Coal is so intimately connected with all that is essentially modern—machinery, steam, and the black pall that overhangs our great towns and manufacturing districts—that it comes almost as a surprise to find it in use in Britain at the beginning of the Christian era. Yet excavation has proved beyond all doubt that coal was used by the Romans, ashes and stores of the unburnt mineral being found all along the Wall, at Lanchester and Ebchester in Durham,[1] at Wroxeter[2] in Shropshire and elsewhere. For the most part it appears to have been used for working iron, but it was possibly also used for heating hypocausts, and there seems good reason to believe that it formed the fuel of the sacred fire in the temple of Minerva at Bath, as Solinus, writing about the end of the third century, comments on the 'stony balls' which were left as ashes by this sacred fire.[3] That such coal as was used by the Romans was obtained from outcrops, where the seams came to the surface, is more than probable. There appears to be no certain evidence of any regular mining at this period.
With the departure of the Romans from Britain coal went out of use, and no trace of its employment can be found prior to the Norman Conquest, or indeed for more than a century after that date. It was not until quite the end of the twelfth century that coal was rediscovered, and the history of its use in England may be said for all practical purposes to begin with the reign of Henry III. (1216). In the 'Boldon Book'[4] survey of the see of Durham, compiled in 1183, there are several references to smiths who were bound to make ploughshares and to 'find the coal' therefor, but unfortunately the Latin word invenire bears the same double meaning as its English equivalent 'to find,' and may imply either discovery or simple provision. In view of the fact that the word used for coal (carbonem) in this passage is unqualified, and that carbo, as also the English 'cole,' practically always implies charcoal, it would be unsafe to conclude that mineral coal is here referred to. The latter is almost invariably given a distinguishing adjective, appearing as earth coal, subterranean coal, stone coal, quarry coal, etc., but far most frequently as 'sea coal.' The origin of this term may perhaps be indicated by a passage in a sixteenth-century account of the salt works in the county of Durham:[5] 'As the tide comes in it bringeth a small wash sea coal which is employed to the making of salt and the fuel of the poor fisher towns adjoining.' It is most probable that the first coal used was that thus washed up by the sea and such as could be quarried from the face of the cliffs where the seams were exposed by the action of the waves. The term was next applied, for convenience, to similar coal obtained inland, and as an export trade grew up it acquired the secondary significance of sea-borne coal.
No references to purchases of sea coal occur in the Pipe Rolls of Henry II., nor, so far as I am aware, in those of Richard I. and John, but it would seem that its existence was known before the end of the twelfth century, as Alexander Neckam in his treatise, De Naturis Rerum,[6] has a curious and puzzling section, 'De Carbone,' at the beginning of his discourse on minerals, parts of which seem applicable to sea coal, though other parts appear to refer to charcoal. So far as can be gathered, he considered sea coal to be charcoal found in the earth; he comments on the extreme durability of coal and its resistance to the effects of wet and the lapse of time, and makes the interesting statement that when men were setting up boundary stones they dug in below them a quantity of coal, and that in the event of a dispute as to the position of the stone in later years the presence of this coal was the determining factor. Whether there is any corroborative evidence of this alleged custom I have not been able to ascertain, but it is at least a proof that mineral coal was known, though evidently not extensively used for fuel at this period. Coal was apparently worked in Scotland about 1200,[7] and it would seem that about a quarter of a century later it was being imported into London, as a mention of Sea Coal Lane, just outside the walls of the city, near Ludgate, occurs in 1228.[8] As property in this lane belonged to William 'de Plessetis,' it is probable that the coal was brought from Plessey, near Blyth, in which neighbourhood the monks of Newminster were given the right to take coal along the shore about 1236.[9] The monks also obtained leave from Nicholas de Aketon about the same time to take sea coals in his wood of Middlewood for use at their forge of Stretton, near Alnwick. It may be remarked that at this time, and for the greater part of the next three centuries, the use of coal was restricted to iron-working and lime-burning, the absence of chimneys rendering it unsuitable for fuel in ordinary living rooms. So particularly was it associated with lime-burning that we find Sea Coal Lane also known as Lime-burners Lane, and references in building accounts to purchases of sea coal for the burning of lime are innumerable.
