¹ Calamine is a carbonate of zinc, ZnC03. It is also known as smithsonite.

² It should be noted, however, that a very high proportion of the silver came from argentiferous galena, and a smaller proportion of the silver, as well as some gold, from other ores, notably the copper ores of the Lake District.

³ See, for example, Smith, Cyril S. and R. Forbes, J. in History of Technology, Vol. III: From the Renaissance to the Industrial Revolution, c. 1750, ed. by SirSinger, Charleset al. (New York, 1957), p. 27Google Scholar; also, Coleman's, D. C. critical essay on this volume, “Technology and Economic History, 1500-1750,” The Economic History Review, 2d ser., IX (1958), 507.Google Scholar

⁴ John U. Nef has produced his most telling evidence in his monumental monograph, The Rise of the British Coal Industry (2 vol.; 2d ed.; London, 1966)Google Scholar, and in his Industry and Government in France and England, 1540-1640 (Ithaca, 1957).Google Scholar

⁵ A quotation from an eighteenth-century scholar will suffice to deal with the principal types of fortuitous discovery: “Mines,” he notes, “have been often discovered by accident, as in sea cliffs, among broken craggy rocks, or by the washing of tides and floods; likewise by irrigations, and torrents of water, issuing out of hills and mountains; and sometimes by the wearing of high roads.” Pryce, William, Mineralogia Cornubiensis (London, 1778), p. 112.Google Scholar

⁶ Shoding (or shoading) was used in the discovery and exploitation of both alluvial and eluvial tin deposits. An excellent contemporary description of the practice is given by Carew, Richard of Anthony in his Survey of Cornwall (London, 1953), p. 90.Google Scholar

⁷ The ancient practice of hushing is well treated in Raistrick, Arthur and Jennings, Bernard, A History of Lead Mining in the Pennines (London, 1965). p. 12.Google Scholar

⁸ Georgius Agricola's De Re Metallica was published posthumously in Basel in 1556. The sole English edition is that done by President and Mrs. Herbert Hoover. This appeared first in 1912 and was reprinted by Dover Books of New York in 1950. SirPettus, John in his Fleta Minor (London, 1686), p. 121Google Scholar, makes mention of his intention to publish an English translation of De Re Metallica, but no trace of this proposed work has ever been discovered.

⁹ Great Britain, Historical Manuscripts Commission, Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquis of Salisbury {Cecil Manuscripts) at Hatfield, XV, (London, 1883), 317–18.Google Scholar

¹⁰ There are copious quantities of contemporary manuscript material in the Public Record Office, London, the various County Record Offices, the British Museum, and the muniment rooms of some of the great country houses. Among the most valuable for their contemporary mining and smelting information are the Kenyon MSS, the Middleton MSS, the Mount Edgcumbe MSS, the Rutland MSS, and the Talbot MSS.

¹¹ It should be noted that, while Beare, Thomas, whose “Account of Tin Works in Cornwall” (British Museum, Harley MS. 6380)Google Scholar was written about 1586, makes no mention at all of underground mining, it is certain that it was then being carried on in the duchy. Correspondence between William Carnsew, Ulrick Frosse, and Customer Smythe makes it clear that lead, at least, was being produced from shaft mines at Treworthie, near Perrin Sands, prior to this date. See Great Britain, Public Record Office, Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, Elizabeth, 1581-1590, II (1865) pp. 134, 153, 155Google Scholaret seq. And in the ensuing decade, when he was writing his Survey of Cornwall, Carew was able to give full descriptions of both surface and underground operations. Despite Beare's omission, then, it is evident that the last two decades of the sixteenth century, when the transition from surface workings to deep shaft mines appears to have been completed, were crucial in the tin mining industry.

¹² Even after some decades of experience of deep mining, passageways were seldom higher or wider than was strictly necessary. Drifts “3 foot over, and 7 foot high; so as a man may stand upright and work,” were still common in the later seventeenth century. See, for example, the anonymous article, “Of some Mineral Observations touching the Mines of Cornwall and Devon……” in Philosophical Transactions, VI (1671), 2102.Google Scholar

¹³ Norden, John, “Speculi Britanniae Pars: A Topographical and Historical Description: Cornwall,” British Museum, Harleian MS. 6252, p. 13.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Book V of De Re Metallica explains the principles of underground mining and the art of subterranean surveying.

