Industrial Biography

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The day before their intended execution, the prisoners formed a plan
of escape. It was Sunday morning, the 20th August, 1648, when they
seized their opportunity, "at ten of the cloeke in sermon time;" and,
overpowering the gaolers, Dudley, with Sir Henry Bates, Major
Elliotts, Captain South, Captain Paris, and six others, succeeded in
getting away, and making again for the open country. Dudley had
received a wound in the leg, and could only get along with great
difficulty. He records that he proceeded on crutches, through
Worcester, Tewkesbury, and Gloucester, to Bristol, having been "fed
three weeks in private in an enemy's hay mow." Even the most
lynx-eyed Parliamentarian must have failed to recognise the quondam
royalist general of artillery in the helpless creature dragging
himself along upon crutches; and he reached Bristol in safety.

His military career now over, he found himself absolutely penniless.
His estate of about 200L. per annum had been sequestrated and sold by
the government;*
[footnote...
The Journals of the House of Commons, on the 2nd Nov. 1652, have the
following entry: "The House this day resumed the debate upon the
additional Bill for sale of several lands and estates forfeited to
the Commonwealth for treason, when it was resolved that the name of
Dud Dudley of Green Lodge be inserted into this Bill."
...]
his house in Worcester had been seized and his sickly wife turned out
of doors; and his goods, stock, great shop, and ironworks, which he
himself valued at 2000L., were destroyed. He had also lost the
offices of Serjeant-at-arms, Lieutenant of Ordnance, and Surveyor of
the Mews, which he had held under the king; in a word, he found
himself reduced to a state of utter destitution.

Dudley was for some time under the necessity of living in great
privacy at Bristol; but when the king had been executed, and the
royalists were finally crushed at Worcester, Dud gradually emerged
from his concealment. He was still the sole possessor of the grand
secret of smelting iron with pit-coal, and he resolved upon one more
commercial adventure, in the hope of yet turning it to good account.
He succeeded in inducing Walter Stevens, linendraper, and John Stone,
merchant, both of Bristol, to join him as partners in an ironwork,
which they proceeded to erect near that city. The buildings were well
advanced, and nearly 700L. had been expended, when a quarrel occurred
between Dudley and his partners, which ended in the stoppage of the
works, and the concern being thrown into Chancery. Dudley alleges
that the other partners "cunningly drew him into a bond," and "did
unjustly enter staple actions in Bristol of great value against him,
because he was of the king's party;" but it would appear as if there
had been some twist or infirmity of temper in Dudley himself, which
prevented him from working harmoniously with such persons as he
became associated with in affairs of business.

In the mean time other attempts were made to smelt iron with
pit-coal. Dudley says that Cromwell and the then Parliament granted a
patent to Captain Buck for the purpose; and that Cromwell himself,
Major Wildman, and various others were partners in the patent. They
erected furnaces and works in the Forest of Dean;*
[footnote...
Mr. Mushet, in his 'Papers on Iron,' says, that "although he had
carefully examined every spot and relic in Dean Forest likely to
denote the site of Dud Dudley's enterprising but unfortunate
experiment of making pig-iron with pit coal," it had been without
success; neither could he find any traces of the like operations of
Cromwell and his partners.
...]
but, though Cromwell and his officers could fight and win battles,
they could not smelt and forge iron with pit-coal. They brought one
Dagney, an Italian glass-maker, from Bristol, to erect a new furnace
for them, provided with sundry pots of glass-house clay; but no
success attended their efforts. The partners knowing of Dudley's
possession of the grand secret, invited him to visit their works; but
all they could draw from him was that they would never succeed in
making iron to profit by the methods they were pursuing. They next
proceeded to erect other works at Bristol, but still they failed.
Major Wildman*
[footnote...
Dudley says, "Major Wildman, more barbarous to me than a wild man,
although a minister, bought the author's estate, near 200L. per
annum, intending to compell from the author his inventions of making
iron with pitcole, but afterwards passed my estate unto two barbarous
brokers of London, that pulled down the author's two mantion houses,
sold 500 timber trees off his land, and to this day are his houses
unrepaired. Wildman himself fell under the grip of Cromwell. Being
one of the chiefs of the Republican party, he was seized at Exton,
near Marlborough, in l654, and imprisoned in Chepstow Castle.
...]
bought Dudley's sequestrated estate, in the hope of being able to
extort his secret of making iron with pit-coal; but all their
attempts proving abortive, they at length abandoned the enterprise in
despair. In 1656, one Captain Copley obtained from Cromwell a further
patent with a similar object; and erected works near Bristol, and
also in the Forest of Kingswood. The mechanical engineers employed by
Copley failed in making his bellows blow; on which he sent for
Dudley, who forthwith "made his bellows to be blown feisibly;" but
Copley failed, like his predecessors, in making iron, and at length
he too desisted from further experiments.

