sea; and
should these fail, there is none to be had in the country."

[24] PARKER'S English Home, 77

[25] The precise time at which Andrea de Ferrara flourished cannot be
fixed with accuracy; but Sir Waiter Scott, in one of the notes to
Waverley, says he is believed to have been a foreign artist brought
over by James IV. or V. of Scotland to instruct the Scots in the
manufacture of sword-blades. The genuine weapons have a crown marked
on the blades.

[26] Mr. Parkes, in his Essay on the Manufacture of Edge Tools, says,
"Had this ingenious artist thought of a bath of oil, he might have
heated this by means of a furnace underneath it, and by the use of a
thermometer, to the exact point which he found necessary; though it is
inconvenient to have to employ a thermometer for every distinct
operation. Or, if he had been in the possession of a proper bath of
fusible metal, he would have attained the necessary certainty in his
process, and need not have immured himself in a subterranean
apartment.--PARKES' Essays, 1841, p. 495.

[27] HOLINSHED, History of England. It was even said to have been one
of the objects of the Spanish Armada to get the oaks of the Forest of
Dean destroyed, in order to prevent further smelting of the iron. Thus
Evelyn, in his Sylva, says, "I have heard that in the great expedition
of 1588 it was expressly enjoined the Spanish Armada that if, when
landed, they should not be able to subdue our nation and make good
their conquest, they should yet be sure not to leave a tree standing in
the Forest of Dean."--NICHOLS, History of the Forest of Dean, p. 22.

CHAPTER II.

EARLY ENGLISH IRON MANUFACTURE.

"He that well observes it, and hath known the welds of Sussex, Surry,
and Kent', the grand nursery especially of oake and beech, shal find
such an alteration, within lesse than 30 yeeres, as may well strike a
feare, lest few yeeres more, as pestilent as the former, will leave
fewe good trees standing in those welds. Such a heate issueth out of
the many forges and furnaces for the making of iron, and out of the
glasse kilnes, as hath devoured many famous woods within the
welds,"--JOHN NORDEN, Surveyors' Dialogue (1607).

Few records exist of the manufacture of iron in England in early times.
After the Romans left the island, the British, or more probably the
Teutonic tribes settled along the south coast, continued the smelting
and manufacture of the metal after the methods taught them by