mechanical skill. The chief smith was a man of considerable distinction in the courts of the Anglo-Saxon kings, and his privileges and weregild exceeded those of any other craftsman. Towards the period of the Conquest, the manufacture of iron had considerably increased, and the art of working it was better understood. Steel and iron armour were common. At the time of the Domesday Survey the city of Hereford had six smiths, who paid each one penny for his forge, and made one hundred and twenty pieces of iron from the king's ore; receiving in return a customary payment of three pence, and being free from all other service; the city of Gloucester paid to the king thirty-six dicras of iron, and one hundred ductile rods to make nails for the king's ships. Iron had now become the principal manufacture of Gloucestershire, and in the reign of Edward the First there is stated to have been no less than seventy-two furnaces in the Forest of Dean for smelting it: The largest establishments of the Romans for the manufacture of iron in Britain were in this county; but the method, whatever it may have been, which they employed, was imperfect, and the cinders of their numerous forges, wherever they are discovered, are found to contain a very considerable portion of unsmelted metal. The first smelting-furnace, and that which in all probability was used by the Romans for the manufacture of iron, is supposed to be the air bloomery; it is described as a "low conical structure, with small openings at the bottom for the admission of air, and a large orifice at top for carrying off the gaseous products of combustion. It was filled with charcoal and ore in alternate layers, and the fire applied to the lowest part." How long this simple contrivance continued in use we have no means of ascertaining, the period to which it belongs being so very remote; there is no doubt, however, that the next era of improvement in the manufacture of iron was the introduction of bellows, and the construction of the blast bloomery, which greatly facilitated the process of smelting, and, by allowing the construction of larger furnaces, considerably increased the manufacture. The blast bloomery, in process of time, and the constant progression of the arts, was superseded by what is denominated the blast furnace. This last improvement is supposed to have been introduced during the early part of the sixteenth century; for in the seventeenth century "the art of casting in metal had arrived at a great degree of perfection, and in the reign of Elizabeth there was a considerable export trade of cast-iron ordnance to the continent.*" "During the long period, however, that the air and blast bloomeries had been the only making furnaces, large accumulations of scoria, containing from thirty to forty per cent. of iron, had formed. The more perfect operation of the blast furnace allowed these to be re-melted with great advantage; a new species of property was thus created; extensive proprietorships of Danish and Roman cinders were formed; large deposits of scoria, which for ages had lain concealed beneath forests of decayed oaks, were dug up, and in Dean forest it is computed that twenty furnaces, for a period of upwards of three hundred years, were supplied chiefly with the bloomery cinders as a substitute for iron-ore."-(Vide Encyclo. Brit.) About the year 1300 a complaint was preferred by the Feroners, or dealers in iron, to the Mayor of London, Elias Russel, and the court of Aldermen, against the smiths of the Wealds and other merchants, for bringing down irons of wheels for carts to the city of London, which were * See Encyclopædia Brit. much shorter than anciently was accustomed, to the great loss and scandal of the whole trade of Ironmongers. Whereupon an inquisition was taken of lawful and honest men, who presented three iron rods of the just and anciently used lengths of the strytes (strytorum), and also of the length and breadth of the gropes (groporum), belonging to the wheels of carts, which rods were sealed with the seal of the Chamber of Guildhall, London, whereof one remains in the said chamber, and another rod was delivered on the Monday before the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in the 29th Edw. I. to John Dode and Robert de Paddington, ironmongers of the market, and the third was delivered the same Monday to John de Wymondham ironmonger of the bridge; which John, Robert, and John were sworn upon the Holy Evangelists that from day to day they should warn or give notice to all merchants bringing such iron to the city of London, as well of the Wealds as elsewhere, that they hereafter should not bring such iron unless it was of the length and breadth aforesaid, upon pain of the forfeiture of such iron, and that such iron as they should find against the aforesaid assize after the feast of Easter next should be wholly forfeited.-Liber Horn. The Liber Horn is an ancient MS., one of the most important preserved in the archives of the city of London, and was compiled about the year 1311; it is very neatly written on thick vellum, and illuminated a fac-simile of one of the initial letters is given above. Some account of the Liber Horn occurs in the Preface of Strype's Stow, 1720. It is so named, the Editor observes, from Andrew Horn, sometime Chamberlain of the city, viz. in the time of King Edward II. What this book contains is told by this inscription in one place of it (fo. cevi.), viz.-Iste Liber restat Andreæ Horne, Piscenario London. de Breggestrete, in quo continentur cartæ et aliæ consuetudines predict. civitat. Angliæ et statuta per Henricum Regem et Edwardum Regem fil. predict. Regis Henrici edita. And again (fo. viii.):-In isto Libro continentur tota statuta et ordinationes et cartæ et libertates et consuetudines civitat. London et ordo justitiorum itinerantium apud turrim Lond. et ipsum iter. Another work bearing the name of Andrew Horne is, "The Mirroir of Justices, written originally in the old French long before the Conquest; and many things added by Andrew Horne, to which is added the Diversity of Courts and their Jurisdiction." It was printed in 1642 with the following title: La Somme Mirroir des Justices vel speculum Justiciariorum factum per Andream Horne Hanc legum summam si quis vult iura tenere Horne mihi cognomen, Andreas est mihi nomen. London: Printed by E. G. for Matthew Walbanke and Richard Best, and are to be sold at their shops "This singular work has raised much doubt and difference of opinion concerning its antiquity. Some (including Lord Coke and Nathaniel Bacon) have pronounced it older than the Conquest, others have ascribed it to the time of Edward II. Both these opinions may be partly right. There may, perhaps, have been a work by this name as early as the date supposed; but whoever judges from the internal evidence of the book will be satisfied that great part of it is of a period much later, and certainly written after Fleta and Britton, for it states many points of law as it were in a state of progression, somewhat receding from those writers and approaching nearer to those of later times. It is probable that Andrew Horne, whose name it bears, might take up an ancient book of that name, and work it into the volume we now see, in the reign of this king or at the end of the former; and, if so, we should expect that whatever it propounds was actually law in the reign of Edward II." &c.-History of English Law, by John Reeves, Esq. 1787, p. 358. The earliest distinct notice of the Ironmongers as a guild which I have met with is in the 25th Edw. III. (1351), when a considerable change and revolution in the civic constitution took place. "Until this time the ward representation continued, but the number of representatives was increased. It appears that the proportion was sometimes left to the discretion of the aldermen; thus, in the 20th Edw. III. an ordinance was made that each alderman in his wardmote should cause eight, six, or four of the best and most discreet men thereof, according as the ward was large or small, to attend at Guildhall when summoned on the affairs of the city. Shortly afterwards, in the 21st Edw. III., a more definite regulation and appointment was made by a bye-law which specified the numbers; some of the larger wards were to return six members, other wards five members, two wards four members, and one ward two members to the common council. But this proceeding occurred on the eve of a material alteration in the elective constituency of the assembly by transferring the right of suffrage from the inhabitants of the wards, or the communities in the most extended sense, to the smaller and more select and opulent class qualified as members of the trades or mysteries." On Monday next before the feast of Saint Martin, in the 25th Edw. III., a certain bill was sent by Andrew Aubrey, the mayor, to two men, probably the wardens or 66 gardeins" of the following mysteries: the Drapers, Grocers, Mercers, Fishmongers, Goldsmiths, Woolners, Vintners, Skinners, Weavers, Tailors, Cordwainers, Iron |