Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/149

Rh Skinner Street and Farringdon Street) is mentioned by that name in a charter of the year 1253. Regulations are laid down for the sale of coals in the statutes of the guild of Berwick-upon-Tweed, which were established in 1284. There is extant a charter of William of Obervell, in 1291, granting liberty to the monks of Dunfermline, in Scotland, to dig coals for their own use in his lands of Pittencrief, but prohibiting them from selling any. It is probable, however, that this description of fuel was not as yet much used for domestic purposes; for the smoke, or smell, of a coal fire was at first thought to be highly noxious. "This same year (1306)," says Maitland, in his History of London, "sea-coals being very much used in the suburbs of London by brewers, dyers, and others requiring great fires, the nobility and gentry resorting thither complained thereof to the king as a public nuisance, whereby they said the air was infested with a noisome smell, and a thick cloud, to the great endangering of the health of the inhabitants; wherefore a proclamation was issued, strictly forbidding the use of that fuel. But, little regard being paid thereunto, the king appointed a commission of Oyer and Terminer to inquire after those who had contumaciously acted in open defiance to his proclamation, strictly conmanding all such to be punished by pecuniary mulcts; and for the second offence to have their kilns and furnaces destroyed." What would these sensitive alarmists of the fourteenth century have said if they could have been informed that the day would come when London should have constantly some ten or twelve tons of coal-dust suspended over it? The prejudice against coal fires, however, seems to have in no long time died away. In 1325 we find mention made of the exportation of coals from Newcastle to France; and the first leases of coal-works in the neighbourhood of that town of which there is any account are dated only a few years later. They were granted by the monks of Tynemouth to various persons at annual rents, varying from two to about five pounds. Ten shillings' worth of Newcastle coals are recorded to have been purchased for the coronation of Edward III. in 1327. Before