The monks of Durham also continued their mining ventures with great spirit and activity. From accounts for the period from the Invention of the Cross until 6 December, 1443, we know that they received £12 1s. from Rainton, and £10 0s. 1d. from Aldyngrige (Aldengrange), besides coal delivered for the use of their house. They spent £3 7s. 7d. on the ‘aqueduct’ at Aldengrange and on sinking there five new pits. They also allowed £4 8s. to Bertram Gaythirde ‘pro fodicione et sinctacione’ of a new pit at Rainton, while £10 was allotted to pay the workmen ‘in aqueductu et le dright, cum thirlyng unius shafte ut patet per bill.’ An additional outlay of £2 7s. 10d. was for the workmen’s ale and for ‘scopes et pykkez ac 2 cordis.’ Soon after this date the supervisor of Aldengrange colliery bought off the threatened competition of the Finchale monks at Baxtanfordwood.

The fifteenth century not only furnishes records of coal-mining all over the Palatinate, but certain of the leases and accounts which have survived enable us to understand the methods employed and trace the gradual technical advance of the industry. An English lease is extant, granted in 1447 to John Brown of Tudhoe and five others by the prior of Durham relating to land and coal-pits in Trillesden and Spennymoor. In Trillesden the lessees are

and

at an annual rent of 24s. for the land and 10 marks of ‘goode Inglissh money’ for the coal-pit. The lessees

A similar regulation of the daily output is insisted on in the renewal of the great lease of the southern mines to Sir William Eure in 1458, to the extent of 340 corfes or scopes at Raly, 300 scopes or corfes at Toftes, and 600 at Hertkeld, and at each of the other mines 20 corfes or scopes, but with permission to make up a deficiency at one mine by an increase at another. In this connexion it may be noted that we here find an early mention of 'styth' or choke-damp; if the miners were stopped thereby on any occasion so that they could not get their authorized tale of coal, they were allowed to make up the amount lacking on the next convenient working day.

Complaints were made and inquisitions held as to wastes and reckless working, such as cutting through the ‘forbarres’ in the mines mentioned in this lease, and it is probable that in 1460-61 the bishop of Durham was working the Raly and Hertkeld mines on his own account. A compotus of his appruator, John Baker, relating to ‘Raley’ mine for the period 14 June, 38 Henry VI, to Christmas, Henry VI, eleven days over a half year, still remains to us, and is extremely valuable for the full and detailed description of the classes and condition of the workmen employed. In the week 14-22 June there were six working days, and John Harper, William Staynford, and John Bagot were employed as ‘hewers,’ hewing (dolanctium) 1,800 corfes of coals at 2.5 bushels the corfe, or reckoning by chaldrons or chalders (celeras) 140 chaldrons 2 qr. 4 bus., a daily output of 23 chaldrons 1 qr. 6 bus., each man earning 5d. a day. In the same week John Marshall, Thomas Bagot, and Thomas Hode were employed as ‘barowmen, removing the aforesaid coals from the places where they were won in the aforesaid mine to the bottom of the pit (fundamentum putei).’ They were paid at the same rate as the ‘hewers.’ Four other men, Thomas Stevenson, Henry Stevenson, Richard Ogle, and Robert Ogle, are described as ‘drawers’ of the aforesaid coal from the bottom of the pit, hewing it and placing it on the bank of the same pit. Their wages were exactly those of the others, viz., 5d. a day, the wage sheet of the ten men totalling 25s. for the full week. During the period of the account only eight full weeks of six days were worked at getting coal, the output and wage sheet remaining the same. But eight weeks of five days were worked with an output of 1 1 7 chaldrons 6 bus. and a wage sheet of 20s. 1 od. a week; five weeks of four days with an output of 93 chaldrons 3 qrs. and a wage sheet of 1 6s. 8d. a week; and one week of three days (Christmas week) with an output of 70 chaldrons 1 qr. 2 bus. and a wage sheet of 12s. 6d. In sum 2,601 chaldrons 2 qr. 2 bus. of coal were won, and £23 2s. 6d. paid to the hewers, barrow-men, and drawers thus employed. For several weeks probably during the hottest weather no coal was raised, and the miners were sometimes employed on work other than the actual handling of coal, both above and below ground, and for such tasks payments were separately entered. Thomas Hode cut down a wain-load of timber in Evenwood Park, and Henry Stevenson carted it to the pit both for the repair of the ‘draght’ and for the mending of the sides of the pit (putei) as necessity required. The payment for this work was 8d. And on another day John Harper and eight of his fellows and ten other persons, working with this timber and other st uffura mending the sides of the pit and making a certain stone wall at the bottom of the said pit to hold up the earth (terram), which was utterly unsafe (fere perantea in casu ruine), earned 7s. 10d., at the rate of 5d. a day each. John Taillour too got 4d. for labour at the woodwork, and William Paterson, smith, 6d. for mending the worn-out and broken ironwork of the ‘draght.’ Again, we hear of the repair by John Taylor and Henry Aleynson of a certain old shed (logium) above the pit of the mine (puteum minere) and also the building another ‘new shed for the tools and other things necessary for the aforesaid work,’ while a great clades or clada (wattled screen?) was bought ‘ ad ponendum ante os putei minere predicte ad removendum ventum ab eodem.’

