Industrial Biography

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It is curious to find how much the national industry of England has
been influenced by the existence from time to time of religious
persecutions abroad, which had the effect of driving skilled
Protestant artisans, more particularly from Flanders and France, into
England, where they enjoyed the special protection of successive
English Governments, and founded various important branches of
manufacture. But it appears from the history of the tin manufactures
of Saxony, that that country also had profited in like manner by the
religious persecutions of Germany, and even of England itself. Thus
we are told by Yarranton that it was a Cornish miner, a Protestant,
banished out of England for his religion in Queen Mary's time, who
discovered the tin mines at Awe, and that a Romish priest of Bohemia,
who had been converted to Lutheranism and fled into Saxony for
refuge, "was the chief instrument in the manufacture until it was
perfected." These two men were held in great regard by the Duke of
Saxony as well as by the people of the country; for their ingenuity
and industry proved the source of great prosperity and wealth,
"several fine cities," says Yarranton, "having been raised by the
riches proceeding from the tin-works"--not less than 80,000 men
depending upon the trade for their subsistence; and when Yarranton
visited Awe, he found that a statue had been erected to the memory of
the Cornish miner who first discovered the tin.

Yarranton was very civilly received by the miners, and, contrary to
his expectation, he was allowed freely to inspect the tin-works and
examine the methods by which the iron-plates were rolled out, as well
as the process of tinning them. He was even permitted to engage a
number of skilled workmen, whom he brought over with him to England
for the purpose of starting the manufacture in this country. A
beginning was made, and the tin-plates manufactured by Yarranton's
men were pronounced of better quality even than those made in Saxony.
"Many thousand plates," Yarranton says, "were made from iron raised
in the Forest of Dean, and were tinned over with Cornish tin; and the
plates proved far better than the German ones, by reason of the
toughness and flexibleness of our forest iron. One Mr. Bison, a
tinman in Worcester, Mr. Lydiate near Fleet Bridge, and Mr. Harrison
near the King's Bench, have wrought many, and know their goodness."
As Yarranton's account was written and published during the lifetime
of the parties, there is no reason to doubt the accuracy of his
statement.

Arrangements were made to carry on the manufacture upon a large
scale; but the secret having got wind, a patent was taken out, or
"trumpt up" as Yarranton calls it, for the manufacture, "the patentee
being countenanced by some persons of quality," and Yarranton was
precluded from carrying his operations further. It is not improbable
that the patentee in question was William Chamberlaine, Dud Dudley's
quondam partner in the iron manufacture.*
[footnote...
Chamberlaine and Dudley's first licence was granted in 1661 for
plating steel and tinning the said plates; and Chamberlaine's sole
patent for "plating and tinning iron, copper, &c.," was granted in
1673, probably the patent in question.
...]
"What with the patent being in our way," says Yarranton, "and the
richest of our partners being afraid to offend great men in power,
who had their eye upon us, it caused the thing to cool, and the
making of the tin-plates was neither proceeded in by us, nor possibly
could be by him that had the patent; because neither he that hath the
patent, nor those that have countenanced him, can make one plate fit
for use." Yarranton's labours were thus lost to the English public
for a time; and we continued to import all our tin-plates from
Germany until about sixty years later, when a tin-plate manufactory
was established by Capel Hanbury at Pontypool in Monmouthshire, where
it has since continued to be successfully carried on.

We can only briefly refer to the subsequent history of Andrew
Yarranton. Shortly after his journey into Saxony, he proceeded to
Holland to examine the inland navigations of the Dutch, to inspect
their linen and other manufactures, and to inquire into the causes of
the then extraordinary prosperity of that country compared with
England. Industry was in a very languishing state at home. "People
confess they are sick," said Yarranton, "that trade is in a
consumption, and the whole nation languishes." He therefore
determined to ascertain whether something useful might not be learnt
from the example of Holland. The Dutch were then the hardest working
and the most thriving people in Europe. They were manufacturers and
carriers for the world. Their fleets floated on every known sea; and
their herring-busses swarmed along our coasts as far north as the
Hebrides. The Dutch supplied our markets with fish caught within
sight of our own shores, while our coasting population stood idly
looking on. Yarranton regarded this state of things as most
discreditable, and he urged the establishment of various branches of
home industry as the best way of out-doing the Dutch without fighting
them.

