The art of working in metals was more highly esteemed than any other by the Anglo-Saxons. Their best artisans were the clergy. Edgar established a law that every priest, to increase knowledge, should diligently learn some handicraft. Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, to the arts of music, engraving, painting, and writing, added the craft of a smith, and was an expert workman. Stigand and Ethelwold, both bishops, were celebrated for their mechanical skill. The chief smith was a man of considerable distinction in the courts of the Anglo-Saxon kings and his privileges and weregild exceeded those of any other craftsman. Towards the period of the Conquest the manufacture of iron had considerably increased, and the art of working it was better understood. Steel and iron armour were common. At the time of the Domesday Survey the City of Hereford had six smiths, who paid each one penny for his forge, and made 120 pieces of iron from the king’s ore, receiving in return a customary payment of three pence, and being free from all other service. The City of Gloucester paid to the king 36 dicras of iron and 100 ductile rods to make nails for the king’s ships. Iron had now become the principal manufacture of Gloucestershire, and in the reign of Edward I. there is stated to have been no less than 72 furnaces in the Forest of Dean for smelting it. The largest establishments of the Romans for the manufacture of iron in Britain were in this county, but the method, whatever it may have been, which they employed was imperfect and the cinders of their numerous forges, wherever they are discovered, are found to contain a very considerable portion of unsmelted metal. The first smelting-furnace, and that which in all probability was used by the Romans for the manufacture of iron, is supposed to be the air-bloomery; it is described as a low conical structure, with small openings at the bottom for the admission of air and a large orifice at top for carrying off the gaseous products of combustion. It was filled with charcoal and ore in alternate layers, and the fire applied to the lowest part. How long this simple contrivance continued in use we have no means of ascertaining, the period to which it belongs being so very remote; there is no doubt, however, that the next era of improvement in the manufacture of iron was the introduction of bellows, and the construction of the blast-bloomery, which greatly facilitated the process of smelting, and, by allowing the construction of larger furnaces, considerably increased the manufacture. The blast-bloomery, in process of time and the constant progression of the arts, was superseded by what is denominated the blast-furnace. This last improvement is supposed to have been introduced during the early part of the