A HISTORY OF CORNWALL loggerheads with the king, on account of its refusal to delegate its contracting powers to a select committee who were to be summoned to Whitehall and overawed into signing a contract for the preemption. 1 On the whole, however, the relations with the crown seem to have been friendly enough. There would, in any case, be little cause for friction, the main flurries between the stannaries and royalty being conflicts of courts, while the proclamations and statutes which the parliaments were called upon to dis- allow seem seldom to have, been numerous or unreasonable. As time advanced, the occasions for the calling of parliaments grew less and less frequent, and for the last one, that of Devon, in 1822, our sole information is that the mem- bers, having been sworn in at Crockerntorre, adjourned to a neighbouring town. 2 The exemption of tinners from ordinary taxa- tion seems, excepting the case of ship money in the year of the Armada, 3 to have been recog- nised as absolute. 4 Occasionally the privilege was attacked and attempts were made by royal officers to tax the tinners illegally, 6 but these were usually repudiated by the crown and the liberties up- held. Such an instance took place in 1338, when a levy of the tenth and fifteenth was answered by the miners refusing to operate their works until their grievance had been redressed. 6 Legal protection from collectors was also sought by the tinners in their courts, and the bailiff, cus- tomer, or sheriff, who included tinners in his lists, came under the operation of the penal statutes of the stannaries. 6 The tinners, however, were subject to assess- ments of their own. Of some of the older im- positions we have already had occasion to speak. Even at that period, when the production of tin was low, we find the king's mark for both stan- nary counties totalling 600 in H99, r 668 in I2i a, 8 and 799 in 1214,' amounting to more than the combined revenues from Cornwall and Devon. 10 It was this importance of tin as a source of royal income which guaranteed the 'Add. MS. 6713, fol. 387. 8 De la Beche, Geo/ogy of Cornwall, Devon, and Weit Somerset, 586. 3 Acts of P. C. 1588, 198 ; S. P. Dom. Eliz. ccxii, 53 ; ccxvi, 48 ; cclxii, 73. 4 Pat. 12 Edw. Ill, pt. i, m. 23^ ; I Edw. IV, pt. iii, m. 13; Close, Edw. Ill, pt. ii, m. 20 ; 12 Edw. Ill, pt. iii, m. 13 ; Add. MS. 24746, fol. 92 ; Convoc. Cornwall. 1 6 Hen. VIII, c. 10.
- Close, 12 Edw. Ill, pt. iii, m. 13.
6 Add. MS. 6713, fol. 253. This exemption from ordinary taxation gave rise to continual frauds on the part of men who wished to become tinners merely to escape payment of rates. P. R. O. Lay Subs. R. bdle. 95, Nos. 12, 22 ; Pat. 12 Edw. Ill, pt. i, m. 23^; 16 Edw. Ill, pt. iii, m. zd ; 17 Edw. Ill, pt. i, m. 40^, pt. ii, m. s,d, 32^; Close, 1 1 Edw. Ill, pt. ii, m. 20. ' Pipe R. i John. 8 Ibid. 14 John. " Ibid. 16 John. 10 About j$oo per annum at this date. tinners the continuity of royal support, and em- boldened them in their stand against manor and shire. 11 With the development of stannary taxation during the thirteenth century, and the establish- ment of a hierarchy of collectors, on the lines which De Wrotham had laid down in 1 1 98, we need not concern ourselves. Those curious to learn of the different expedients to which Richard of Cornwall and his son Edmund re- sorted, to raise money, can find enlightenment in the sources, 12 but most interest is centred upon the devices by which revenue was raised from the Cornish stannaries from the fourteenth century onward. There were, in the first place, sums accruing from various miscellaneous perquisites. The duke had his share in the profits of the stewards' courts, the amounts in no case being over 20 from any one district, and usually much less. 13 Dublet, a small tax in Penwith and Kerrier, brought in n*. Sd. per annum, 14 while the 'fine of tin,' collected in Blackmore stannary, and in Pyder hundred, contributed usually a lump sum of 65*. 8^. 15 Occasionally receipts are found from the sale of tin forfeited because sold un- stamped, orfraudulentlymarked. 16 In likecategory we may mention a profuse coinage of tin half- pennies and farthings undertaken by James II, and by William and Mary, for the purpose of profiting by the high seigniorage ; 17 the smelting- houses which the Black Prince ran at Lost- withiel ; 18 and the small sums which Edward IV 11 The chief forms assumed by the taxation in the Derbyshire mines were ' lott ' and ' cope,' the former the thirteenth dish of ore as toll to the lord of the soil (in most of the mines the king), and the latter 6J. per load of nine dishes {Compleat Mineral Laws of Derbyshire, pt. i, art. 12, 13, 20). 'Lott lead 'in Mendip was the tenth pound blown at the hearth. (' Peculiarities in the Old Mining Laws of Mendip,' by C. Lemon, Trans. Roy. Geol. Soc. Cornw. vi, 329.) In Dean, the miners of ' beneath the wood ' supplied each week twelve charges of ore to the king's forges at d. per charge (Houghton, The Compleat Miner, pt. ii, art. 19). Every miner, besides, paid a royal tax of d. per week (Houghton, The Compleat Miner, pt. ii, art. 15). 11 Exch. K. R. Bailiffs' Accts. of Edmund of Corn- wall, 24-25 Edw. I ; Pipe R. 20, 23, 27, and 34 Edw. I, Devon ; Aug. Off. Duchy of Cornw. Accts. part 5. B In 1450 only 3 all told (Receiver's Roll, 29 Hen. VI). 14 It appears first in 1302 (Pipe R. 30 Edw. I, Cornw.), and vanishes after 1507 (Ministers' Accts. Duchy of Cornw. 22 Hen. VII). 15 See Ministers' Accts. Duchy of Cornw. 16 Edw. III. 16 Receiver's Roll, 21-22 Eliz. ; 4 Jas. I. " Cal. S. P. Dom. 1651, 313-315 ; S. P. Dom. Chas. II, xxxvii, 19 ; ccxxx, 75 ; Treas. Papers, Ixxxvi, 102; vii, 73 ; Ixxxiv, 138. Collins, A Pica for the Bringing in of Irish Cattle. 18 White Book of Cornwall, 32 Edw. Ill, c. 89. 536
