adds, in his
Treatise, that his brother-in-law, Richard Parkshouse, of Sedgeley,[5]
"had a fowling-gun there made of the Pit-cole iron," which was "well
approved." There was therefore every prospect of the new method of
manufacture becoming fairly established, and with greater experience
further improvements might with confidence be anticipated, when a
succession of calamities occurred to the inventor which involved him in
difficulties and put an effectual stop to the progress of his
enterprise.
The new works had been in successful operation little more than a year,
when a flood, long after known as the "Great May-day Flood," swept away
Dudley's principal works at Cradley, and otherwise inflicted much
damage throughout the district. "At the market town called
Stourbridge," says Dud, in the course of his curious narrative,
"although the author sent with speed to preserve the people from
drowning, and one resolute man was carried from the bridge there in the
day-time, the nether part of the town was so deep in water that the
people had much ado to preserve their lives in the uppermost rooms of
their houses." Dudley himself received very little sympathy for his
losses. On the contrary, the iron-smelters of the district rejoiced
exceedingly at the destruction of his works by the flood. They had
seen him making good iron by his new patent process, and selling it
cheaper than they could afford to do. They accordingly put in
circulation all manner of disparaging reports about his iron. It was
bad iron, not fit to be used; indeed no iron, except what was smelted
with charcoal of wood, could be good. To smelt it with coal was a
dangerous innovation, and could only result in some great public
calamity. The ironmasters even appealed to King James to put a stop to
Dud's manufacture, alleging that his iron was not merchantable. And
then came the great flood, which swept away his works; the hostile
ironmasters now hoping that there was an end for ever of Dudley's
pit-coal iron.
But Dud, with his wonted energy, forthwith set to work and repaired his
furnaces and forges, though at great cost; and in the course of a short
time the new manufacture was again in full progress. The ironmasters
raised a fresh outcry against him, and addressed another strong
memorial against Dud and his iron to King James. This seems to have
taken effect; and in order to ascertain the quality of the article by
testing it upon a large scale, the King commanded Dudley to send up to
the Tower of London, with every possible speed, quantities of all the
sorts of bar-iron made by him, fit for the "making of muskets,
carbines, and iron for great bolts for shipping; which iron," continues
Dud, "being so tried by artists and smiths, the ironmasters and
iron-mongers were all silenced until the 21st year of King James's
reign." The ironmasters then endeavoured to get the Dudley patent
included in the monopolies to be abolished by the statute of that year;
but all they could accomplish was the limitation of the patent to
fourteen years instead of thirty-one; the special exemption of the
patent from the operation of the statute affording a sufficient
indication of the importance already attached to the invention. After
that time Dudley "went on with his invention cheerfully, and made
annually great store of iron, good and merchantable, and sold it unto
diverse men at twelve pounds per ton." "I also," said he, "made all
sorts of cast-iron wares, as brewing cisterns, pots, mortars, &c.,
better and cheaper than any yet made in these nations with charcoal,
some of which are yet to be seen by any man (at the author's house in
the city of Worcester) that desires to be satisfied of the truth of the
invention."
Notwithstanding this decided success, Dudley encountered nothing but
trouble and misfortune. The ironmasters combined to resist his
invention; they fastened lawsuit's upon him, and succeeded in getting
him ousted from his works at Cradley. From thence he removed to Himley
in the county of Stafford, where he set up a pit-coal furnace; but
being without the means of forging the iron into bars, he was
constrained to sell the pig-iron to the charcoal-ironmasters, "who did
him much prejudice, not only by detaining his stock, but also by
disparaging his iron." He next proceeded to erect a large new furnace
at Hasco Bridge, near Sedgeley, in the same county, for the purpose of
carrying out the manufacture on the most improved principles. This
furnace was of stone, twenty-seven feet square, provided with unusually
large bellows; and when in full work he says he was enabled to turn out
seven tons of iron per week, "the greatest quantity of pit-coal iron
ever yet made in Great Britain." At the same place he discovered and
opened out new workings of coal ten feet thick, lying immediately over
the ironstone, and he prepared to carry on his operations on a large
scale; but the new works were scarcely finished when a mob of rioters,
instigated by the charcoal-ironmasters, broke in upon them, cut in
pieces the new bellows, destroyed the machinery, and laid the results
of all his deep-laid ingenuity and persevering industry in ruins. From
that time forward Dudley was allowed no rest nor peace: he was
attacked by mobs, worried by lawsuits, and eventually overwhelmed by
debts. He was then seized by his creditors and sent up to London,
where he was held a prisoner in the Comptoir for several thousand
pounds. The charcoal-iron men thus for a time remained masters of the
field.
