The history of Cornwall: civil, military, religious, architectural, agricultural, commercial, biographical, and miscellaneous / [Richard Polwhele].

  • Richard Polwhele
Date:
1803
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The history of Cornwall: civil, military, religious, architectural, agricultural, commercial, biographical, and miscellaneous / [Richard Polwhele]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    485/540 (page 7)
    CM*APTEM THE Si-KTM. MINING. I. FROM the Saxons to the time of Edward the First, we have many documents respecting the Cornish mines. The Saxons* are said to have neglected the mines of Cornwall. In this county, indeed, they had no authority, till it was conquered by Athelstan. Whether the Normans derived any great emolument from the Cornish mines is doubtful; as in the reign of king John, their product was so inconsiderable, that the tin-farm amounted to no more than one hundred marks.*!’ The Jews were now the sole managers of the mines : And memorials of the Jews are still disco- * The Saxons, says Camden, seem to have employed the Saracens. “ That the ancient Britains wrought those tinn-mines, is plain from Diodorus Siculus who lived under Augustus ; to omit Timaeus the historian in Pliny, who tells us, that the Britains fetched tinnoutof the isle Icta,|] in their little wicker-boats covered with leather. For Diodorus affirms, that the Britains who lived in those parts, digging tinn out of a rocky sort of ground, carried it in carts at low-tide to some of the neighbouring islands; that thence the merchants transported it into Gaule, and then on horse-back in thirty days to the springs of Eridanus, or the city Narbona, as to a common mart. iEthicus too, whoever he was, that unworthily goes under the name of being translated by St. Jerom, intimates the same thing, and adds that he gave directions to those workmen. The Saxons seem not to have medled with them, or at most to have only employed the Saracens: for the inhabitants to this day call a mine that is given over, Attal-Sarisin, that is, the leavings of the Saracens.” Gibion's Camden, pp. 2, 3. + “ According to which valuation the bishop of Exeter received then in lieu of his tenth part, and still receives from the duke of Cornwall annually the sum of six pounds thirteen shillings and four-pence; so low were the tin-profits then in Cornwall, whereas in Devonshire the tin was then set to farm for one hundred pounds yearly. King John, sensible of the languishing state of this manufacture, granted the county of Cornwall some marks of his favour, disforested what part of it was then subject to the arbitrary forest-law, allowing it equal title to the laws of the kingdom with the other parts of England, and is said to have granted a charter to the tinners (Carew, p. 17), but what it was does not appear.” Borlase, p. 190. || This hint seems to favour a conjecture, that Bolen (Caesar's Iccius Portus) might take its name from this island Icta. For Stephen’s edition of the Commentaries reads it Ictius, and the Greek version calls it “lick©* as in another place vOx1 »©. And why might not that haven be as well called Ictius from the place with which it had the most considerable trade, as Britannicus, from its being the chief port to and from Britain.