A HISTORY OF CORNWALL its original nucleus. Five tracts of stanniferous wastrel, with their adjunct vales, supplied the ancient stream works of Cornwall. The moor between Launceston and Bodmin, in which the Fowey River has its source, gave rise to the northern stannary of Foweymore. Hensborough Beacon with the tin grounds of Roche, Luxulian, and St. Austell formed that of Blackmore. A smaller district on the north coast, including St. Agnes and Cligga, and extending inland to Truro, constituted the stannary of Tywarnhail. The stannaries of Penwith and Kerrier included two great tracts of waste, of which one lies north of Helston in Kerrier, and the other between Lelant and Land's End. In each district was established a court, pre- sided over by a steward, as the warden's repre- sentative. In Devon, where analogous divisions had taken place, already by 1243 we ^ nt ^ l ^ e stannary courts recorded in the Pipe Rolls. 1 Cornwall, by the year I297, 2 contained the stannaries of Blackmore, Penwith and Kerrier, and Tywarnhail, each with its court; but of Foweymore we have no trace until I342. 3 Gradually, also, arose a code, partly from pre- scription and partly no doubt from enactment by early stannary parliaments, the object of which was to make it dangerous for either tinner or foreigner to infringe the judicial liberties of the mines. It is unfortunate that we have not the records of the first stannary convocations, with which to trace the gradual steps by which the screw tightened. As it is, we must depend upon the law as defined by the convocations held from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. 4 No tinner, so it reads, might appear at an assize, 6 or might sue, or allow himself to be sued, in any foreign court (any court outside the stannaries), save for pleas of life, limb, or land, under penalty of a heavy fine. 6 No case determinable in the stannary court might be tried elsewhere, violations of this rule being punishable whether or no the offender were a tinner. 7 Warrants and writs issued against the tinners from foreign courts were not allowed, and officers attempting to serve them were liable to arrest. In this category came 1 Pipe R. 27 Hen. Ill, Devon. 1 Exch. K. R. Bailiffs' Accts. of Edmund of Corn- wall, 2425 Edw. I. 3 Receiver's R. 26 Edw. III. 4 In the earliest existing court roll of the stannaries (P.R.O. Ct. R. bdle. 156, No. 26) we find instances of men charged with impleading tinners in a foreign court. 5 Add. MS. 6713, fol. 191. 6 Convoc. Cornw. 22 Jas. I, c. 7. Cf. Compleat Mineral Laws of Derbyshire, pt. i, art. 13, 18, 37; pt. 2, art. 40. Thomas Houghton, The Compleat Miner, 14, art. 31; pt. ii, art. 21. 'Certain Peculiari- ties in the Old Mining Laws of Mendip,' by C. Lemon, Trans. Roy. Geol. Soc. Cornw. vi, 330. 7 Pearce, Laws and Customs of the Stannaries, p. xx. A similar provision held in the Forest of Dean. Houghton, The Compleat Miner, pt. ii, art. 2 1 . warrants issued by any justice of the peace, 8 writs of cercionary from the royal courts, 9 and writs of replevin from any one but the warden, and all attempts to remove suits from the stan- nary courts once they had there begun. Writs of prohibition, habeas corpus, and corpus cum causa, were allowed where the plea was one of land, life, or member, 10 but no litigant might procure these writs under any other circum- stances. The use of royal writs of subpoena to sue a tinner out of the stannaries for matters there determinable was equally forbidden, and the writ itself might be broken with impunity. 11 No appeals were permitted from stannary judge- ments to foreign courts, either by writs of error or of certiorari. 12 Save in the few cases where a tinner might legally be tried in a foreign court, 15 in which event the jury was composed half of tinners, 13 the latter were immune from jury service save in their own tribunals. 14 A host of prosecutions recorded in mediaeval stannary court rolls for violations of the above regulations not only confirm our views as to their antiquity, but prove conclusively that they were in no sense dead letters. 15 From almost the first the stannary courts were obliged to contend for the maintenance of their prerogatives with the non-mining part of the population, partly by reason of conflicts of juris- diction, and partly because of the miners' disre- gard in their operations for ordinary rights of property. Thus in 1309 we find the sheriff of Cornwall mobbed by the Blackmore tinners, on his attempting to levy upon their chattels. 16 A few years later we see the tinners of Devon charged before the king with having intimidated the bailiffs of the hundred moots, and of having made arbitrary use of the stannary writ. 17 Matters, however, did not come to a head until 1376, when two long petitions from the people of Cornwall and Devon were answered in the Good Parliament. 18 But before examining their con- tents, a slight retrospect is essential for a clear view of the constitutional questions involved. One reason for these disputes seems to have been the lack of precise definition with which 8 Add. MS. 6713, fol. 112. Helston Court, 12 Hen. VIII. 9 Ibid. fols. 1 29, 1 30. 10 Convoc. Cornw. 12 Chas. I, c. 30. 11 Add. MS. 6713, fol. 127 (Penwith and Kerrier Customs). " Convoc. Cornw. 12 Chas. I, c. 30. 13 Chart. R. 33 Edw. I, m. 40. 14 Harl. MS. 6380, fol. 43. 15 P.R.O. Ct. R. bdle. 159, No. I; bdle. 156, No. 26, etc. 16 Pat. 3 Edw. II, m. 43 d. "Pat. 12 Edw. II, pt. i, m. 15, sched. Cf. also Close, 7 Edw. Ill, pt. i, m. gd. ; Pat. 8 Edw. II, pt. ii, m. 2 d. ; Par/. R. (Rec. Com.), i, 1 90, 297, 312, 382. 18 Par/. R. (Rec. Com.), 11, 343, 344. 528
