this country for making iron with pit-coal, was with raw coal, by a Mr. Blewstone, a German, who built his furnace at Wednesbury, so ingeniously contrived (that only the flame of the coal should come to the ore, with several other conveniences), that many were of opinion he would succeed in it. But experience, that great baffler of speculation, showed it could not be; the sulphureous vitriolic streams that issue from the pyrites, which frequently, if not always, accompanies pit-coal, ascending with the flame, and poisoning the ore, sufficiently to make it render much worse iron than that made with charcoal, though not, perhaps, so much worse, as the body of coal itself would possibly do."

This last experiment is expressly stated to have been made with "raw coal," but it does not appear that this arose from any want of knowledge of the method of coking the coal, as Dr. Plot further mentions:

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They have a way of charring the coal, in all particulars the same as they do wood, whence the coal is freed from those noxious steams that would otherwise give the malt an ill odour. The coal thus prepared they call cokes, which conceives as strong a heat almost as charcoal itself, and is as fit for most other uses, but for melting, fining, and refining of iron, which it cannot be brought to do, though attempted by the most skilful and curious artists."

The various attempts to substitute pit-coal for charcoal having thus failed, no further experiments were made till the early part of the next century, when pit-coal was first used by Mr. Abraham Darby, in his furnace at Colebrook Dale, in 1713; and in the forty-fourth volume of the "Philosophical Transactions," published in the year 1747, it is stated, that "Mr. Ford, from iron ore and coal, both got in the same Dale (Colebrook), makes iron brittle or tough, as he pleases; there being cannon thus cast so soft, as to bear turning like wrought iron."

At this eventful era in the history of the manufacture of iron, when agriculture was progressively sweeping before it what remained of the once immense tracts of woodland, till then dedicated to the supply of the blast furnace, when the

increased application of machinery, and the introduction of the steam-engine, gave hope of new life and impulse to manufactures in general, the iron trade seemed dwindling into insignificance and contempt.

It was not until impelled by necessity that pit-coal again became an object of general consideration, nor until improvements in machinery had attained a great degree of certainty, and experience had taught the mechanic the manifest advantages of the steam-engine, that the adventurous manufacturer found that he possessed in the immense beds of coal an extent of means to which he had till then been a stranger. Small furnaces, supplied with air from leathern bellows, worked by oxen, horses, or human labour, were laid aside, and an increase of size took place, together with an increase of the column of blast necessary to produce combustion. But, notwithstanding the efforts that were then made, there was a gradual, but steady, diminution in the quantity of iron produced, although every year witnessed an increased demand for the article, particularly in its manufactured state.

Recourse was had to foreign markets for the necessary supply, and the immense annual importations from Russia and Sweden may date their origin from this period. The flourishing and extensive detail of Dudley no longer existed, and the 300 blast-furnaces, mentioned by him, were now diminished to fifty-nine, and their total annual produce to 17,350 tons, or not quite 300 tons from each furnace, which is further shown in the following table, distinguishing the number of furnaces, and the make in each county, in the year 1740:

:

The following are the imports and exports of iron at this

The first knives made in England were by one Thomas Mathews, of London, in the year 1563, when we imported the greatest part of our manufacture requisite from Flanders and other countries.-Oddy's European Commerce.

"June 20, 1662.-Drew up the agreement between the King (Charles the Second) and Sir John Winter, about the Forrest of Deane; and having done it, he came himself. I did not know him to be the Queen Dowager's Secretary before, but observed him to be a man of fine parts; and we read it, and both liked it well. That done, I turned to the Forrest of Deane, in Speede's mapps, and there he showed me how it lies; and the sea-bayly, with the great charge of carrying it to Lydny, and many other things worth my knowing; and I do perceive that I am very short in my business by not knowing many times the geographical part of my business."- Pepys's Memoirs; Old Iron Furnaces in the Forest of Dean.

“August 14, 1662.-Commissioner Pett and I being invited, went by Sir John Winter's coach, sent for us, to the Mitre, in Fanchurch Street, to a venison-pasty; where I found a very worthy man, and good discourse. Most of which was concerning the Forrest of Deane, and the timber there, and iron workes, with their great antiquity, and the vast heaps of cinders which they find, and are now of great value, being necessary for the making of iron at this day, and without which they cannot work: with the age of many trees there left at a great fall in Edward the Third's time, by the name of forbidtrees, which at this day are called vorbid trees." — Ibid.

Ship-building, and the founding of iron cannon, were the sole manufactures in which the English excelled in James the First's reign. They seem, indeed, to have possessed alone the secret of the latter, and great complaints were made every parliament against the exportation of English ordnance.-Appendix to Hume's History of Great Britain.

Charles the First, in 1637, by proclamation, ordered the pigs and bars of iron made in England to be marked by his surveyors of the iron works, to prevent the sale of bad iron, and that iron was not to be exported without the king's licence, under pain of forfeiture, &c. Those surveyors were also empowered to enter any woods that were felled, cut, or corded, to be converted

into coal for making of iron, whereby it might appear of what condition those woods were that should be employed that way, and that they be not cut down contrary to law. - Macpherson's Annals of Commerce.

1681.-Andrew Yarrington, in a work entitled " England's Improvement by Sea and Land," asserts that tin plates (iron plates tinned over) were now made in England through his means, he having learnt the art of making them in Bohemia. Little was at this time done in this manufacture; in the year 1720 it was one of the many projects set afloat, and, in 1740, it was brought to considerable perfection.

1685.-Manufacture of fine ironmongery in England improved by French

refugees.

The ingenious William Chetwyord, of Rugely, Esq., at Madely furnace, cast iron rollers for gardens, hollow, like the mills for sugar canes, of 5, 6, 7, or 800 weight a-piece; the hollow whereof being filled with timber, and wedged up close, the other iron work of the roller is fastened to the wood in the same place as in other rollers, which are weightier and more substantial than any other rollers I have elsewhere seen. For such purposes as these, this serves well enough, but for others it will not, for it is so brittle, that, being heated, with one blow of a hammer it will break all to pieces.—Plott's Nat. History of Staffordshire, 1686.

In the early part of the eighteenth century, John Hanbury invented the method of rolling iron plates by means of cylinders, and introduced the art of turning into England.-Coxe's Tour in Monmouthshire.

CHAP. III.

IRELAND.

THE history of the iron manufacture in England and Wales having been continued from its commencement to its state of prosperity, and subsequent decline, arising from the destruction of the forests, and, consequently, of the means of supplying the furnaces with the fuel, which at that time was indispensable, it will be desirable, before we enter on the account of more extensive operations, to give a short history of the manufacture in Ireland, and also in the British colonies of America.

To the English who settled in Ireland during and after the reign of Elizabeth, the Irish were indebted for the discovery of the iron mines of that country; the natives, constantly engaged either in quarrels amongst themselves, or with the old English as they were termed, that is, those who settled in Ireland from the time of the first conquest until the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign, had neither time nor inclination to attend to such inquiries; and the disorganised state of the country also operated on the settlers.

James the First came to the throne soon after the submission of O'Neil, in 1603, and immediately proceeded by a steady, regular, and well-concerted plan, to civilise the inhabitants, to reconcile them to laws and industry, and to render their subjection durable and useful to the crown of England, and, in the space of nine years, he made greater advances towards the reformation of that kingdom than had been made in the 440 years which had elapsed since the conquest was first attempted.

He abolished many Irish customs which supplied the place