¹⁵ Experienced German miners were engaged to work and develop mines in many parts of England, Scotland, and Ireland during the sixteenth century, and there is abundant evidence of their mining skills in the State Papers and other contemporary sources. See Cunningham, William, Alien Immigrants to England (London, 1897)Google Scholar, for a balanced, overall treatment, and Williams, Lionel, “Alien Immigrants in Relation to Industry and Society in Tudor England,” Proceedings of the Huguenot Society, XIX (1956), 146–69Google Scholar. for a more narrowly focused, but highly pertinent article. Collingwood, W. G., Elizabethan Keswick (Kendal, Westmorland, England 1912)Google Scholar, is a detailed regional study, in which the contribution of the German miners, brought in to open up the copper mines of the Lake District, is carefully assessed in the light of the Account Books of Haug, Langnauer and Company, the Augsburg company which contributed much of the early capital employed in the operations of the Company of the Mines Royal.

¹⁶ During the seventeenth century there appeared in England a number of handbooks on mining practice, some of which were straight translations of earlier — mainly sixteenth century — German works. The most famous of them was that of Houghton, Thomas, Rara Avis in Terra: The Compleat Miner (London, 1681).Google Scholar

¹⁷ Worth, R. N., Historical Notes Concerning the Progress of Mining Skill in Devon and Cornwall (Falmouth, 1872), p. 13.Google Scholar

¹⁸ The philosopher John Locke, who undertook to carry out certain atmospheric experiments for Robert Boyle, noted that the miners on Mendip “do not, as in wells, sink their pits straight down, but as cranies of the rocks give them easiest pasage.” Letter from Locke to Boyle, quoted in Boyle, Robert, “The General History of the Air,” The Works of Robert Boyle (6 vols.; London, 1772), V, 688.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Stokes, A. H., “Lead and Lead Mining in Derbyshire,” Transactions of the Chesterfield and Derbyshire Institute of Mining, Civil and Mechanical Engineers, VIII (1880–1881), 96–98Google Scholar, notes that the use of footholds in the shafts — which, as one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Mines, he condemned as highly dangerous — was still common in Derbyshire mines in the late nineteenth century. Also in use were various rope and wooden ladders and stemples.

²⁰ Childrey, Joshua, Britannia Baconica, or the Natural Rarities of England, Scotland and Wales (London, 1661), p. 8Google Scholar, speaks of mines of the period around 1600 as being forty to fifty fathoms in depth.

²¹ Daniel Höchstetter, as joint patentee with Thomas Thurland of the Company of the Mines Royal, was a major figure in Elizabethan mining operations. Details of the licence are given in Great Britain, Public Record Office, Calendar of Patent Rolls, Elizabeth Vol. IV (1964), p. 384.Google Scholar

²² Burchard Cranach (Kranich) was a talented and many-sided savant, scientist, and practical man of affairs, as Donald, Maxwell B. has indicated in his “Burchard Kranich (c. 1515-1578), Miner and Queen's Physician, Cornish Mining Stamps, Antimony and Frobisher's Gold,” Annals of Science, VI (1950), 308–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See Calendar of Patent Rolls, Elizabeth, II (1948), p. 495Google Scholar, for details of the licence.

²³ This appears to have been due largely to the keen personal interest of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, Elizabeth's Secretary of State and an important investor in the Company of the Mines Royal.

²⁴ In a letter to Secretary of State Cecil, William Humfrey, licencee of the Company of the Mineral and Battery Works, recommended “an Alemain engineer who can raise water one hundred fathoms high, by a newly invented engine.” Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth, Vol. I (1856), p. 254Google Scholar. Nothing came of the claim.