Charles I. seems to have taken pity on the suffering inventor; and on
his earnest petition, setting forth the great advantages to the nation
of his invention, from which he had as yet derived no advantage, but
only losses, sufferings, and persecution, the King granted him a
renewal of his patent[6] in the year 1638; three other gentlemen
joining him as partners, and doubtless providing the requisite capital
for carrying on the manufacture after the plans of the inventor. But
Dud's evil fortune continued to pursue him. The patent had scarcely
been securedere the Civil War broke out, and the arts of peace must at
once perforce give place to the arts of war. Dud's nature would not
suffer him to be neutral at such a time; and when the nation divided
itself into two hostile camps, his predilections being strongly
loyalist, he took the side of the King with his father. It would
appear from a petition presented by him to Charles II. in 1660, setting
forth his sufferings in the royal cause, and praying for restoral to
certain offices which he had enjoyed under Charles I., that as early as
the year 1637 he had been employed by the King on a mission into
Scotland,[7] in the train of the Marquis of Hamilton, the King's
Commissioner. Again in 1639, leaving his ironworks and partners, he
accompanied Charles on his expedition across the Scotch border, and was
present with the army until its discomfiture at Newburn near Newcastle
in the following year.
The sword was now fairly drawn, and Dud seems for a time to have
abandoned his iron-works and followed entirely the fortunes of the
king. He was sworn surveyor of the Mews or Armoury in 1640, but being
unable to pay for the patent, another was sworn in in his place. Yet
his loyalty did not falter, for in the beginning of 1642, when Charles
set out from London, shortly after the fall of Strafford and Laud, Dud
went with him.[8] He was present before Hull when Sir John Hotham shut
its gates in the king's face; at York when the royal commissions of
array were sent out enjoining all loyal subjects to send men, arms,
money, and horses, for defence of the king and maintenance of the law;
at Nottingham, where the royal standard was raised; at Coventry, where
the townspeople refused the king entrance and fired upon his troops
from the walls; at Edgehill, where the first great but indecisive
battle was fought between the contending parties; in short, as Dud
Dudley states in his petition, he was "in most of the battailes that
year, and also supplyed his late sacred Majestie's magazines of
Stafford, Worcester, Dudley Castle, and Oxford, with arms, shot,
drakes, and cannon; and also, became major unto Sir Frauncis Worsley's
regiment, which was much decaied."
In 1643, according to the statement contained in his petition above
referred to, Dud Dudley acted as military engineer in setting out the
fortifications of Worcester and Stafford, and furnishing them with
ordnance. After the taking of Lichfield, in which he had a share, he
was made Colonel of Dragoons, and accompanied the Queen with his
regiment to the royal head-quarters at Oxford. The year after we find
him at the siege of Gloucester, then at the first battle of Newbury
leading the forlorn hope with Sir George Lisle, afterwards marching
with Sir Charles Lucas into the associate counties, and present at the
royalist rout at Newport. That he was esteemed a valiant and skilful
officer is apparent from the circumstance, that in 1645 he was
appointed general of Prince Maurice's train of artillery, and
afterwards held the same rank under Lord Ashley. The iron districts
being still for the most part occupied by the royal armies, our
military engineer turned his practical experience to account by
directing the forging of drakes[9] of bar-iron, which were found of
great use, giving up his own dwelling-house in the city of Worcester
for the purpose of carrying on the manufacture of these and other arms.
But Worcester and the western towns fell before the Parliamentarian
armies in 1646, and all the iron-works belonging to royalists, from
which the principal supplies of arms had been drawn by the King's army,
were forthwith destroyed.
Dudley fully shared in the dangers and vicissitudes of that trying
period, and bore his part throughout like a valiant soldier. For two
years nothing was heard of him, until in 1648, when the king's party
drew together again, and made head in different parts of the country,
north and south. Goring raised his standard in Essex, but was driven
by Fairfax into Colchester, where he defended himself for two months.
While the siege was in progress, the royalists determined to make an
attempt to raise it. On this Dud Dudley again made his appearance in
the field, and, joining sundry other counties, he proceeded to raise
200 men, mostly at his own charge. They were, however, no sooner
mustered in Bosco Bello woods near Madeley, than they were attacked by
the Parliamentarians, and dispersed or taken prisoners. Dud was among
those so taken, and he was first carried to Hartlebury Castle and
thence to Worcester, where he was imprisoned. Recounting the
sufferings of himself and his followers on this occasion, in the
petition presented to Charles II. in 1660,[10] he says, "200 men were
dispersed, killed, and some taken, namely, Major Harcourt, Major
Elliotts, Capt. Long, and Cornet Hodgetts, of whom Major Harcourt was
miserably burned with matches. The petitioner and the rest were
stripped almost naked, and in triumph and scorn carried up to the city
of Worcester (which place Dud had fortified for the king), and kept
close prisoners, with double guards set upon the prison and the city."