Forest lately demolished (if rebuilt), for the same as before; at
Redbrooke, for 4s. 6d.; at the Abbey, viz. Tintern, for 9s.; at
Brockweare, for 6s. 6d.; at Redbrooke Passage, for 5s. 6d.; at
Gunspill, for 7s. So also no house or smith's coal was to be
delivered on the banks of the Wye, below Huntsam Ferry, for less than
8s. a dozen bushels, or for 4s. 6d. if only lime coal; and if above
Huntsam, 3s. 6d., on a forfeiture of 100 dozen of good iron ore, the
one half to his Majesty, and the other to the miner that will sue for
the same, together with loss of "freedom" and utter expulsion from
the mine-works--a very heavy penalty for such an offence, showing the
arbitrary power assumed by the court, at one time conferring
free-minership upon strangers and foreigners, and at another deposing
the free miner merely for an over or even an under charge.

This "order" likewise informs us that the instructions given in 1674, to
pull down the King's iron-works in the Forest, had been so thoroughly
executed, that all the furnaces were ere this demolished, leaving such
only to be supplied with ore as were situated beyond the Forest limits.
These furnaces seem to have taken about 600 dozen bushels of ore at one
time, during the delivery of which no second party was allowed to come
in. It is signed by fourteen out of the forty-eight free miners in their
own hands, which is so far an improvement; but if the iron trade was
unpromising, owing to the course which the Government felt constrained to
take, lest its development should endanger the timber, it was not so with
the coal, the getting of which the Crown would obviously regard with
favour, in the hope that it would relieve the woods from spoliation.
Accordingly, we shall find that from about this period on through the
next century coal-works were constantly on the increase, so as eventually
to throw the getting of iron-ore into the shade. This last "order"
cancelled an agreement passed by the Mine Law Court on the 9th of March,
1675, to the effect that a legal-defence fund be raised; but it confirmed
the decree of a former court forbidding any young man to set up for
himself as a free miner unless he was upwards of twenty-one years of age,
and had served by indenture an apprenticeship of five years, and had also
given a bond of ten pounds to obey all the orders of the said court.

One of the most minute of the various perambulat