THE HARDWARE TRADE AND COLONIAL INDUSTRIES 523
hands of small independent masters, The history of the A.D. 1689
. ; . —1776.
rade is almost entirely concerned with the struggle that was ,
made to overcome the difficulty that arose from the in- wpa to
% . 0. Yow . 1 ficult
creasing scarcity of fuel; but incidentally, it throws much bg ihe
light on the policy that was pursued in regard to the indus- a of
irial development of the plantations.
The paucity of fuel had caused anxiety even in Tudor
times, and there had been legislation with the view of main-
taining woods and coppices in the reign of Henry VIIL®
The Sussex Ironworks were regarded with special suspicion, which,
. . causea a
as they drew on supplies of timber that might have been migration
available for shipbuilding and competed with London for of iy
supplies of fuel. Eventually they were starved out; and the Buses
iron-trade migrated to Shropshire and the Forest of Dean,
where both iron-ore, and fuel for smelting, were more easily
obtained. It was obvious, however, that, though this was
a temporary relief, it could not prove a permanent remedy.
From the sixteenth century onwards, attention had been gud Ling
. ey eqs 3 . a
directed to the possibility of substituting coal and coke, for eapers-
. . . ts
wood and charcoal, in the various processes of the iron manu- ys
facture. Neither Dudley, nor any of the other men who Ls
devoted themselves to this object, were able to get beyond te 1% of
. " . oat for
the experimental stage; but the difficulties were gradually ctarcoal
solved, and the Darbys made the new processes a practical
success. The cast-iron bridge over the Severn, which was
erected in 1779, marks the beginning of an iron age, when
the metal? has been applied to new purposes of many kinds
and serves as a monument to the enterprise of this family,
1 33 Hen. VIII. ¢. 17. Frequent cases of prosecutions under this Act occur in
the Bedfordshire Quarter Sessions Records in the seventeenth century. Compare
also for Durham in 1629, I. Lowthian Bell, Brit. Assoc. Report, 1863, p. 787.
“There is one man, whose dwellinge place is within twenty miles of the cittye of
Durhame, which hath brought to the grounde, above 30,000 oakes in his life tyme;
and (if hee live longe) it is to be doubted, that hee will not leave so much tymber
or other woode in this whole County as will repaire one of our churches, if it
should fall, his iron and leade workes do so fast consume the same.” A. L.,
Relation of some abuses which are committed against the Commonwealth composed
speciallie for the Benefit of this Countie of Durhame, p. 9.
3 The most important steps in progress may be briefly indicated. Abraham
Darby succeeded in 1735 in making coke from coal; this served as a substitute for
wood charcoal in the furnaces for smelting the ore, when a more powerful blast
was used (Smiles, Industrial Biography, p. 338). In 1766 the Cranages introduced
a reverberatorv furnace in which coal could be used, and superseded the forges in