Such continued to be the state of things until the Restoration, when
we find Dud Dudley a petitioner to the king for the renewal of his
patent. He was also a petitioner for compensation in respect of the
heavy losses he had sustained during the civil wars. The king was
besieged by crowds of applicants of a similar sort, but Dudley was no
more successful than the others. He failed in obtaining the renewal
of his patent. Another applicant for the like privilege, probably
having greater interest at court, proved more successful. Colonel
Proger and three others*
[footnote...
June 13, 1661. Petition of Col. Jas. Proger and three others to the
king for a patent for the sole exercise of their invention of melting
down iron and other metals with coal instead of wood, as the great
consumption of coal [charcoal ?] therein causes detriment to
shipping, &c. With reference thereon to Attorney-General Palmer, and
his report, June 18, in favour of the petition,--State Papers,
Charles II. (Dom. vol, xxxvii, 49.
...]
were granted a patent to make iron with coal; but Dudley knew the
secret, which the new patentees did not; and their patent came to
nothing.

Dudley continued to address the king in importunate petitions, asking
to be restored to his former offices of Serjeant-at-arms, Lieutenant
of Ordnance, and Surveyor of the Mews or Armoury. He also petitioned
to be appointed Master of the Charter House in Smithfield, professing
himself willing to take anything, or hold any living.*
[footnote...
In his second petition he prays that a dwelling-house situated in
Worcester, and belonging to one Baldwin, "a known traitor," may be
assigned to him in lieu of Alderman Nash's, which had reverted to
that individual since his return to loyalty; Dudley reminding the
king that his own house in that city had been given up by him for the
service of his father Charles I., and turned into a factory for arms.
It does not appear that this part of his petition was successful.
...]
We find him sending in two petitions to a similar effect in June,
1660; and a third shortly after. The result was, that he was
reappointed to the office of Serjeant-at-Arms; but the Mastership of
the Charter-House was not disposed of until 1662, when it fell to the
lot of one Thomas Watson.*
[footnote...
State Papers, vol. xxxi. Doquet Book, p.89.
...]
In 1661, we find a patent granted to Wm. Chamberlaine and--Dudley,
Esq., for the sole use of their new invention of plating steel, &c.,
and tinning the said plates; but whether Dud Dudley was the person
referred to, we are unable precisely to determine. A few years later,
he seems to have succeeded in obtaining the means of prosecuting his
original invention; for in his Metallum Martis, published in 1665, he
describes himself as living at Green's Lodge, in Staffordshire; and
he says that near it are four forges, Green's Forge, Swin Forge,
Heath Forge, and Cradley Forge, where he practises his "perfect
invention." These forges, he adds, "have barred all or most part of
their iron with pit-coal since the authors first invention In 1618,
which hath preserved much wood. In these four, besides many other
forges, do the like [sic ]; yet the author hath had no benefit
thereby to this present." From that time forward, Dud becomes lost to
sight. He seems eventually to have retired to St. Helen's in
Worcestershire, where he died in 1684, in the 85th year of his age.
He was buried in the parish church there, and a monument, now
destroyed, was erected to his memory, bearing the inscription partly
set forth underneath.*
[footnote...