Wherever he travelled abroad, in Germany or in Holland, he saw
industry attended by wealth and comfort, and idleness by poverty and
misery. The same pursuits, he held, would prove as beneficial to
England as they were abundantly proved to have been to Holland. The
healthy life of work was good for all--for individuals as for the
whole nation; and if we would out-do the Dutch, he held that we must
out-do them in industry. But all must be done honestly and by fair
means. "Common Honesty," said Yarranton, "is as necessary and needful
in kingdoms and commonwealths that depend upon Trade, as discipline
is in an army; and where there is want of common Honesty in a kingdom
or commonwealth, from thence Trade shall depart. For as the Honesty
of all governments is, so shall be their Riches; and as their Honour,
Honesty, and Riches are, so will be their Strength; and as their
Honour, Honesty, Riches, and Strength are, so will be their Trade.
These are five sisters that go hand in hand, and must not be parted."
Admirable sentiments, which are as true now as they were two hundred
years ago, when Yarranton urged them upon the attention of the
English public.

On his return from Holland, he accordingly set on foot various
schemes of public utility. He stirred up a movement for the
encouragement of the British fisheries. He made several journeys into
Ireland for the purpose of planting new manufactures there. He
surveyed the River Slade with the object of rendering it navigable,
and proposed a plan for improving the harbour of Dublin. He also
surveyed the Dee in England with a view to its being connected with
the Severn. Chambers says that on the decline of his popularity in
1677, he was taken by Lord Clarendon to Salisbury to survey the River
Avon, and find out how that river might be made navigable, and also
whether a safe harbour for ships could be made at Christchurch; and
that having found where he thought safe anchorage might be obtained,
his Lordship proceeded to act upon Yarranton's recommendations.*
[footnote...
JOHN CHAMBERS, Biographical Illustrations of Worcestershire. London,
1820.
...]

Another of his grand schemes was the establishment of the linen
manufacture in the central counties of England, which, he showed,
were well adapted for the growth of flax; and he calculated that if
success attended his efforts, at least two millions of money then
sent out of the country for the purchase of foreign linen would be
retained at home, besides increasing the value of the land on which
the flax was grown, and giving remunerative employment to our own
people, then emigrating for want of work. " Nothing but Sloth or
Envy," he said, "can possibly hinder my labours from being crowned
with the wished for success; our habitual fondness for the one hath
already brought us to the brink of ruin, and our proneness to the
other hath almost discouraged all pious endeavours to promote our
future happiness."

In 1677 he published the first part of his England's Improvement by
Sea and Land--a very remarkable book, full of sagacious insight as
respected the future commercial and manufacturing greatness of
England. Mr. Dove says of this book that Yarranton" chalks out in it
the future course of Britain with as free a hand as if second-sight
had revealed to him those expansions of her industrial career which
never fail to surprise us, even when we behold them realized."
Besides his extensive plans for making harbours and improving
internal navigation with the object of creating new channels for
domestic industry, his schemes for extending the iron and the woollen
trades, establishing the linen manufacture, and cultivating the home
fisheries, we find him throwing out various valuable suggestions with
reference to the means of facilitating commercial transactions, some
of winch have only been carried out in our own day. One of his
grandest ideas was the establishment of a public bank, the credit of
which, based upon the security of freehold land,*
[footnote...
Yarranton's Land Bank was actually projected in 1695, and received
the sanction of Parliament; though the Bank of England (founded in
the preceding year) petitioned against it, and the scheme was
dropped.
...]
should enable its paper "to go in trade equal with ready money." A
bank of this sort formed one of the principal means by which the
Dutch had been enabled to extend their commercial transactions, and
Yarranton accordingly urged its introduction into England. Part of
his scheme consisted of a voluntary register of real property, for
the purpose of effecting simplicity of title, and obtaining relief
from the excessive charges for law,*
[footnote...
It is interesting to note in passing, that part of Yarranton's scheme
has recently been carried into effect by the Act (25 and 26 Vict. c.
53) passed in 1862 for the Registration of Real Estate.
...]
as well as enabling money to be readily raised for commercial
purposes on security of the land registered.