It is in 1243 that we get our first dated reference to an actual coal working. In that year Ralf, son of Roger Wlger, was recorded to have been drowned 'in a delf of sea coals' (in fossato carbonum maris).[10] The use of the word fossatum is interesting, as clearly indicating an 'open cast working,' that is to say, a comparatively shallow trench carried along the seam where it comes close to the surface, a step intermediate between the mere quarrying of outcrop and the sinking of regular pits. An indication of the spread of coal mining is to be found in one of the articles of inquiry for the Forest Assize of 1244, which relates to 'sea coal found within the forest, and whether any one has taken money for the digging of the same.'[11] It is probable that special reference was intended to the Forest of Dean, coal being worked about this time at Blakeney, Stainton, and Abinghall; from the last named place a penny on every horse-load of coal was paid to the Constable of St. Briavels, as warden of the Forest.[12] By 1255 the issues of the Forest of Dean included payments for digging sea coals, and customs on all sea coal brought down the Severn.[13] Some of this latter may have been quarried in Shropshire, as about 1260 Walter de Clifford licensed Sir John de Halston to dig for coals in the forest of Clee,[14] and there are other indications of the early exploitation of the Shropshire coal-field. The Midland field of Derbyshire and Notts was also working, coal being got in Duffield Frith in 1257,[15] the year in which Queen Eleanor was driven from Nottingham Castle by the unpleasant fumes of the sea coal used in the busy town below,[16] a singularly early instance of the smoke nuisance which we are apt to consider a modern evil. Half a century later, in 1307, the growing use of coal by lime-burners in London became so great a nuisance that its use was rigorously prohibited, but whether successfully may be questioned.[17]
By the end of the thirteenth century it would seem that practically all the English coal-fields were being worked to some extent. In Northumberland so numerous were the diggings round Newcastle that it was dangerous to approach the town in the dark, and the monks of Tynemouth also were making good use of their mineral wealth;[18] in Yorkshire coal was being got at Shippen at least as early as 1262,[19] and in Warwickshire and at Chilvers Coton in 1275.[20] The small Somerset field near Stratton on Fosse and the Staffordshire coal measures may be possible exceptions, but in the latter county coal was dug at Bradley in 1315 and at Amblecote during the reign of Edward III.[21] The diggings were still for the most part open-cast works, but pits were beginning to come in. These 'bell pits,' of which numbers remained until recently in the neighbourhood of Leeds,[22] at Oldham in Lancashire,[23] and elsewhere, were narrow shafts sunk down to the coal and then enlarged at the bottom, and widened as far as was safe—and sometimes farther, if we may judge from a number of instances in Derbyshire in which miners were killed by the fall of their pits.[24] When as much coal as could safely be removed had been obtained, the pit was abandoned and a fresh pit sunk as near to it as possible. As a rule the old pit had to be filled up, and at Nuneaton we find this very properly enforced by the bailiff in 1343,[25] and at later dates. Open coal delfs were a source of considerable danger to men and animals, especially when water had accumulated in them, and a number of cattle were drowned at Morley in Derbyshire in 1372,[26] while it was probably in an abandoned working at Wingerworth that a beggar woman, Maud Webster, was killed in 1313 by a mass of soil falling on her as she was picking up coal.[27] From the pits the coal was raised in corves, or large baskets, and as early as 1291 we have a case of a man being killed at Denby in a 'colpyt' by one of these loaded corves falling upon his head.[28]
A case of some interest is recorded in Derbyshire in 1322, when Emma, daughter of William Culhare, while drawing water from the 'colepyt' at Morley was killed by 'le Damp,' i.e. choke damp.[29] This is one of the very few early references to choke damp, or 'stithe,' as it was often called, and the case is also interesting because, as water from a coal pit could hardly be good for either drinking or washing purposes, she must have been engaged in draining the pit, and this suggests a pit of rather exceptional dimensions. A more certain indication of a considerable depth having been attained is given forty years later in the case of another pit at Morley Park, said to have been drowned, or flooded, 'for lack of a gutter.'