Tin mining claims an antiquity unsurpassed by any other industry in this country, but with what degree of justice may well be doubted. The claim of the western promontory of Britain, later known as Cornwall and Devon, to be the Cassiterides or Tin Islands whence the Phoenicians obtained their stores of that metal at least five hundred years before the Christian era rests upon rather shadowy grounds.[204] Diodorus Siculus, who wrote about B.C. 30, is the first writer definitely to connect Britain with the tin trade, and his statements appear to be based rather upon a doubtful understanding of earlier topographers than upon actual knowledge. According to him the tin was produced in the promontory of 'Bolerium' and brought to the island of 'Ictis,' whence it was transported to Gaul. If 'Bolerium' is Cornwall, then there is no reason to doubt that 'Ictis' is 'Insula Vectis,' or the Isle of Wight, which was at that date still connected to the mainland by a narrow ridge of rock, covered at highwater, but dry at low water, as 'Ictis' is said to have been.[205] It is certainly strange, if an ancient and well-established trade in tin really existed in Britain when the Romans came over, that that race, with its keen eye for metallic wealth, should have made no use of the tin mines of Cornwall. Yet there is no reference to these mines in the literature of the period of the Roman occupation, nor are there traces of anything approaching an occupation of Cornwall by the Romans, who appear to have ignored this corner of Britain completely. After the departure of the Romans, and before the Saxons conquered this district, which did not happen till the middle of the tenth century, there is some evidence of tin being worked here, as Cornish tin is said to have been carried over to France in the seventh century, and in a life of St. John of Alexandria, who died in 616, there is a story of an Alexandrian galley coming to Britain for tin.[206] That the Saxons worked the tin seems probable from the discovery of Saxon remains in the St. Austell tin grounds and elsewhere,[207] but the industry can hardly have been of any great importance at the time of the Norman Conquest, as there is no reference to it in the Domesday Survey.

While the history of tin mining in Britain prior to the middle of the twelfth century is problematical, there is from that time onwards an immense mass of material bearing upon the subject. This material has been patiently examined by Mr. George Randall Lewis, and summarised in his work on The Stannaries,[208] a book so full and complete that I have saved myself much labour by basing this chapter almost entirely upon it.

There are, as might be expected, many analogies between the mining of tin and the mining of lead. The processes were very similar, and the laws governing the workers had much in common, but it is in the case of the Stannaries that we find the full development of the 'free miner,' so far as England is concerned. Certain initial differences in the methods employed are observable owing to the form in which tin is obtained. Tin, like other metals, exists in veins or lodes embedded in the rock at various depths; where these veins outcrop on the banks of a stream they are broken up by the action of the water and climatic variations, the resultant pile of stanniferous boulders being known as 'shode'; the waters of the stream constantly wear away small pieces of the tin ore and carry it downwards until, owing to its heavy specific gravity, the tin sinks, forming a deposit in the bed of the stream which may sometimes be as much as twenty feet thick. It was this third class of alluvial tin which was alone worked in prehistoric and early medieval days. This might safely be assumed, but rather remarkable confirmation is obtained from an account of tin worked for Edmund of Cornwall in 1297. From this it appears that twenty-eight and a half 'foot-fates' of ore produced a thousand-weight (1200 lbs.) of 'white tin,' the proportion corresponding pretty closely with those—three 'foot-fates' of ore to yield 105 lbs. of metal—given in the sixteenth century by Thomas Beare for alluvial or 'stream' tin, which was far richer than mine tin.[209] It cannot have been very long before the miners realised that the stream tin was carried down by the water, and started to search for its source. The 'shode,' or boulder tin, must therefore have been worked almost as early as the alluvial deposits, and the final stage was the working of the 'lode.' In this lode mining the first workings were no doubt shallow trenches and confined to places where the ore lay close to the surface; a somewhat greater depth was obtained by 'shamelling,' the trench being carried down in stages, a 'shamell' or platform being left at each stage at the height to which the miner could throw his ore; finally came the deep shaft with galleries. But here, as in all mining, the question of drainage came in. Where the workings were quite shallow the water could be baled out with wooden bowls, or a 'level,' or deep ditch, could be dug. For greater depths the adit, or drainage gallery (see above, p. 50), was available, and although Mr. Lewis[210] cannot find any instance of the use of the adit in tin mining before the seventeenth century, it does not seem reasonable to doubt that it was in use much earlier. Exactly when pumps and other draining machines were introduced into the tin mines is not clear, but probably they were little used during our medieval period, when few of the mines were of any great depth.[211]