He pointed out very graphically the straits to which a man is put who
is possessed of real property enough, but in a time of pressure is
unable to turn himself round for want of ready cash. "Then," says he,
"all his creditors crowd to him as pigs do through a hole to a bean
and pease rick." "Is it not a sad thing," he asks, "that a
goldsmith's boy in Lombard Street, who gives notes for the monies
handed him by the merchants, should take up more monies upon his
notes in one day than two lords, four knights, and eight esquires in
twelve months upon all their personal securities? We are, as it were,
cutting off our legs and arms to see who will feed the trunk. But we
cannot expect this from any of our neighbours abroad, whose interest
depends upon our loss."

He therefore proposed his registry of property as a ready means of
raising a credit for purposes of trade. Thus, he says, "I can both in
England and Wales register my wedding, my burial, and my christening,
and a poor parish clerk is entrusted with the keeping of the book;
and that which is registered there is held good by our law. But I
cannot register my lands, to be honest, to pay every man his own, to
prevent those sad things that attend families for want thereof, and
to have the great benefit and advantage that would come thereby. A
register will quicken trade, and the land registered will be equal as
cash in a man's hands, and the credit thereof will go and do in trade
what ready money now doth." His idea was to raise money, when
necessary, on the land registered, by giving security thereon after a
form which be suggested. He would, in fact, have made land, as gold
now is, the basis of an extended currency; and he rightly held that
the value of land as a security must always be unexceptionable, and
superior to any metallic basis that could possibly be devised.

This indefatigable man continued to urge his various designs upon the
attention of the public until he was far advanced in years. He
professed that he was moved to do so (and we believe him) solely by
an ardent love for his country, "whose future flourishing," said he,
"is the only reward I ever hope to see of all my labours." Yarranton,
however, received but little thanks for his persistency, while he
encountered many rebuffs. The public for the most part turned a deaf
ear to his entreaties; and his writings proved of comparatively small
avail, at least during his own lifetime. He experienced the lot of
many patriots, even the purest--the suspicion and detraction of his
contemporaries. His old political enemies do not seem to have
forgotten him, of which we have the evidence in certain rare
"broadsides" still extant, twitting him with the failure of his
schemes, and even trumping up false charges of disloyalty against
him.*
[footnote...
One of these is entitled 'A Coffee-house Dialogue, or a Discourse
between Captain Y--and a Young Barrister of the Middle Temple; with
some Reflections upon the Bill against the D. of Y.' In this
broadside, of 3 1/2 pages folio, published about 1679, Yarranton is
made to favour the Duke of York's exclusion from the throne, not only
because he was a papist, but for graver reasons than he dare express.
Another scurrilous pamphlet, entitled 'A Word Without Doors,' was
also aimed at him. Yarranton, or his friends, replied to the first
attack in a folio of two pages, entitled 'The Coffee-house Dialogue
Examined and Refuted, by some Neighbours in the Country ,
well-wishers to the Kingdom's interest.' The controversy was followed
up by 'A Continuation of the Coffee-house Dialogue,' in which the
chief interlocutor hits Yarranton rather hard for the miscarriage of
his "improvements." "I know," says he, "when and where you undertook
for a small charge to make a river navigable, and it has cost the
proprietors about six times as much, and is not yet effective; nor
can any man rationally predict when it will be. I know since you left
it your son undertook it, and this winter shamefully left his
undertaking." Yarrantons friends immediately replied in a four-page
folio, entitled 'England's Improvements Justified; and the Author
thereof, Captain Y., vindicated from the Scandals in a paper called a
Coffee-house Dialogue; with some Animadversions upon the Popish
Designs therein contained.' The writer says he writes without the
privity or sanction of Yarranton, but declares the dialogue to be a
forgery, and that the alleged conference never took place. "His
innocence, when he heard of it, only provoked a smile, with this
answer, Spreta vilescunt, falsehoods mu st perish, and are soonest
destroyed by contempt; so that he needs no further vindication. The
writer then proceeds at some length to vindicate the Captain's famous
work and the propositions contained in it.
...]