²⁵ Victoria County History: Cornwall, I (London, 1906), p. 545.Google Scholar

²⁶ The mining chapters in the Victoria County History give fair details of these for Cornwall, Devonshire, Derbyshire and other important mining counties of England. Cardiganshire is well treated in two papers by Lewis, W. J.: “Some Aspects of Lead Mining in Cardiganshire in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” Ceredigion, I (1950–1951)Google Scholar, and “The Cywsymlog Lead Mines,” Ceredigion, II (1952–1955)Google Scholar. The same author's Lead Mining in Wales (Cardiff, 1967)Google ScholarPubMed considers other mining districts of Wales, as well as Cardiganshire.

²⁷ Bulmer's career in the mines of Mendip can be followed to some extent in the State Papers, though there are many gaps. For Scotland, however, the material is far more abundant: apart from the many items in the State Papers of Scotland — Privv Council of Scotland Registers among others — there is material in Great Britain, Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report, No. 15, Appendix VI (1927)Google ScholarPubMed, Manuscripts of the Earl of Carlisle, 1200-1820, and in the Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquis of Salisbury. Atkinson, Stephen, The Discouverie and Historie of the Gold Mynes of Scotland, Written in the Year 1619, ed. by Meason, G. L. for the Bannantyne Club (Edinburgh, 1825)Google Scholar, is the work of one of Bulmer's assistants, who held him in high esteem. Atkinson has much to say about Bulmer's many mining activities, especially those carried out in Scotland. A modern appraisal of Bulmer has been provided by Robertson, H. M.: “Sir Bevis Bulmer: A Large-scale Speculator of Elizabethan and Jacobean Times,” Journal of Economic and Business History, III (1931), 99–120.Google Scholar

²⁸ While there are frequent references to Myddelton in the State Papers Domestic, and the Acts of the Privy Council, these tend to be concerned very largely with Myddelton's work in providing London with a new supply of fresh drinking water. SirPettus, John, Fodinae Regales (London, 1670)Google Scholar contains some enlightening details of his mining interests and achievements, as does Bushell's, ThomasA Just and True Remonstrance of His Majesty's Mines Royall in the Principalities of Wales (London, 1641)Google Scholar. A recent work by Gough, J. W., Sir Hugh Myddelton: Entrepreneur and Engineer (Oxford, 1964)Google Scholar, draws together the available evidence and gives a well balanced account of Myddelton's achievements.

²⁹ Bushnell was far and away the most extraordinary figure in seventeenth-century mining and metallurgy — not excluding the much better known Dud Dudley. John Aubrey's statement, that “Mr. Bushell was the greatest Master of the Art of running in Debt … in the World,” is followed up by Aubrey's calculation that this, at the time of Bushell's death, was no less than “one hundred and twenty thousand pounds.” Aubrey's Brief Lives, ed. by Dick, Oliver Lawson (Ann Arbor, 1962), p. 42Google Scholar. His own work, A Just and True Remonstrance..…, already cited, and the many petitions and letters written by and about him, to be found in the House of Lords MSS. the State Papers Domestic, the Registers of the Privy Council, and elsewhere, testify to a character who would doubtless have been outstanding — or else notorious — in any age. His marked success in draining the very rich silver-lead mines of Cardiganshire, with personal profit measured in the thousand, rather than the hundred pounds, was followed soon after by the outbreak of the English Civil War, and the loss of all his wealth in fruitless support of Charles I. The story of Bushnell is recounted and his achievement appraised in Gough, J. W., The Superlative Prodigal: A Life of Thomas Bushell (Bristol, 1932)Google Scholar. See also Chope's, R. Pearse two articles: “Thomas Bushell and the Combe Martin Mines,” Devon and Cornwall Notes and Queries, X (1918), 34–41Google Scholar, and “Thomas Bushell and the Cornish Mines,” Ibid., XI (1919), 152-55.

³⁰ As usual it is Agricola who has the most complete and satisfactory information, including some detailed drawings of the various machines employed in continental Europe. See De Re Metallica, Book VI, pp. 200-12.

³¹ Jenkin, A. K. Hamilton, The Cornish Miner (London, 1927), p. 85.Google Scholar

³² Carew, , Survey of Cornwall, p. 93.Google Scholar

³³ SirDe La Beche, Henry T., Report on the Geology of Cornwall, Devon and West Somerset (London; Longmans for the Geological Survey of Great Britain, 1839), p. 570.Google Scholar

³⁴ Particularly noteworthy were the efforts of Thomas Bushell in this matter.