The primitive miner, when he had got his ore with the aid of his simple tools, a wooden shovel and a pick, also in earliest times of wood, but later of iron, constructed a rough hearth of stones on which he kindled a fire. When it was burning strongly he cast in his ore and afterwards collected the molten tin from the ashes. The next stage was to construct a regular furnace, exactly similar in type to the boles or furnaces used for lead-melting (see above, p. 51). These furnaces were enclosed in a building, the 'blowing-house,' in early times a rough thatched shanty, which was burnt from time to time to obtain the metallic dust which had lodged in the thatch, but afterwards more substantial. The cost of a 'melting howse' (80 feet by 20 feet) built at Larian in Cornwall by Burcord Crangs, a German, in the time of Queen Mary, was about £300, composed as follows:[212]—

The lumps of ore were first broken up with hammers or in a mill; the powdered ore was then washed to free it as far as possible from earthy impurities. Sometimes this was done with a 'vanne,' or shovel, the heavy ore remaining at the point of the shovel and the lighter impurities being washed away. An elaborate process was also used, in which the water containing the powdered ore was allowed to run over pieces of turf, the metallic portion sinking and becoming entangled in the fibres. The usual method, however, was by means of troughs or 'buddles.' This washing was not only a necessary preliminary to the smelting, but had an economic importance, as it was at the wash that the ore was divided when a claim was worked by partners, and the tribute or share due to the lord of the soil was apportioned; it was also, towards the end of the medieval period, the only place where the ore might be bought by dealers.[215] To prevent fraud it was therefore enacted that due notice should be given of washes, and no secret buddles should be used.

When we first get any details of tin-working, in 1198, it was usual for the tin to be smelted twice, the first being a rough process performed near the tinfield, but the second, or refining, being only permitted at special places and in the presence of the officers of the stannaries. The tin from the first smelting had to be stamped by the royal officers within two weeks of smelting, a toll being paid to the king at the same time of 2s. 6d. per thousand-weight in Devon, and of 5s. in Cornwall. Moreover, by the regulations of 1198, within thirteen weeks the tin had to be resmelted and again stamped, this time paying a tax of one mark.[216] The double smelting possibly ceased before the end of the thirteenth century. In any case the fiscal arrangement was altered, and in 1302, not long after the stannaries had reverted to the Crown, after being in the hands of the Earls of Cornwall from 1231 to 1300, we find the stampage dues consolidated into a single coinage duty. Under this system of coinage all the tin smelted had to be sent to certain specified towns, those for Cornwall being Bodmin, Liskeard, Lostwithiel, Helston, and Truro; and for Devon, Chagford, Tavistock, Plympton, and Ashburton. Here the tin remained until the two yearly visits of the coinage officials, at Michaelmas and Midsummer, when each block, weighing roughly 200 to 300 lbs., was assayed, weighed, and taxed: it was then stamped and might be sold. To prevent fraud an elaborate system of marking was gradually introduced during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the use of private marks by the owners of the blowing-houses was probably of much earlier origin. The use of these marks was designed not only to protect the merchant, but also to act as a check on smuggling, of which an immense amount undoubtedly went on.[217]

One result of the coinage system, by which tin might not be sold until stamped, and could only be stamped twice a year, was that the smaller tin-workers inevitably fell into the hands of the capitalists. The small independent tinner, with no reserve of capital to draw upon, had almost always to pledge his tin in advance to the adventurers and tin-dealers, and as a result he was often worse off with his theoretical independence than he would have been as a recognised wage-labourer. The wage work system must have been introduced into the stannaries at quite an early period. Even in 1237 there are references to servants who worked the mines for the tinners.[218] In 1342 certain of the wealthier Cornish tinners endeavoured to force their poorer brethren to work for them at a penny a day, when they had been working tin worth 20d. or more daily, and it is said that Abraham the tinner in 1357 was actually employing three hundred persons on his works. Side by side with these hired workmen were the independent tinners, working either separately or, more usually in partnerships; but from the small amounts which many of these tinners presented for coinage, Mr. Lewis has concluded that they may have been only partly dependent upon their mining.[219] There is, however, the complication that the small amounts presented may in part have been due to their having sold their ore to the larger dealers, but it is clear that some of the tinners did also carry on farming.