In 1681 he published the second part of 'England's Improvement,'*
[footnote...
This work (especially with the plates) is excessively rare. There is
a copy of it in perfect condition in the Grenville Library, British
Museum.
...]
in which he gave a summary account of its then limited growths and
manufactures, pointing out that England and Ireland were the only
northern kingdoms remaining unimproved; he re-urged the benefits and
necessity of a voluntary register of real property; pointed out a
method of improving the Royal Navy, lessening the growing power of
France, and establishing home fisheries; proposed the securing and
fortifying of Tangier; described a plan for preventing fires in
London, and reducing the charge for maintaining the Trained Bands;
urged the formation of a harbour at Newhaven in Sussex; and, finally,
discoursed at considerable length upon the tin, iron, linen, and
woollen trades, setting forth various methods for their improvement.
In this last section, after referring to the depression in the
domestic tin trade (Cornish tin selling so low as 70s. the cwt.), he
suggested a way of reviving it. With the Cornish tin he would combine
"the Roman cinders and iron-stone in the Forest of Dean, which makes
the best iron for most uses in the world, and works up to the best
advantage, with delight and pleasure to the workmen." He then
described the history of his own efforts to import the manufacture of
tin-plates into England some sixteen years before, in which he had
been thwarted by Chamberlaine's patent, as above described,--and
offered sundry queries as to the utility of patents generally, which,
says he, "have the tendency to drive trade out of the kingdom."
Appended to the chapter on Tin is an exceedingly amusing dialogue
between a tin-miner of Cornwall, an iron-miner of Dean Forest, and a
traveller (himself). From this we gather that Yarranton's business
continued to be that of an iron-manufacturer at his works at Ashley
near Bewdley. Thus the iron-miner says, "About 28 years since Mr.
Yarranton found out a vast quantity of Roman cinders, near the walls
of the city of Worcester, from whence he and others carried away many
thousand tons or loads up the river Severn, unto their iron-furnaces,
to be melted down into iron, with a mixture of the Forest of Dean
iron-stone; and within 100 yards of the walls of the city of
Worcester there was dug up one of the hearths of the Roman
foot-blasts, it being then firm and in order, and was 7 foot deep in
the earth; and by the side of the work there was found a pot of Roman
coin to the quantity of a peck, some of which was presented to Sir
[Wm.] Dugdale, and part thereof is now in the King's Closet."*
[footnote...
Dr. Nash, in his History of Worcestershire, has thrown some doubts
upon this story; but Mr. Green, in his Historical Antiquities of the
city, has made a most able defence of Yarranton's statement (vol.i.
9, in foot-note).
...]

In the same year (1681) in which the second part of 'England's
Improvement' appeared, Yarranton proceeded to Dunkirk for the purpose
of making a personal survey of that port, then belonging to England;
and on his return he published a map of the town, harbour, and castle
on the sea, with accompanying letterpress, in which he recommended,
for the safety of British trade, the demolition of the fortifications
of Dunkirk before they were completed, which he held would only be
for the purpose of their being garrisoned by the French king. His
'Full Discovery of the First Presbyterian Sham Plot' was published in
the same year; and from that time nothing further is known of Andrew
Yarranton. His name and his writings have been alike nearly
forgotten; and, though Bishop Watson declared of him that he deserved
to have a statue erected to his memory as a great public benefactor,
we do not know that he was so much as honoured with a tombstone; for
we have been unable, after careful inquiry, to discover when and
where he died.

Yarranton was a man whose views were far in advance of his age. The
generation for whom he laboured and wrote were not ripe for their
reception and realization; and his voice sounded among the people
like that of one crying in the wilderness. But though his
exhortations to industry and his large plans of national improvement
failed to work themselves into realities in his own time, he broke
the ground, he sowed the seed, and it may be that even at this day we
are in some degree reaping the results of his labours. At all events,
his books still live to show how wise and sagacious Andrew Yarranton
was beyond his contemporaries as to the true methods of establishing
upon solid foundations the industrial prosperity of England.

CHAPTER V.

COALBROOKDALE IRON WORKS--THE DARBYS AND REYNOLDSES.

"The triumph of the industrial arts will advance the cause of
civilization more rapidly than its warmest advocates could have
hoped, and contribute to the permanent prosperity and strength of the
country far move than the most splendid victories of successful
war.--C. BABBAGE, The Exposition of 1851.