Pulvis et umbra sumus
Memento mori.

Dodo Dudley chiliarchi nobilis Edwardi nuper domini de Dudley filius,
patri charus et regiae Majestatis fidissimus subditus et servus in
asserendo regein, in vindicartdo ecclesiam, in propugnando legem ac
libertatem Anglicanam, saepe captus, anno 1648, semel condemnatus et
tamen non decollatus, renatum denuo vidit diadaema hic inconcussa
semper virtute senex.

Differt non aufert mortem longissima vita
Sed differt multam cras hodiere mori.
Quod nequeas vitare, fugis:
Nec formidanda est.

Plot frequently alludes to Dudley in his Natural History of
Staffordshire, and when he does so he describes him as the "worshipful
Dud Dudley," showing the estimation in which he was held by his
contemporaries.
...]

CHAPTER IV.

ANDREW YARRANTON.

"There never have been wanting men to whom England's improvement by
sea and land was one of the dearest thoughts of their lives, and to
whom England's good was the foremost of their worldly considerations.
And such, emphatically, was Andrew Yarranton, a true patriot in the
best sense of the word."--DOVE, Elements of Political Science.

That industry had a sore time of it during the civil wars will
further appear from the following brief account of Andrew Yarranton,
which may be taken as a companion memoir to that of Dud Dudley. For
Yarranton also was a Worcester ironmaster and a soldier--though on
the opposite side,--but more even than Dudley was he a man of public
spirit and enterprise, an enlightened political economist (long
before political economy had been recognised as a science), and in
many respects a true national benefactor. Bishop Watson said that he
ought to have had a statue erected to his memory because of his
eminent public services; and an able modern writer has gone so far as
to say of him that he was "the founder of English political economy,
the first man in England who saw and said that peace was better than
war, that trade was better than plunder, that honest industry was
better than martial greatness, and that the best occupation of a
government was to secure prosperity at home, and let other nations
alone."*
[footnote...
PATRICK EDWARD DOVE, Elements of Political Science. Edinburgh, 1854.
...]
Yet the name of Andrew Yarranton is scarcely remembered, or is at
most known to only a few readers of half-forgotten books. The
following brief outline of his history is gathered from his own
narrative and from documents in the State Paper Office.

Andrew Yarranton was born at the farmstead of Larford, in the parish
of Astley, in Worcestershire, in the year 1616.*
[footnote...
A copy of the entries in the parish register relating to the various
members of the Yarranton family, kindly forwarded to us by the Rev.
H. W. Cookes, rector of Astley, shows them to have resided in that
parish for many generations. There were the Yarrantons of Yarranton,
of Redstone, of Larford, of Brockenton, and of Longmore. With that
disregard for orthography in proper names which prevailed some three
hundred years since, they are indifferently designated as Yarran,
Yarranton, and Yarrington. The name was most probably derived from
two farms named Great and Little Yarranton, or Yarran (originally
Yarhampton), situated in the parish of Astley. The Yarrantons
frequently filled local offices in that parish, and we find several
of them officiating at different periods as bailiffs of Bewdley.
...]
In his sixteenth year he was put apprentice to a Worcester
linendraper, and remained at that trade for some years; but not
liking it, he left it, and was leading a country life when the civil
wars broke out. Unlike Dudley, he took the side of the Parliament,
and joined their army, in which he served for some time as a soldier.
His zeal and abilities commended him to his officers, and he was
raised from one position to another, until in the course of a few
years we find him holding the rank of captain. "While a soldier,"
says he, "I had sometimes the honour and misfortune to lodge and
dislodge an army;" but this is all the information he gives us of his
military career. In the year 1648 he was instrumental in discovering
and frustrating a design on the part of the Royalists to seize Doyley
House in the county of Hereford, and other strongholds, for which he
received the thanks of Parliament "for his ingenuity, discretion, and
valour," and a substantial reward of 500L.*
[footnote...
Journals of the House of Commons, lst July, 1648.
...]
He was also recommended to the Committee of Worcester for further
employment. But from that time we hear no more of him in connection
with the civil wars. When Cromwell assumed the supreme control of
affairs, Yarranton retired from the army with most of the
Presbyterians, and devoted himself to industrial pursuits.

