A HISTORY OF CORNWALL of the tools of the ancient and mediaeval tinner which, as we have just seen, were of wood and unfitted for piercing rock ; the fact that whenever mention is made of the specific nature of a tin work it is invariably described as a moor or stream work and never as a mine work 5 1 the mining customs of Cornwall which, in their total lack of provision for the occurrence of veins of mixed metals, are evidently adapted only to stream-tin works all point to this as the proper solution of the question. Similar conclusions may be drawn from the continual complaints in which the landlords set forth the destructiveness of the stannary works to their crops. A single example will suffice. In 1361 John of Treeures complains to the prince and his council ' that, whereas the tin- ners have warrant of the Prince to dig and raise tin where they can find it, and have dug and collected it for a long time on the moor waste of the said John and his ancestors in the vill of Treeures, who received from the tinners a third part of the tin for toll, according to ancient ordinance, for the damage done to the lord of the place ; but now of late more than sixty tin- ners have entered on his demesne and have con- ducted water to the vill of Treeures over his demesne and soil, so that by reason of the great quantity of water they deluge the land there where they work upon the moor, and nothing remains of the good land there but stones and gravel, so that corn will not grow there ; that the tinners refuse to give more toll for waste done to the demesne than for damage on the waste moor; wherefore the said John prays, for the love of Christ, that you may be pleased to ordain a remedy, that is to increase the toll in the demesne beyond the toll in the waste in propor- tion to its greater value.' 2 Complaints of this sort, so numerous during the Middle Ages, 3 could not have been occasioned by the driving of shafts in rocky edges, but by the wholesale up- turning of the soil by trenching and excavating for alluvial deposits. Finally we may have recourse to a quasi- mathematical argument. Stream tin, as we know from the testimony of Thomas Beare, 4 was considered far superior in quality to mine tin. Three foot-fates of the former (about eight quarts) 6 sufficed for 105 pounds of refined 1 See Smirke, Vice v. Thomas, App. 26, citing from the White Book of Cornwall, the complaint of Henry Nanfan ; also Proceedings In the Chancery ofERzabtth, i, p. xiii. It should be noted also that the statutes of Henry VIII against the choking of the rivers with silt from the tin mines, refers expressly to stream works as the offenders (Stat. 23 Hen. VIII, c. 8 ; 27 Hen. VIII, c. 23 ; P. R. O. Ct. R. bdle. 159, No. 26).
- Smirke, Vice v. Thomas, App. 25, citing the White
Book of Cornwall. 3 Par/. R. (Rec. Com.), i, 297, 312, 382 ; ii, 190. 4 Harl. MS. 6380. 6 Harl. MS. 6380, fol. 35. metal. If we turn now to the account given in the sole surviving Pipe Roll of Edmund of Cornwall of that earl's operations with regard to the preemption of the black tin in 1297 6 we find that, having purchased the black tin at i8</. the foot-fate, to produce a thousand-weight of white tin he used twenty-eight and one-half feet of ore, figures which almost exactly tally with the account of the stream tin given by Beare three centuries later. The inference is that Edmund's tin (and he seems to have preempted the entire output) was obtained from stream works. With the progress of tin mining during the Middle Ages the scene of operations shifted steadily from the east to the west. During the twelfth century the rich Devon stream works produced almost all the tin used in Europe, and Cornish mining, such as it was, lay near the Devon boundary. In 1198 De Wrotham on occasion of his reforms held two inquests, at Exeter and at Launceston. In Devon he had twenty-six witnesses and in Cornwall only eighteen, 7 facts which indicate fairly clearly about what centres most of the mining was con- ducted. Devon tin however was soon exhausted, and in the thirteenth century Cornwall came to the forefront. 8 Devon, which in 1189 had produced over 600 thousand-weight, 9 had pro- duced only seventy-four in I243, 10 and although in later centuries it sometimes exceeded this amount, Cornwall never failed to maintain its preeminence with the greatest ease. In the latter county the centres of activity moved ever to the west. In 1305, out of a total yield for Cornwall of 850 thousand-weight, the tin coined at Lostwithiel and Bodmin, the two eastern markets, amounted to 716 thousand weight, while the western parts, represented by Helston and Truro, produced only 134. During the forty or fifty years of accounts during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I, 12 however, the average annual product of the two eastern stannaries, as represented by the coinage at Lostwithiel and Liskeard, was but 135 thousand-weight as compared with 807 for the west. 13 Penzance, in the Land's End district, 6 Exch. K. R. Bailiffs' Accts. of Edmund of Cornwall, 24-25 Edw. I. 7 Black Book of the Exchequer, No. i o. 8 In 1 220 the Devon stannaries were farmed for but 200 marks, while those of Cornwall brought five times as much (Pat. 5 Hen. Ill, m. 4, 8 ; Close, 5 Hen. Ill, m. 8, 9 ; 9 Hen. Ill, m. 4, 9 ; 10 Hen. Ill, m. 27 ; Fine R, 5 Hen. Ill, m. 7). ' Pipe R. I Ric. I, Devon. 10 Ibid. 27 Hen. Ill, Devon. 11 P. R. O. Exch. K. R. Accts. bdle. 261, Nos. i and 2. 11 Receiver's Rolls. " An examination of the tribulage accounts (Mins. Accts. Duchy of Cornw.) shows an enormous increase in tinning in the Penwith and Kerrier district, and a falling off in Blackmore in the east. 542