Dud Dudley's invention of smelting iron with coke made of pit-coal
was, like many others, born before its time. It was neither
appreciated by the iron-masters nor by the workmen. All schemes for
smelting ore with any other fuel than charcoal made from wood were
regarded with incredulity. As for Dudley's Metallum Martis, as it
contained no specification, it revealed no secret; and when its
author died, his secret, whatever it might be, died with him. Other
improvements were doubtless necessary before the invention could be
turned to useful account. Thus, until a more powerful blowing-furace
had been contrived, the production of pit-coal iron must necessarily
have been limited. Dudley himself does not seem to have been able to
make more on an average than five tons a-week, and seven tons at the
outside. Nor was the iron so good as that made by charcoal; for it is
admitted to have been especially liable to deterioration by the
sulphureous fumes of the coal in the process of manufacture.

Dr. Plot, in his 'History of Staffordshire,' speaks of an experiment
made by one Dr. Blewstone, a High German, as "the last effort" made
in that county to smelt iron-ore with pit-coal. He is said to have
"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 would not
be; the sulphureous vitriolic steams 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 the coal itself would possibly do."*
[footnote...
Dr. PLOT, Natural History of Staffordshire, 2nd ed. 1686, p. 128.
...]
Dr. Plot does not give the year in which this "last effort" was made;
but as we find that one Dr. Frederic de Blewston obtained a patent
from Charles II. on the 25th October, 1677, for "a new and effectual
way of melting down, forging, extracting, and reducing of iron and
all metals and minerals with pit-coal and sea-coal, as well and
effectually as ever hath yet been done by charcoal, and with much
less charge;" and as Dr. Plot's History, in which he makes mention
of the experiment and its failure, was published in 1686, it is
obvious that the trial must have been made between those years.

As the demand for iron steadily increased with the increasing
population of the country, and as the supply of timber for smelting
purposes was diminishing from year to year, England was compelled to
rely more and more upon foreign countries for its supply of
manufactured iron. The number of English forges rapidly dwindled, and
the amount of the home production became insignificant in comparison
with what was imported from abroad. Yarranton, writing in 1676,
speaks of "the many iron-works laid down in Kent, Sussex, Surrey, and
in the north of England, because the iron of Sweadland, Flanders, and
Spain, coming in so cheap, it cannot be made to profit here." There
were many persons, indeed, who held that it was better we should be
supplied with iron from Spain than make it at home, in consequence of
the great waste of wood involved by the manufacture; but against this
view Yarranton strongly contended, and held, what is as true now as
it was then, that the manufacture of iron was the keystone of
England's industrial prosperity. He also apprehended great danger to
the country from want of iron in event of the contingency of a
foreign war. "When the greatest part of the iron-works are asleep,"
said he, "if there should be occasion for great quantities of guns
and bullets, and other sorts of iron commodities, for a present
unexpected war, and the Sound happen to be locked up, and so prevent
iron coming to us, truly we should then be in a fine case!"

Notwithstanding these apprehended national perils arising from the
want of iron, no steps seem to have been taken to supply the
deficiency, either by planting woods on a large scale, as recommended
by Yarranton, or by other methods; and the produce of English iron
continued steadily to decline. In 1720-30 there were found only ten
furnaces remaining in blast in the whole Forest of Dean, where the
iron-smelters were satisfied with working up merely the cinders left
by the Romans. A writer of the time states that we then bought
between two and three hundred thousand pounds' worth of foreign iron
yearly, and that England was the best customer in Europe for Swedish
and Russian iron.*
[footnote...
JOSHUA GEE, The Trade and Navigation of Great Britain considered,
1731.
...]
By the middle of the eighteenth century the home manufacture had so
much fallen off, that the total production of Great Britain is
supposed to have amounted to not more than 18,000 tons a year;
four-fifths of the iron used in the country being imported from
Sweden.*
[footnote...
When a bill was introduced into Parliament in 1750 with the object of
encouraging the importation of iron from our American colonies, the
Sheffield tanners petitioned against it, on the ground that, if it
passed, English iron would be undersold; many forges would
consequently be discontinued; in which case the timber used for fuel
would remain uncut, and the tanners would thereby be deprived of bark
for the purposes of their trade!
...]

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