We then find him engaged in carrying on the manufacture of iron at
Ashley, near Bewdley, in Worcestershire. "In the year 1652", says he,
"I entered upon iron-works, and plied them for several years."*
[footnote...
YARRANTON'S England's Improvement by Sea and Land. Part I. London,
1677.
...]
He made it a subject of his diligent study how to provide employment
for the poor, then much distressed by the late wars. With the help of
his wife, he established a manufacture of linen, which was attended
with good results. Observing how the difficulties of communication,
by reason of the badness of the roads, hindered the development of
the rich natural resources of the western counties,*
[footnote...
There seems a foundation of truth in the old English distich --

The North for Greatness, the East for Health,
The South for Neatness, the West for Wealth.
...]
he applied himself to the improvement of the navigation of the larger
rivers, making surveys of them at his own cost, and endeavouring to
stimulate local enterprise so as to enable him to carry his plans
into effect.

While thus occupied, the restoration of Charles II. took place, and
whether through envy or enmity Yarranton's activity excited the
suspicion of the authorities. His journeys from place to place seemed
to them to point to some Presbyterian plot on foot. On the 13th of
November, 1660, Lord Windsor, Lord-Lieutenant of the county, wrote to
the Secretary of State--"There is a quaker in prison for speaking
treason against his Majesty, and a countryman also, and Captain
Yarrington for refusing to obey my authority."*
[footnote...
State Paper Office. Dom. Charles II. 1660-1. Yarranton afterwards
succeeded in making a friend of Lord Windsor, as would appear from
his dedication of England's Improvement to his Lordship, whom he
thanks for the encouragement he had given to him in his survey of
several rivers with a view to their being rendered navigable.
...]
It would appear from subsequent letters that Yarranton must have lain
in prison for nearly two years, charged with conspiring against the
king's authority, the only evidence against him consisting of some
anonymous letter's. At the end of May, 1662, he succeeded in making
his escape from the custody of the Provost Marshal. The High Sheriff
scoured the country after him at the head of a party of horse, and
then he communicated to the Secretary of State, Sir Edward Nicholas,
that the suspected conspirator could not be found, and was supposed
to have made his way to London. Before the end of a month Yarranton
was again in custody, as appears from the communication of certain
justices of Surrey to Sir Edward Nicholas.*
[footnote...
The following is a copy of the document from the State Papers: --
"John Bramfield, Geo. Moore, and Thos. Lee, Esqrs. and Justices of
Surrey, to Sir Edw. Nicholas.--There being this day brought before us
one Andrew Yarranton, and he accused to have broken prison, or at
least made his escape out of the Marshalsea at Worcester, being there
committed by the Deputy-Lieuts. upon suspicion of a plot in November
last; we having thereupon examined him, he allegeth that his Majesty
hath been sought unto on his behalf, and hath given order to yourself
for his discharge, and a supersedeas against all persons and
warrants, and thereupon hath desired to appeal unto you. The which we
conceiving to be convenient and reasonable (there being no positive
charge against him before us), have accordingly herewith conveyed
him unto you by a safe hand, to be further examined or disposed of as
you shall find meet.--S. P. O. Dom. Chas. II. 23rd June, 1662.
...]
As no further notice of Yarranton occurs in the State Papers, and as
we shortly after find him publicly occupied in carrying out his plans
for improving the navigation of the western rivers, it is probable
that his innoceney of any plot was established after a legal
investigation. A few years later he published in London a 4to. tract
entitled 'A Full Discovery of the First Presbyterian Sham Plot,'
which most probably contained a vindication of his conduct.*
[footnote...
We have been unable to refer to this tract, there being no copy of it
in the British Museum.
...]