[30] This may only refer to a surface drain, but there is abundant proof that regular drainage by watergates, soughs, or adits had already come into use, and that coal-mining had reached the 'pit and adit' stage. In this system of working, the water, always the most troublesome enemy of the miner, was drawn off by a subterranean drain leading from the bottom of the pit. It need hardly be pointed out that the system was only practicable on fairly high ground, where the bottom of the pit was above the level of free drainage: in such a case a horizontal gallery, or adit, could be driven from a suitable point on the face of the hill slightly below the bottom of the pit to strike the latter, and a wooden sough,[31] or drain, of which the sections were known in Warwickshire as 'dearns,' could be laid to carry the water from the pit to a convenient point of discharge. In 1354 the monks of Durham, when obtaining a lease of coal mines in Ferry, had leave to place pits and watergates where suitable,[32] and ten years later a lease of a mine at Gateshead stipulated for provision of timber for the pits and water-gate.[33] During the next century a certain number of pits were sunk in lower ground, or to a greater depth, below the level of free drainage, and in 1486 we find the monks of Finchale, active exploiters of the northern coal measures, erecting a pump worked by horse power at Moorhouse,[34] but it is not until the second half of the sixteenth century, nearly at the end of the medieval period, that we find such pumps, 'gins,' or baling engines, and similar machines in common use.
Piecing together information afforded by scattered entries, we can obtain some idea of the working of a coal pit about the end of the fifteenth century. After the overseer, or a body of miners, had inspected the ground and chosen a likely place, a space was marked out, and a small sum distributed among the workers as earnest money. The pit was then sunk at such charge as might be agreed upon: at Heworth in 1376 the charge was six shillings the fathom,[35] at Griff in 1603 six shillings the ell.[36] A small 'reward' was paid when the vein of coal was struck, the pit was then cleaned up and timbered, and a water-gate or adit driven to afford drainage and ventilation. Over the mouth of the pit was erected a thatched 'hovel' with wattled sides to keep the wind and rain from the pit, and in this was a windlass for raising the corves. The workmen consisted of hewers, who cut the coal, and bearers who carried it to the bottom of the pit and filled the corves: they were under the control of the 'viewer,' whose duty it was 'to see under the ground that the work was orderly wrought,' and the 'overman,' who had 'to see such work as come up at every pit to be for the coal owner's profit.'[37] Their wages do not appear to have been much, if at all, above those of the ordinary labourer or unskilled artisan. Owing no doubt to the comparatively late rise of the industry and the simplicity of the work, no refining or skilled manipulation being required as in the case of metallic ores, the coal miners never acquired the privileged position of the 'free miners' of Dean, Derbyshire, Cumberland, and Cornwall.[38] The work was not attractive, and the supply of labour seems occasionally to have run dry. So much was this the case after the Black Death in 1350 and the second epidemic of 1366 that the lessees of the great mines at Whickham and Gateshead had to resort to forced labour, and obtained leave to impress workmen.[39] Much later, about 1580, the Winlaton pits were hampered by lack of workmen and the owners, having sent into Scotland for more hands with little success, had to hire women and even then were short-handed, to say nothing of being troubled with incompetent men who for their negligence and false work had to be 'laid in the stocks,' and even 'expulsed oute of their worke.'[40]
The question of mineral rights as regards coal is complicated by the variety of local customs. In some cases, as at Bolsover,[41] the manorial tenants had the right to dig sea coal in the waste and forest land for their own use; but it was probably usual to charge a fee for licence to dig, and this was clearly the practice at Wakefield.[42] So far as copyhold lands were concerned the lord of the manor, or his farmer, appears as a rule to have had the power to dig without paying the tenant compensation. This was certainly being done at Houghton, in Yorkshire, and in the adjacent manor of Kipax in 1578, and the undoubted injury to the copyholders was held to be counterbalanced by the advantage to the neighbourhood of a cheap supply of coal.