Candles for the miners were a heavy expense - no less than 760 lb. being used at a cost of £3 19s. 2d., while three forty-one fathom ropes (cordis canabi) were bought from William Roper of Darlington at 3$. a rope, and twenty-one dozen corfes at 16d. a dozen. A barrow (semivectoria) cost 14d., and the same price was paid for a measure (modia ferro ligato) for the coal pro majori commodo domini. Mention is also made of the mending of two barrow-ways (vie semivectorie subtus terram). That one which John Harper undertook was stopped with earth and stone and gave him a day’s work to clear it, for which he was paid 5d. Amongst other repairs we hear of the mending of a ‘vase ligni vocate le synkyng tubbe’ which was used ‘pro aqua inhaurianda extra puteum,’ while John Patenson was entrusted with the sharpening (exasperatione) of nine score ‘ pikkis’ broken or blunted in the course of the work. Some of the workmen were also occasionally employed at the pit-brow in loading wains and packhorses with coals. As the result of coal sales during the year some £41 I 4s. 2d. was paid to the receiver-general of Durham and apparently thirtyeight wain-loads of coal were sent to Auckland for use at the bishop’s house (hospicium). It is impossible in the space at our disposal to give any detailed account of the coal-mines of Durham during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the reader must be referred to Mr. Galloway’s Annals of Coal Mining, which presents an excellent resume of the chief facts of importance. When Wolsey was translated to Durham the best days of the Palatinate had passed, and the merchants of Newcastle were again claiming exclusive rights of shipment on the Tyne. Franklin his chancellor put the case very clearly to the new bishop:

and he clinches the argument:

Wolsey probably never found time to enter the Palatinate during his tenure of the see, but he directed Dr. Strangways, surveyor of Durham, and Richard Bellysis, esq., to survey all lead, coal, and other mines within his bishopric, and make them as profitable as possible, as well as to finish the new house and furnace which he had ordered to be built at Gateshead for melting and trying lead with sea-coals. With the fall of Wolsey, however, the Newcastle traders had no longer anything to fear from the prestige and business ability of the great cardinal, and an Act of 1530 practically gave them a monopoly of the northern export trade, which was only for a brief space interrupted by a withdrawal of their privileges in the time of Queen Mary.

All through the sixteenth century the working of coal was actively prosecuted in the county of Durham, and allusions to mines already mentioned are frequent in the leases, surveys, and accounts of the Palatinate; many of these are cited by Mr. Galloway. A few additional notices are preserved in the survey of the possessions of the earl of Westmorland made on the occasion of his attainder after the Northern Rising in 1569. The royal commissioners returned amongst other sums £22 a year due from the bishop of Durham to the earl for coal-mines leased in ‘Cockfield, Mawefeldes, Wodyfeldes and Fulcye.’ To this, however, the bishop demurred, and his reasons were to the point: ‘the pyttes and mynes are wrought out and no coales there to be gotten nor eny pyttes in worke within those places at this present.’ Again, at Thornley near Brancepeth, Christopher Danyell paid 16s. 8d. a year at Pentecost and Martinmas for a coal-mine, holding at the will of the lord. The famous Westmorland Colliery at Winlaton had been granted on a thirty years’ lease dated 30 September, Eliz., to Cuthbert Blunt, with ‘ free wayleave, grandleave, staythleave and waterleve.’ He sub-leased the mines to Christopher Cooke, and we learn from the depositions in a suit of 1587 that apparently Cooke’s mining operations had been interfered with by certain persons who had acquired the manor of Winlaton. In these depositions mention is made of scarcity of labour, and we hear that women had been enlisted ‘for lack of men.’