Yarranton was no sooner at liberty than we find him again occupied
with his plans of improved inland navigation. His first scheme was to
deepen the small river Salwarp, so as to connect Droitwich with the
Severn by a water communication, and thus facilitate the transport of
the salt so abundantly yielded by the brine springs near that town.
In 1665, the burgesses of Droitwich agreed to give him 750L. and
eight salt vats in Upwich, valued at 80L. per annum, with
three-quarters of a vat in Northwich, for twenty-one years, in
payment for the work. But the times were still unsettled, and
Yarranton and his partner Wall not being rich, the scheme was not
then carried into effect.*
[footnote...
NASH'S Worcestershire, i. 306.
...]
In the following year we find him occupied with a similar scheme to
open up the navigation of the river Stour, passing by Stourport and
Kidderminster, and connect it by an artificial cut with the river
Trent. Some progress was made with this undertaking, so far in
advance of the age, but, like the other, it came to a stand still for
want of money, and more than a hundred years passed before it was
carried out by a kindred genius--James Brindley, the great canal
maker. Mr. Chambers says that when Yarranton's scheme was first
brought forward, it met with violent opposition and ridicule. The
undertaking was thought wonderfully bold, and, joined to its great
extent, the sandy, spongy nature of the ground, the high banks
necessary to prevent the inundation of the Stour on the canal,
furnished its opponents, if not with sound argument, at least with
very specious topics for opposition and laughter.*
[footnote...
JOHN CHAMBERS, Biographical Illustrations of Worcestershire. London,
1820.
...]
Yarranton's plan was to make the river itself navigable, and by
uniting it with other rivers, open up a communication with the Trent;
while Brindley's was to cut a canal parallel with the river, and
supply it with water from thence. Yarranton himself thus accounts for
the failure of his scheme in 'England's Improvement by Sea and
Land': -- "It was my projection," he says, "and I will tell you the
reason why it was not finished. The river Stour and some other rivers
were granted by an Act of Parliament to certain persons of honor, and
some progress was made in the work, but within a small while after
the Act passed*
[footnote...
The Act for making the Stour and Salwarp navigable originated in the
Lords and was passed in the year 1661.
...]
it was let fall again; but it being a brat of my own, I was not
willing it should be abortive, wherefore I made offers to perfect it,
having a third part of the inheritance to me and my heirs for ever,
and we came to an agreement, upon which I fell on, and made it
completely navigable from Stourbridge to Kidderminster, and carried
down many hundred tons of coal, and laid out near 1000L., and there
it was obstructed for want of money."*
[footnote...
Nash, in his Hist. of Worc., intimates that Lord Windsor subsequently
renewed the attempt to make the Salwarp navigable. He constructed
five out of the six locks, and then abandoned the scheme. Gough, in
his edition of Camden's Brit. ii. 357, Lond. 1789, says, "It is not
long since some of the boats made use of in Yarranton's navigation
were found. Neither tradition nor our projector's account of the
matter perfectly satisfy us why this navigation was neglected..... We
must therefore conclude that the numerous works and glass-houses upon
the Stour, and in the neighbourhood of Stourbridge, did not then
exist, A.D. 1666. ....The navigable communication which now connects
Trent and Severn, and which runs in the course of Yarranton's
project, is already of general use.... The canal since executed under
the inspection of Mr. Brindley, running parallel with the river....
cost the proprietors 105,000L."
...]

Another of Yarranton's far-sighted schemes of a similar kind was one
to connect the Thames with the Severn by means of an artificial cut,
at the very place where, more than a century after his death, it was
actually carried out by modern engineers. This canal, it appears, was
twice surveyed under his direction by his son. He did, however,
succeed in his own time in opening up the navigation. of the Avon,
and was the first to carry barges upon its waters from Tewkesbury to
Stratford.

