As we proceed with our history we shall find some curious facts connected with the London ironmongers, and that their ordinances, quaint and still in force, contain many very illustrative evidences of the trade-unions of centuries ago. CHAPTER II. IRON, IRONWORKS, AND IRONMONGERS. Iron and its uses historically described should form no unimportant part to the history of the Ironmongers’ Company, but as it is not our intention now to give the thousand-and-one notes which would form a most interesting and valuable compendium to the general account of the City Guild, it is sufficient for us if we so condense our large store of material and give such an epitome as will assist the reader to comprehend the origin of the trade of which the company bears the name. A well-known writer justly observes that no one should fail to consider the origin, history, and value of iron; that our instruments of cutlery, the tools of our mechanics, and the countless machines which we construct by the infinitely varied applications of iron are derived from ore for the most part coeval with or more ancient than the fuel by the aid of which we reduce it to its metallic state, and apply it to innumerable uses in the economy of human life. The use of iron is identified with the time of erecting the Egyptian monuments, the oldest in the world, and a very large number of the helmets dug up at Nineveh were made of iron, and some of copper inlaid. Readers of history have only to turn to the pages of Anderson, Fosbroke, Scrivenor, Layard, and others to learn that iron has ever been a most useful and valuable article of commerce. The Romans proved their constructive ingenuity by the manufacture of those innumerable articles of iron which from time to time have been dug up throughout England, particularly in those districts where woods and forests at one time existed. In Gloucestershire the Forest of Dean for centuries had the extensive furnaces about which so many battles were fought in and out of Parliament, and in Sussex the sites of the ancient ironworks in the Weald can be traced to this day, and will be found described in Lower’s “Historical and Archæological Notices,” printed in the second volume of the Sussex Collections. In the reign of the Conqueror Gloucestershire possessed a large trade in the forging of iron for the King’s navy, and in Edward I.’s time seventy-two furnaces were kept employed. As we progressed, England discovered that the iron we manufactured was wanted for home use, consequently Edward III. prohibited its exportation.