[43] The uncertainty of the law and the conflicting claims of ground landlords, tenants, and prospectors led to a plentiful crop of legal actions. For the most part these were actions for trespass in digging coal without leave, occasionally complicated by counter appeals.[44] In the first half of the sixteenth century, for instance, Nicholas Strelley, being impleaded for trespass by Sir John Willoughby, set forth that he had a pit in Strelley from which he obtained much coal, to the advantage of the neighbourhood and of 'the schyres of Leicestre and Lincoln, being very baren and scarce contres of all maner of fuell'; and no doubt, though he omitted to say so, to his own advantage; now, owing to the deepness of the mine and the amount of water, the old pit could only be worked if a sough or drain were constructed at an unreasonable expense; he had therefore dug a fresh pit on the borders of Strelly close to Sir John's manor of Wollaton, purposing to use an old sough running through Sir John's ground. Sir John had promptly blocked the sough with a 'counter-mure' and brought actions for trespass, and Nicholas Strelley, much aggrieved, invoked the aid of the Star Chamber.[45] The same court was also invoked a few years later by William Bolles, who complained that by the procurement of Sir William Hussey certain persons came to Newthorpe Mere in Gresley and 'most cruelly and maliciously cutt in peaces brake and caste downe dyvers frames of tymbre made upon and in one pitte made and sonken to gett cooles, and cutt in peaces dyvers greate ropes loomes and tooles apperteyninge to the said woorke at the said pitte,' the offenders being unidentified as the outrage took place 'in the night tyme when every good trew and faithful subjecte ought to take their reste.'[46]
Presuming an undisputed title, the owner of coal measures could exploit them in a variety of ways. He might work them himself; the outlay would be small, provided extensive drainage operations were not required, for wages, as we have said, were low and the equipment of the mine, consisting of a few picks, iron bars or wedges, wooden shovels shod with iron and baskets, buckets, and ropes, inexpensive, and there was a steady sale for the coal, though the price of coal varied so greatly and was so much affected by cost of carriage that it is not possible to give even an approximate average value for the medieval period; the question being further complicated by the extraordinary variety of measure employed. Coal is quoted in terms of the 'hundredweight,' the 'quarter' (valued at Colchester in 1296 at 6d.),[47] the 'seam' (or horse-load), the 'load,' which may be either horse or wain load, the 'scope,' which appears to be equivalent to the 'corf,' or basket, the 'roke' or 'rowe,' the 'rod' or 'perch' (a measure apparently peculiar to Warwickshire),[48] the 'butress' and the 'three-quarters' (of a buttress), and most commonly in the Tyne district by the 'fother,' 'chalder,' or 'chaldron' and 'ten,' and also by the 'keel' or barge load. Where the owner did not work the coals himself he could either issue annual licences to dig coal or lease the mines for a term of years.[49] The earliest leases give a vague general permission to dig coal wherever found within the lands in question, but it soon became usual to limit the output either by fixing the maximum amount to be taken in one day, or more usually in early leases by restricting the number of workmen to be employed. In 1326 Hugh of Scheynton granted to Adam Peyeson land at Benthall with all quarries of sea coal, employing four labourers to dig the same, and as many as he chose to carry the coals to the Severn.[50] Slightly before this date we find that payment was made at Belper according to the number of picks employed, the royalty on one pick in 1315 being over £4.[51] In 1380 the prior of Beauvale in leasing a mine of sea coal at Newthorpe to Robert Pascayl and seven other partners,[52] stipulated that they should have only got two men in the pit, a viewer (servaunt de south la terre), and three men above ground. The lessees of a pit at Trillesden in 1447 were 'to work and win coal every day overable [i.e. working day] with three picks and ilk pick to win every day 60 scopes,'[53] and at Nuneaton, in 1553, the lessees were not to employ more than six workmen at the time.[54] In this latter case there was a further stipulation that the pits when exhausted should be filled up with 'yearthe and slecke,' while at Trillesden the pit was to be worked workmanlike and the miners were to 'save the field standing,' pointing to a fairly elaborate system of galleries and pillars liable to subsidence if not properly planned.