Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 9.djvu/358

 282 ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS. and is there treated as a charter confirming by parliamentary authority the previous custom of the trade. This charter was issued on the prayer of the girdlers (cincturarii) of London, probably with the object of suppressing the manufacture of cheap, inferior, girdles in plnces beyond the limits of the franchise, but ostensibly in order to protect the people from injury, and the girdlers of London from being prejudiced in their reputation by the sale of a bad article as their workmanship. — See 2 Rot. Pari., 456 ; 4 R,ot. Pari., 73, (printed edition). The restriction was perhaps of very early date in London, and at first confined to the girdle makers of that city. The extension of it to all other cities and places was the effect, or intended effect, of the above charter of 1 Edward IIL The prejudicial consequences, especially on the consumption of tin in which the royal family was so much interested, seem to have induced the Kino' to modify or suspend the operation of the charter, so far as regarded other cities and places. There are several traces of this in the patent rolls within a year or two afterwards ; and in the 30th year of his reign there was a general suspension of the ordinance, addressed to the mayor and sheriffs of London, and a reference of the matter to the next parliament. — 3 Rot. Pari., 296. Whether anything was done upon this reference does not appear ; but in the following reign a statute (15 Richard IL, cap. 11) was passed, annulling generally all charters and patents for restraining the use of white metal in girdles.* In 3 Henry V., the Company of London Girdlers again complained of the use of white metal in their trade, and sought a remedy from parliament; but they did not succeed in prevailing on parliament to enforce the restric- tion anywhere except in the city and liberties. With respect to the metals laton and baterla, both are mentioned in the ordinance or charter 1 Edward III., and this is the earliest notice of hateria in any document that I have met with in the public records. In the recital of this charter in the close roll, 30 Edward III. (2 Rot. Pari., 456), auricalcum is substituted for laton. In 7 Elizabeth, a company for "mineral and battery works" was erected, and received from the Queen a grant of the ore called calamine for making "mixed metal called latten." — Pettus, Fodina) Regales, pp. 57, 58. By a petition in or about 1665, mentioned by the same author, it appears that latten was the material of which wire and pins were then made. B}' statute 4 William and Mary, cap. 5, a duty was laid on "battery, kettles," &c., and on *' metal prepared for battery.'^ On the authority of these documents I venture to doubt whether there is any good reason for attempting to distinguish between latten and brass. W^hen brass ceased to be regarded in this country only as a. foreign import, the common use of the foreign name naturally ceased also, although it is still retained to a certain extent, as applied to one of the/orms in which brass comes into the market, viz., sheet brass. It is true that some statutes, as well as writers, seem to treat brass and latten as two distinct metals ; as the Acts 21 Henry VIII., c. 10, and 33 Henry VIII., c. 7. But the difference of form in which a metal is offered for sale is quite enough to warrant a distinc- tion in a parliamentary enumeration of articles of export or import ; and as for the difference specified by Plowden in the dissertation contained in his report of the case of Mines (Plowd. Rep., 339), — in which he says, that brass consists of copper and lead or tin, and latten of copper and calamine, — it ' This statute was repealed by 1 James I. cap. 2,i, sec. 41.