Chronicle and Romance: Froissart, Malory, Holinshed: (The Harvard Classics Series)
History
Chronicle and Romance: Froissart, Malory, Holinshed: (The Harvard Classics Series)
England -- Social life and customs -- 16th century; Great Britain -- History -- Edward III, 1327-1377
Iron is found in many places, as in Sussex, Kent, Weredale, Mendip,
Walshall, as also in Shropshire, but chiefly in the woods betwixt
Belvos and Willock (or Wicberry) near Manchester, and elsewhere in
Wales. Of which mines divers do bring forth so fine and good stuff as
any that cometh from beyond the sea, beside the infinite gains to the
owners, if we would so accept it, or bestow a little more cost in the
refining of it. It is also of such toughness, that it yieldeth to the
making of claricord wire in some places of the realm. Nevertheless, it
was better cheap with us when strangers only brought it hither; for it
is our quality when we get any commodity to use it with extremity
towards our own nation, after we have once found the means to shut out
foreigners from the bringing in of the like. It breedeth in like
manner great expense and waste of wood, as doth the making of our pots
and table vessels of glass, wherein is much loss, sith it is so
quickly broken; and yet (as I think) easy to be made tougher, if our
alchemists could once find the true birth or production of the red
man, whose mixture would induce a metallic toughness unto it, whereby
it should abide the hammer.
Copper is lately not found, but rather restored again to light. For I
have read of copper to have been heretofore gotten in our island;
howbeit as strangers have most commonly the governance of our mines,
so they hitherto make small gains of this in hand in the north parts;
for (as I am informed) the profit doth very hardly countervail the
charges, whereat wise men do not a little marvel, considering the
abundance which that mine doth seem to offer, and, as it were, at
hand. Leland, our countryman, noteth sundry great likelihoods of
natural copper mines to be eastwards, as between Dudman and Trewardth,
in the sea cliffs, beside other places, whereof divers are noted here
and there in sundry places of this book already, and therefore it
shall be but in vain to repeat them here again. As for that which is
gotten out of the marchasite, I speak not of it, sith it is not
incident to my purpose. In Dorsetshire also a copper mine lately found
is brought to good perfection.
As for our steel, it is not so good for edge-tools as that of Cologne,
and yet the one is often sold for the other, and like talc used in
both, that is to say, thirty gads to the sheaf, and twelve sheaves to
the burden.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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