[55] But the most important lease was that of five mines in Whickham, made in 1356 by Bishop Hatfield of Durham to Sir Thomas Gray and the Rector of Whickham for the enormous rent of 500 marks (£333, 6s. 8d.).[56] In this case the lessees were limited to one keel (about twenty tons) daily from each mine; but on the other hand the bishop agreed never to take their workmen away, and not to open any fresh pits in the district, and not to sell the coal from his existing pits at Gateshead to ships. A century later Sir William Eure leased some of the most important Durham coal mines, his daily output being restricted to 340 corves at Raly, 300 at Toftes, 600 at Hartkeld, and 20 at any other mines, with the right of making up from one mine any deficiency in another, and also of making up any deficiency caused by delays due to 'styth' or choke-damp, which appears to have been so troublesome in the hot season as to cause a complete suspension of work. Under this lease Sir William obtained at Raly in one week of 1460, some 1800 corves, each of 2½ bushels, making rather over 140 chalders, paying 5d. a day to each of the three hewers, the three barrowmen, who brought the coal to the foot of the shaft, and the four drawers who raised and banked it.[57]
In the Whickham lease of 1356 it will be noticed that the bishop undertook not to allow coals from his own pits to be exported by sea. The sea-borne trade in coals from Newcastle and the Tyne was obtaining considerable dimensions; ten years later, in 1366, a large purchase of coal was made at Winlaton for the king's works at Windsor. The sheriff of Northumberland accounted for £165, 5s. 2d. expended on the purchase and carriage to London of 576 chalder of coals, reckoning by the 'great hundred' of six score, so that there were actually shipped 676 chalder, but of this 86 chalder had to be written off, partly through some being jettisoned during a sudden storm at sea, and partly because the London chalder was much bigger than that used in Northumberland, the difference amounting to about five per cent.[58] The chalder, or chaldron, seems to have been originally about eighteen to twenty hundredweight, and from early times twenty of these made the load of a keel, or coal barge, but in order to evade the export duty of 2d. on every keel, or at least to compensate for it, it became the practice to build keels of twenty-two or twenty-three chalder burden. This was forbidden in 1385,[59] but the prohibition being evaded, an Act was passed in 1421[60] by which the actual capacity of each keel had to be marked upon it. This in turn was evaded by a rapid increase in the size of the chalder, until by the time of Elizabeth it had doubled its original weight, and the 'ten' (chalder) was the equivalent of the keel of twenty tons.[61] Returning to the fourteenth century, the customs accounts of the port of Newcastle[62] show that between Michaelmas 1377 and Michaelmas 1378 as much as 7338 chalder of coal, valued at 2s. the chalder, was exported to foreign countries. For the most part this went to the Low Countries—Sluys, Bremerhaven, Flushing, and Dunkirk being amongst the ports mentioned, though in a number of cases ships of 'Lumbardye' occur, the average quantity taken by each vessel being a little less than fifty chalder. Of the home trade for this period no record is obtainable, and it is not until the time of Elizabeth that we can compare the exports to home and foreign ports. For the seven years 1591-7, the amount sent abroad was 95,558 chalder, rising from 10,000 in 1591 to 18,000 in 1593, and then falling gradually back to 10,000, while the home trade amounted to 418,200 chalder, increasing steadily from 45,700 up to over 70,000.[63] The supremacy of Newcastle is shown by a comparison of the amounts of coal exported to foreign countries from the chief English ports in 1592.[64] Newcastle comes first with 12,635 chalder, then Bristol with 580, Wales with 464, and Liverpool with 448.
The expansion of the home trade noticed in the returns for 1591-7 is borne out by an abundance of corroborative evidence, and may be largely attributed to the great increase at this period in the use of chimneys. Practically the chimney was an Elizabethan invention so far as the smaller houses were concerned, and 'the multitude of chimnies lately erected' was one of the changes most remarked upon by Harrison's old friends at the time that he wrote his Description of England, published in 1577. The reign of Elizabeth, therefore, when the rapid increase in the demand for house coal, coupled with a rise in the price, resulted in a rapid expansion of the industry in all parts of the country, marks the end of the medieval period of coal mining and the initiation of a new epoch with which we are not concerned.
