distance of 100 yards,
within which every pit was guarded from being encroached upon by any
other work, to 300 yards. It also provided that no iron ore intended
for Ireland should be shipped on the Severn or Wye for a less sum
than 6s. 6d. for every dozen bushels. This order was signed by
sixteen out of the forty-eight miners with their own hands, the rest
making their marks only.

To this period is assigned Dr. Parsons's quaint remarks on the Forest.
"It abounds," he says, "with springs for the most part of a brownish or
umber colour, occasioned by their passage through the veynes of oker, of
which there is a great plenty, or else through the rushy tincture of the
mineralls of the ore. The ground of the Forest is more inclined to wood
and cole than corn, yet they have enough of it too. The inhabitants are,
some of them, a sort of robustic wild people, that must be civilized by
good discipline and government. The ore and cinder wherewith they make
their iron (which is the great imployment of the poorer sort of
inhabitants) 'tis dug in most parts of ye Forest, one in the bowells, and
the other towards the surface of the earth. But, whether it be by virtue
of the Forrest laws, or other custome, the head Gaviler of the Forrest,
or others deputed by him, provided they were born in the Hundred of St.
Briavel's, may go into any man's grounds whatsoever, within the
limitation of the Forrest, and dig or delve for ore and cinders without
any molestation. There are two sorts of ore: the best ore is your brush
ore, of a blewish colour, very ponderous and full of shining specks like
grains of silver; this affordeth the greatest quantity of iron, but being
melted alone produceth a mettal very short and brittle. To remedy this
inconvenience, they make use of another material which they call cinder,
it being nothing else but the refuse of the ore after the melting hath
been extracted, which, being melted with the other in due quantity, gives
it that excellent temper of toughness for which this iron is preferred
before any other that is brought from foreign parts. But it is to be
noted that in former times, when their works were few and their vents
small, they made use of no other bellows but such as were moved by the
strength of men, by reason whereof their fires were much less intense
than in the furnaces they now imploy; so that, having in them only melted
downe the principal part of the ore, they re