The discovery of coal. tended materially to enlarge the knowledge of the English merchants, acquiring as they did from year to year, by their intercourse with the more refined and intelligent merchants of Holland and France, much information on subjects they might have learnt at an earlier period of their history had their rulers not embroiled them in constant wars with the very nations with whom they were now in direct communication. Again, though it is certain that, at least on the western side of England, the Romans had worked coal on or near the surface,[1] the opening of the great coal-fields near Newcastle first took place in the reign of this wise monarch—though, curiously enough, its value was sooner appreciated by foreigners than by the people of the country in which this vast source of wealth was found. For a considerable period after its discovery, the consumption of coal was supposed to be so unhealthy that a royal edict prohibited its use in the city of London while the queen resided there, in case it might prove "pernicious to her health."[2] On the other hand, while England was thus prohibiting the use of the article which has made her by far the most famous commercial nation of either ancient or modern times, France sent her ships laden with corn to Newcastle, receiving coal as their return cargoes,
- ↑ Mr. Wright, in his excavations at Uriconium (Wroxeter), found abundant evidences of the use of coal. Roman candles have also been met with in some of the neighbouring mines. As early as A.D. 1253 there was a lane behind Newgate, in London, called Sea-coal Lane. Ayloffe's Calend., p. 11. It appears also that coal was used in A.D. 1337 in the manufacture of iron anchors. See "Syllabus of Rymer's Fœdera," Appendix No. 8, p. 648, s. a. 1337.
- ↑ Stow's "Survey of London," p. 925.