It is incontestable that the second half of the sixteenth century witnessed an enormous development of the northern coal trade. Wood was becoming rapidly more scarce and dearer to purchase, while the great increase of house chimneys removed some of the more obvious drawbacks to the use of fossil fuel. Harrison in his Description of England, published about ten years before the coming of the Armada, noted that ‘theyr greatest trade beginneth nowe to growe from the forge into the kitchin and hall,’ and with this extension of traffic in coals there synchronized an increase of chimneys marvellous to old men,

The increased demand for coal called forth the shrewd financier - in this case, Sutton, master of the ordnance at Berwick in 1569, who shortly after obtained a long lease of the mines of Whickham and Gateshead. In 1580 he was said to be worth £50,000. This apparently was the beginning of the famous ‘Grand Lease,’ which ultimately passed into the hands of the merchants of Newcastle, who had already acquired several lesser collieries, and put them in a position to regulate still more effectively the price of coal. Consequently in 1590, the Lord Mayor of London complained to Lord Burghley ‘of the monopoly and extortion of the owners of Newcastle coals.’

The Lord Mayor’s complaint was echoed by contemporary writers. No doubt the increased demand was responsible in part for the advance in prices, but the sufferers therefrom were probably correct in judging that the Newcastle monopoly aggravated the evil. The history of the famous Society of Hostmen and the part they played in the control of the export trade from Newcastle belongs rather to the history of Northumberland than that of Durham, but we may mention here their charter of incorporation granted by Queen Elizabeth. These hostmen or fitters acted as intermediaries between coalowners and merchants frequenting the port, and provided keels for carrying coals from the staiths to the sea-going ships. Some idea of the probable average production of the northern collieries towards the end of the sixteenth and in the first decade of the seventeenth century may be derived from the quantity of coal exported from the Tyne in 1609, which amounted to 239,261 tons, of which 24,956 tons were sent abroad. The corresponding figures for the Wear are stated to have been 11,648 tons and 2,383 tons.

As early at least as the fifteenth century, choke damp had been a recognized impediment to the work of the miners in the deeper pits of the Palatinate, but in the year 1621 we meet with the first record of what was in all probability an explosion of fire-damp in an entry of the register of St. Mary’s Church, Gateshead:

About this time too we meet with records of pits being drowned out, and various accidents from drowning and burning are recorded at Whickham in the first half of the seventeenth century. The next half-century was a period of considerable disturbance, the Plague, the Great Fire of London, and the civil wars all contributing to upset the regular course of trade. It is interesting to note that the first allusion to cokemaking appears during this period, coke being mentioned as having been made in Derbyshire in 1644 for drying malt. An interesting item is the first record of railways and wagons being used, namely, in 1671, at Sir Thomas Liddell’s railway at Ravensworth, the rails being made of wood, and one horse drawing about four or five chaldrons from the colliery to the staiths, which were situated near the present Dunston staiths. In 1675 the output of the Tyne appears to have been increased to about 570,000 tons of coal; but there is no certainty as to the exact value of the weights and measures used, until, in 1678, Parliament passed an Act to regulate the weights and measures in the coal trade.

In 1681 the Grand Lease previously referred to expired, and Bishop Crewe granted a renewal of the lease to Colonel Liddell and his partners, from whom it passed afterwards to Lord Ravensworth and other notable men who formed the partnership known as the ‘Grand Allies.’ About this time, the coal-mines of Lumley Park are referred to as amongst the most important in the north, and producing the best coal, which was shipped at Sunderland. Towards the end of the seventeenth century the number of those working and selling coals who were not members of the Hostmen’s Corporation of Freemen, or the ‘Non-Freemen,’ as they were called, had become so great, and they exercised so considerable an influence, that the hostmen were obliged to grant them some measure of recognition, and from this time onwards there appears to have been keen competition between the two parties.