³⁵ Collingwood, Elizabethan Keswick, gives some details of the stamp mills built at Newlands and Caldbeck.

³⁶ Carew, , Survey of Cornwall, p. 94.Google Scholar

³⁷ Ibid.

³⁸ Ibid.

³⁹ J. R. Leifchild, writing of the equivalent practice in the Cornish tin mines, calls this a “sleeping table.” Cornwall: Its Mines and Mines (London, 1968), p. 207.Google ScholarPubMed

⁴⁰ These claims and Humfrey's suit alleging infringement of patent rights by the Earl of Shrewsbury and others are dealt with in considerable detail by Donald, M. B., Elizabethan Monopolies: The History of the Company of Mineral and Battery Works (Edinburgh, 1961), pp. 142–78Google Scholar. This chapter is based on the extensive Exchequer Depositions by Commission of 1581-84, and Exchequer Special Commissions of the same period.

⁴¹ Schubert, H. R., History of the British Iron and Steel Industry (London, 1957), p. 124.Google Scholar

⁴² A distinction is sometimes implied in the use of these two words, although it is now generally recognized that the distinction is, at best, only a slight one. More often than not the two terms are used synonomously. See Bailey, A. R., Textbook of Metallurgy (2d ed.; London, 1961), p. 208Google Scholar; also, the note on this subject by H. C. and Hoover, L. H. in their edition of Agricola's De Re Metallica, p. 267.Google Scholar

⁴³ M. B. Donald, himself a chemical engineer, notes that “the smelting of copper ores represents a considerable technical advance over the reduction of the ores of silver, lead, iron and tin to their respective metals.” Elizabethan Copper: The History of the Company of the Mines Royal, 1568-1605 (London, 1955), pp. 184–85Google Scholar. They have continued to provide challenge to the metallurgist. See Pinkney, E. T., “Torca, the Key to ‘Unyielding’ Copper Ores,” Optima, XVII (1967), p. 83.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Donald, , Elizabethan Copper, pp. 185–88Google Scholar, making use of some contemporary metallurgical notebooks, gives clear details of these techniques.

⁴⁵ Greenly, Edward, The Geology of Anglesey (2 vols.; London, 1919), II, 824et seq.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ See n. 3 above.

⁴⁷ The most authoritative work on the blowing houses of Devon and Cornwall is that of R. Hansford Worth. See particularly his lengthy article, “The Blowing House,” Transactions of the Devonshire Association, LXXII (1940), 209–50Google Scholar, for a clear description of the blowing house and its technology, and a long list of the known blowing-house sites and ruins in Devonshire. This article has been reprinted in Worth's Devonshire, ed. by Spooner, G. M. and Russell, F. S. (Newton Abbot, 1967).Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Carew, , Survey of Cornwall, p. 94.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Until Carew's time, and for some years after, it was the usual practice periodically to burn down the shelter housing the furnace in order to retrieve the tin dust that had been driven off in the smelting operation, only to be lodged in the thatched roof. According to Carew the shelters were burned down every seven or eight years. Survey of Cornwall, p. 95.

⁵⁰ Book IX of De Re Metallica deals in great detail with the many types of furnaces available for the smelting and refining of metals.

⁵¹ Collingwood, , Elizabethan Keswick, p. 13.Google Scholar

⁵² Calendar of Patent Rolls, Elizabeth, III (1961), p. 330Google Scholar. Patent number 1858.

⁵³ Donald, , Elizabethan Monopolies, p. 168.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Raistrick, and Jennings, , History of Lead Mining in the Pennines, p. 80.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Public Record Office, State Papers Domestic, Elizabeth, 12/152/88. Donald, , Elizabethan Copper, p. 93Google Scholar, cites this item incorrectly as 12/172/88.

