asherwomen, and, by way of inducement to him to be vigilant,
he gave young Crawshay an interest in that branch of the business,
which was soon found to prosper under his charge. After a few more
years, Mr. Bicklewith retired, and left to Crawshay the cast-iron
business in York Yard. This he still further increased, There was not
at that time much enterprise in the iron trade, but Crawshay
endeavoured to connect himself with what there was of it. The price of
iron was then very high, and the best sorts were still imported from
abroad; a good deal of the foreign iron and steel being still landed at
the Steelyard on the Thames, in the immediate neighbourhood of
Crawshay's ironmongery store.

It seems to have occurred to some London capitalists that money was
then to be made in the iron trade, and that South Wales was a good
field for an experiment. The soil there was known to be full of coal
and ironstone, and several small iron works had for some time been
carried on, which were supposed to be doing well. Merthyr Tydvil was
one of the places at which operations had been begun, but the place
being situated in a hill district, of difficult access, and the
manufacture being still in a very imperfect state, the progress made
was for some time very slow. Land containing coal and iron was deemed
of very little value, as maybe inferred from the fact that in the year
1765, Mr. Anthony Bacon, a man of much foresight, took a lease from
Lord Talbot, for 99 years, of the minerals under forty square miles of
country surrounding the then insignificant hamlet of Merthyr Tydvil, at
the trifling rental of 200L. a-year. There he erected iron works, and
supplied the Government with considerable quantities of cannon and iron
for different purposes; and having earned a competency, he retired from
business in 1782, subletting his mineral tract in four divisions--the
Dowlais, the Penydarran, the Cyfartha, and the Plymouth Works, north,
east, west, and south, of Merthyr Tydvil.

Mr. Richard Crawshay became the lessee of what Mr. Mushet has called
"the Cyfartha flitch of the great Bacon domain." There he proceeded to
carry on the works established by Mr. Bacon with increased spirit; his
son William, whom he left in charge of the ironmongery store in London,
supplying him with capital to put into the iron works as fast as he
could earn it by the retail trade. In 1787, we find Richard Crawshay
manufacturing with difficulty ten tons of bar