While the economic position of the smaller tinners must often have been little, if at all, superior to that of ordinary labourers, their political position was remarkable. They constituted a state within a state; the free miner 'paid taxes not as an Englishman, but as a miner. His law was not the law of the realm, but that of his mine. He obeyed the king only when his orders were communicated through the warden of the mines, and even then so long only as he respected the mining law. His courts were the mine courts, his parliament the mine parliament.'[220] The tinner was a free man and could not be subjected to the system of villeinage. He had the right of prospecting anywhere within the two counties, except in churchyards, highways, and gardens, and might 'bound' or stake out a claim by the simple process of cutting shallow holes and making piles of turf at the four corners of his claim, and such claim would be his absolute property provided that he worked it (the exact amount of work necessary to retain a claim varied in different places and at different periods). For his claim he paid to the lord of the land, whether it were the king or a private lord, a certain tribute of ore, usually the tenth or the fifteenth portion. He had, moreover, the right to divert streams, either to obtain water for washing his ore, or to enable him to dig in the bed of the stream, and the important privilege of compelling landowners to sell him fuel for his furnace. Further, he had his own courts, and was under the sole jurisdiction of the warden-officers of the stannaries. Each stannary, of which there were five in Cornwall and four in Devon, had its own court, presided over by a steward, and no tinner might plead or be impleaded outside his court, from which the appeal lay to the warden, or in practice to the vice-warden. How and when these privileges were obtained must remain a matter for speculation, but they can be traced when William de Wrotham was appointed warden in 1198, and were definitely confirmed to the tinners by King John in 1201. By development, apparently, from the two yearly great courts of the stannaries, arose the 'stannary parliaments.' The parliament for Cornwall consisted of twenty-four members, six being nominated by the mayor and council of each of the four towns of Lostwithiel, Launceston, Truro, and Helston; that of Devon contained ninety-six members, twenty-four from each of the stannaries. Those parliaments were summoned, through the lord warden, by the Duke of Cornwall, in whom the supreme control of the stannaries was vested from 1338 onwards, and had power not only to legislate for the stannaries, but to veto any national legislation which infringed their privileges. When the parliaments originated is not known, but they were certainly established before the beginning of the sixteenth century, prior to which date all records of their proceedings are lost.

With all these privileges, to which may be added exemption from ordinary taxation and military service, though the tinners were liable to be taxed separately and enrolled for service under their own officers, it was natural that the exact definition of a tinner should have given rise to much dispute. On the one hand, it was argued that these exemptions and privileges applied only to working tinners actually employed in getting ore; on the other, the tin dealers, blowers, and owners of blowing-houses claimed to be included. Eventually the larger definition was accepted, and, indeed, it was almost entirely from the capitalist section of the industry that the parliaments were elected, from the sixteenth century, if not earlier.

It is rather remarkable that when the stannaries first come into evidence, in the reign of Henry II., the chief centre of production appears to have been Devon rather than Cornwall.[221] So far as can be estimated the output during this reign rose gradually from about 70 tons in 1156 to about 350 in 1171. Richard I., with his constant need of money, reorganised the stannaries in 1198, and at the beginning of John's reign the output was between 400 and 450 tons. The issue of the charter to the stannaries in 1201 does not seem to have had any immediate effect on the industry, but about ten years later there was increased activity, the output rising in 1214 to 600 tons.[222] During the early years of Henry III. the tin revenues were farmed out, and no details are available either for these years, or from the period 1225-1300, during which time the stannaries were in the hands of the Earls of Cornwall. Two things only are clear, that the total output had fallen off, and that Cornwall had now far outstripped Devon. The grant of a charter confirming the privileges of the stannaries in 1305 seems to have marked the beginning of a more prosperous era, and by 1337 the output had reached 700 tons. The Black Death, however, in 1350 put an end to this prosperity, and with the exception of a boom during the reign of Henry IV. tinning did not recover until just at the end of our medieval period. Even at its worst, however, the industry was a source of considerable revenue, the coinage duties[223] never falling below £1000, and amounting in 1337 and 1400 to over £3000, in addition to which there were other smaller payments and perquisites.[224] The royal privileges of pre-emption was also of value to needy kings who frequently availed themselves of it to grant this pre-emption, or virtual monopoly, to wealthy foreign merchants and other money-lenders in return for substantial loans.

Before leaving the subject of the tin mines of Cornwall and Devon, it is perhaps worth while noting that there is virtually no documentary evidence of the working of the copper deposits of Cornwall prior to the late sixteenth century, and it would seem that most of the copper used in medieval England must have been imported.