⁵⁶ Beck, Ludwig, Die Geschichte des Eisens (5 vols.; Braunschweig, 1884–1903), II, 177–78.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ The classic treatment of this technological evolution is that of Ludwig Beck, Die Geschichte des Eisens. See particularly parts of volumes I and II. See also Johannsen, Otto, Geschichte des Eisens (3d ed.; Düsseldorf, 1953)Google Scholar, Fairbairn, William, Iron: Its History, Properties and Processes (Edinburgh, 1865)Google Scholar, and Scrivenor, Harry, A Comprehensive History of the Iron Trade (London, 1841).Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Public Record Office, Patent Rolls, 12 Henry VII, membrane 23d.

⁵⁹ The Sidney works in the Weald had a production of 202 tons in the year 1562, and in other years its production came near to that. Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report on the Manuscripts of the Lord de I'Isle and Dudley, I (1925), 312.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Scott, W. R., The Constitution and Finance of English, Scottish and Irish Joint-stock Companies (3 vols.; Cambridge, England, 1910–1912)Google Scholar, is the standard work on the subject.

⁶¹ Ramsay, Peter, Tudor Economic Problems (London. 1963)Google Scholar, provides a clear statement of these expanding vistas and of economic trends as they affected Tudor England.

⁶² Lawrence Stone has shown conclusively that the part played by the aristocracy in business and industrial ventures was very considerable, and that much of their capital went into the development of their own estates. More specifically, he notes that in the “remarkable growth of mining activity … the nobility and greater gentry took the lead, sometimes on a very large scale.” The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558-1641 (Oxford, 1965). p. 339.Google Scholar

⁶³ Unwin, George in his classic study, Industrial Organization in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Oxford, 1904)Google Scholar, has examined the determinants of economic change in the period — see particularly Chapter VI, “Joint-Stock Enterprise and Industrial Monopoly.” pp. 148-71; in a massive monograph. The Constitution and Finance of the English, Scottish and Irish Joint-Stock Companies, W. R. Scott has dealt not only with the origins and development of the system, but has treated at considerable length the most important of these companies, including the Mines Royal and the Mineral and Battery Works.

⁶⁴ Nef, , Industry and Government in France and England, 1540-1640, p. 11.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ After less than a decade the Augsburg firm of Haug, Langnauer, which at the beginning held eleven of the twenty-four shares of the Company of the Mines Royal, withdrew its support and ended its participation in the venture.

⁶⁶ The most comprehensive treatment of the Mines Royal is given in Donald, Elizabethan Copper. Details from the Account Books of Haug, Langnauer are given in Collingwood, Elizabethan Keswick.

⁶⁷ The best source of information on the Mineral and Battery Works is Donald, Elizabethan Monopolies.

⁶⁸ Details of Sir Francis Godolphin's tin-mining activities are provided in the Mount Edgcumbe Papers, Cornwall County Record Office, Truro.

⁶⁹ Norden, , Cornwall, p. 47.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Lewis, G. R., The Stannaries: A Study of the English Tin Miner (Boston, 1908), pp. 176–77.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Historical Manuscripts Commission, Twelfth Report, Appendix IV, Rutland I, 1440-1641 (1888)Google Scholar, includes some materials on mining and smelting.

⁷² The Talbot MSS, housed in Sheffield Public Library, provide details of the mining activities of the Earls of Shrewsbury during the later Tudor period.

⁷³ Somerset County Record Office, Waldegrave Estate Documents, Lead Reeves Accounts, 1602-28.

⁷⁴ British Museum, Lansdowne MSS, 55, fols. 81-2.

⁷⁵ Nef, John U., “The Progress of Technology and the Growth of Large-Scale Industry in Great Britain, 1540-1640,” The Economic History Review, V (1934–1935), 12.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Middleton MSS, 5/165/92. These are now housed in the University of Nottingham Library. The account is printed in full in Pelham, R. A., “The Establishment of the Willoughby Ironworks in North Warwickshire in the Sixteenth Century,” University of Birmingham Historical Journal, IV (1953–1954), 22–23.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ Stone, , Crisis of the Aristocracy, p. 357.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Nef, , Industry and Government in France and England, p. 1.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Flinn, M. W., Origins of the Industrial Revolution (London. 1966), p. 93.Google Scholar