Industrial Biography: Iron Workers and Tool MakersSmiles, Samuel
History
Industrial Biography: Iron Workers and Tool Makers
Smiles, Samuel
Industrial arts -- Biography; Iron industry and trade -- Great Britain -- Biography
But Dud, with his wonted energy, forthwith set to work and repaired his
furnaces and forges, though at great cost; and in the course of a short
time the new manufacture was again in full progress. The ironmasters
raised a fresh outcry against him, and addressed another strong
memorial against Dud and his iron to King James. This seems to have
taken effect; and in order to ascertain the quality of the article by
testing it upon a large scale, the King commanded Dudley to send up to
the Tower of London, with every possible speed, quantities of all the
sorts of bar-iron made by him, fit for the "making of muskets,
carbines, and iron for great bolts for shipping; which iron," continues
Dud, "being so tried by artists and smiths, the ironmasters and
iron-mongers were all silenced until the 21st year of King James's
reign." The ironmasters then endeavoured to get the Dudley patent
included in the monopolies to be abolished by the statute of that year;
but all they could accomplish was the limitation of the patent to
fourteen years instead of thirty-one; the special exemption of the
patent from the operation of the statute affording a sufficient
indication of the importance already attached to the invention. After
that time Dudley "went on with his invention cheerfully, and made
annually great store of iron, good and merchantable, and sold it unto
diverse men at twelve pounds per ton." "I also," said he, "made all
sorts of cast-iron wares, as brewing cisterns, pots, mortars, &c.,
better and cheaper than any yet made in these nations with charcoal,
some of which are yet to be seen by any man (at the author's house in
the city of Worcester) that desires to be satisfied of the truth of the
invention."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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