The improvement of agriculture, too, had a share of Yarranton's
attention. He saw the soil exhausted by long tillage and constantly
repeated crops of rye, and he urged that the land should have rest or
at least rotation of crop. With this object he introduced
clover-seed, and supplied it largely to the farmers of the western
counties, who found their land doubled in value by the new method of
husbandry, and it shortly became adopted throughout the country.
Seeing how commerce was retarded by the small accommodation provided
for shipping at the then principal ports, Yarranton next made surveys
and planned docks for the city of London; but though he zealously
advocated the subject, he found few supporters, and his plans proved
fruitless. In this respect he was nearly a hundred and fifty years
before his age, and the London importers continued to conduct their
shipping business in the crowded tideway of the Thames down even to
the beginning of the present century.

While carrying on his iron works, it occurred to Yarranton that it
would be of great national advantage if the manufacture of tin-plate
could be introduced into England. Although the richest tin mines then
known existed in this country, the mechanical arts were at so low an
ebb that we were almost entirely dependent upon foreigners for the
supply of the articles manufactured from the metal. The Saxons were
the principal consumers of English tin, and we obtained from them in
return nearly the whole of our tin-plates. All attempts made to
manufacture them in England had hitherto failed; the beating out of
the iron by hammers into laminae sufficiently thin and smooth, and
the subsequent distribution and fixing of the film of tin over the
surface of the iron, proving difficulties which the English
manufacturers were unable to overcome. To master these difficulties
the indefatigable Yarranton set himself to work. "Knowing," says he,
"the usefulness of tin-plates and the goodness of our metals for that
purpose, I did, about sixteen years since (i.e. about 1665),
endeavour to find out the way for making thereof; whereupon I
acquainted a person of much riches, and one that was very
understanding in the iron manufacture, who was pleased to say that he
had often designed to get the trade into England, but never could
find out the way. Upon which it was agreed that a sum of monies
should be advanced by several persons,*
[footnote...
In the dedication of his book, entitled Englands Improvement by Sea
and Land, Part I., Yarranton gives the names of the "noble patriots"
who sent him on his journey of inquiry. They were Sir Waiter Kirtham
Blount, Bart., Sir Samuel Baldwin and Sir Timothy Baldwin, Knights,
Thomas Foley and Philip Foley, Esquires, and six other gentlemen. The
father of the Foleys was himself supposed to have introduced the art
of iron-splitting into England by an expedient similar to that
adopted by Yarranton in obtaining a knowledge of the tin-plate
manufacture (Self-Help, p.145). The secret of the silk-throwing
machinery of Piedmont was in like manner introduced into England by
Mr. Lombe of Derby, who shortly succeeded in founding a flourishing
branch of manufacture. These were indeed the days of romance and
adventure in manufactures.
...]
for the defraying of my charges of travelling to the place where
these plates are made, and from thence to bring away the art of
making them. Upon which, an able fire-man, that well understood the
nature of iron, was made choice of to accompany me; and being fitted
with an ingenious interpreter that well understood the language, and
that had dealt much in that commodity, we marched first for Hamburgh,
then to Leipsic, and from thence to Dresden, the Duke of Saxony's
court, where we had notice of the place where the plates were made;
which was in a large tract of mountainous land, running from a place
called Seger-Hutton unto a town called Awe [Au], being in length
about twenty miles."*
[footnote...
The district is known as the Erzgebirge or Ore Mountains, and the
Riesengebirge or Giant Mountains, MacCulloch says that upwards of 500
mines are wrought in the former district, and that one-thirtieth of
the entire population of Saxony to this day derive their subsistence
from mining industry and the manufacture of metallic products.--
Geographical Dict. ii. 643, edit. 1854.
...]

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