The seventeenth century witnessed several important technical changes in the mining for coal, In 1618 we first hear of boring for coal, and in 1692 we learn that Thomas Wake commenced to make various bore-holes near Ryton and Wylam. Water was at this time one of the gravest troubles, and in many places some form of machinery was introduced for draining the pits, apparently a chain-pump worked either by horses or water-wheel being employed. Tramlines were in use in several places, although in many pits carts and horses were still employed. The existence of fire-damp was clearly recognized, and also the fact that it could be fired by a light or an accidental spark. It is probable that the comparative immunity from accident caused by fire at this period was due to the fact that workings never seem to have extended far from the shafts themselves, and it would appear probable that in most cases the old-fashioned bell pit was still in use. The coal trade of the Wear developed very considerably during the seventeenth century.

It has been seen that it was comparatively insignificant at the commencement of that period, but soon after the opening of the eighteenth century the Wear was exporting about 175,000 tons of coal as against some half million exported from the Tyne. At this time the price of coals in Newcastle was about 11s. per chaldron, say about 4s. per ton, and about 18s. per chaldron, or about 7s. per ton in London. The next century was destined to witness the commencement of a series of changes which profoundly affected the whole of the coal trade in general, and among others had a lasting effect upon the county of Durham. It has been seen that one of the great difficulties to be contended with in this county was the influx of water in the pits. It was about the year 1710 that Newcomen invented his steam-engine, the first one having apparently been erected at a coal-pit in Staffordshire in the year 1712. It is said that the first steam-engine in the north of England was erected about the year 1714 at a place called Washington Fell, for a colliery upon the River Wear, and the next at Norwood, near Ravensworth Castle; it is, however, doubtful whether these engines were erected as early as the date above given. In 1724 a Mr. John Potter of Chester le Street advertised himself as an agent for the erection of these engines, and it appears that about this period numerous engines were employed, so much so that a list drawn up by Mr. W. Brown, of Throckley, gives no less than thirtytwo of them, having cylinders up to 72 in. in diameter, as being employed in pumping at various pits in the county of Durham. The same year (1769) was the date of James Watt’s great invention of the independent condenser, but it would seem that the Watt engine did not displace the later Newcomen engines erected in the north of England at any very rapid rate. Very shortly after the application of the steam-engine to coal-mining came another invention of almost equal importance to the coal trade: in the year 1735 Abraham Darby succeeded in smelting pigiron by means of coal. Although the manufacture of coke was known, as has been seen, long before this time, it is doubtful whether Darby was acquainted with it. He appears to have commenced by attempting to treat pit-coal in the same way as the charcoal burner treated wood, building a hemispherical pile, which he in this way coked. The coke thus made worked perfectly well in the blast furnace, and from this time onwards the use of coal in the manufacture of iron was an established fact. It can easily be understood that these two inventions helped each other forwards by their mutual interdependence, and at the same time proved a powerful factor in developing the coal trade, which in a sense was a common bond between them. During the eighteenth century, the increased demands for coal caused other methods of coal-mining to be adopted. Underground roads appear to have been laid out and working in pillars commenced. The first account of attempting to win the pillars in a colliery is stated to have been due to Edward Smith at Chartershaugh on the Wear in 1738. The same person also appears to have used some simple form of flue for producing artificial ventilation, which became a necessity now that colliery workings became more complicated. It is worth recording that the commencement of the eighteenth century witnessed the publication of the first book devoted to coal-mining, called The Compleat Collier, or The Whole Art of Sinking, Getting, and Working the Coal Mines, &c., as now used in the Northern Parts, especially about Sunderland and Newcastle. There is a certain amount of evidence that the practice to which this book referred was that of the River Wear, and the little book shows that there was a considerable amount of crude knowledge of mining at that time. It seems that at the period at which the author writes pits were sunk of square form, timbered with wood until the stone head was reached, when they were continued in a circular shape. When much water had to be passed through, a method of tubbing, by means of water-tight frames covered with wooden staves like those of a tub, was employed, and it would seem that these were tolerably successful. Pits were, of course, small, namely, about 6 ft. in diameter, but even so some of them seem to have descended to depths of 300 or 400 ft. The underground workings consisted of roads driven in the coal at right angles to each other, consisting, as at present, of bords which were driven comparatively wide across the cleat of the coal, whilst the head ways were driven narrow at right angles to the former.