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
In 1681 he published the second part of 'England's Improvement,'[20] in
which he gave a summary account of its then limited growths and
manufactures, pointing out that England and Ireland were the only
northern kingdoms remaining unimproved; he re-urged the benefits and
necessity of a voluntary register of real property; pointed out a
method of improving the Royal Navy, lessening the growing power of
France, and establishing home fisheries; proposed the securing and
fortifying of Tangier; described a plan for preventing fires in London,
and reducing the charge for maintaining the Trained Bands; urged the
formation of a harbour at Newhaven in Sussex; and, finally, discoursed
at considerable length upon the tin, iron, linen, and woollen trades,
setting forth various methods for their improvement. In this last
section, after referring to the depression in the domestic tin trade
(Cornish tin selling so low as 70s. the cwt.), he suggested a way of
reviving it. With the Cornish tin he would combine "the Roman cinders
and iron-stone in the Forest of Dean, which makes the best iron for
most uses in the world, and works up to the best advantage, with
delight and pleasure to the workmen." He then described the history of
his own efforts to import the manufacture of tin-plates into England
some sixteen years before, in which he had been thwarted by
Chamberlaine's patent, as above described,--and offered sundry queries
as to the utility of patents generally, which, says he, "have the
tendency to drive trade out of the kingdom." Appended to the chapter on
Tin is an exceedingly amusing dialogue between a tin-miner of Cornwall,
an iron-miner of Dean Forest, and a traveller (himself). From this we
gather that Yarranton's business continued to be that of an
iron-manufacturer at his works at Ashley near Bewdley. Thus the
iron-miner says, "About 28 years since Mr. Yarranton found out a vast
quantity of Roman cinders, near the walls of the city of Worcester,
from whence he and others carried away many thousand tons or loads up
the river Severn, unto their iron-furnaces, to be melted down into
iron, with a mixture of the Forest of Dean iron-stone; and within 100
yards of the walls of the city of Worcester there was dug up one of the
hearths of the Roman foot-blasts, it being then firm and in order, and
was 7 foot deep in the earth; and by the side of the work there was
found a pot of Roman coin to the quantity of a peck, some of which was
presented to Sir [Wm.] Dugdale, and part thereof is now in the King's
Closet." [21]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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