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.