"N.B. The iron rail-ways are of great advantage to the country in general, and are made at an expense of about 300l. per mile. The advantage they give for the conveyance of goods by carts and waggons, seems even to surpass, in some instances, those of boat carriage by canals." So we come to the story of the railway, which had, however, been undergoing development, from very primitive conditions, for a considerable period even prior to this notable event on the banks of the Thames in 1802. {195}CHAPTER XVIII EVOLUTION OF THE RAILWAY The early history of the railway is the early history of the English coal trade. Down to the sixteenth century the fuel supply of the country alike for manufacturing and for domestic purposes was derived almost exclusively from those forests and peat-beds that once covered so large a portion of the area of the British Isles. Coal was not unknown, though it was then called "sea-coal," a name distinguishing coal from charcoal, and given to it because the fact of the earliest known specimens being found on the shores of Northumberland and of the Firth of Forth--where there are outcrops of the coal measures--led to the belief that the black stone which burned like charcoal was a product of the sea. The name was retained, as an appropriate one, when coal was brought to London by sea from the north. Coal is known to have been received at various dates during the thirteenth century in London (which then already had a Sacoles, or Sea-coal, Lane), in Colchester, in Dover and in Suffolk; but it was used mainly by smiths and lime-burners; and it was used by them still more when the construction of feudal castles and ecclesiastical buildings in and following the Norman period called for work not to be done efficiently with fires of wood or charcoal. The use of coal as fuel for domestic purposes remained, however, extremely limited. Unlike wood and charcoal, coal was not suitable for burning in the centre of rooms then unprovided with chimneys, while coal smoke was regarded as an intolerable nuisance, and as seriously detrimental to health. It was on these grounds that when, in the fourteenth century, brewers, dyers and others in London were found to be using coal, a Royal Proclamation was issued interdicting its use by any person not a smith or a lime-burner, and appointing a {196}commission of Oyer and Terminer to see to the punishment of all offenders.