Chapter Ten Newcastle's Coal Mine Owners Create Commercial Fitters1 From 1689 to 1722, Newcastle's coal capitalists shared the business woes of other English entrepreneurs of their time. They too struggled "under the existence or imminent threat of excess capacity."2 They deplored their "ability to raise coal" faster than their ability to dispose of it" even at prices which had not changed for decades, and their merchants complained constantly about "the stagnation of the market."3 This situation became endemic to the coal business for at least five decades after 1689. As early as the 1660s, coal supplies (in peace time) saturated contemporary markets, the "industry was over-capital- ized, and its principal markets were glutted."4 To maintain profits, coal mine owners imitated the advanced business prac- tices of other English industrialists: they lowered wages, streamlined transport systems, and pressured Parliament for trading privileges. Although individual coal mine owners, like businessmen in other trades, profited from their holdings, none of their strategies resolved the coal trade's crisis of deficient demand.5 Beyond these economy-wide similarities with other English enterprises, distinctive market dilemmas bedeviled Newcastle's coal mine owners in ways that affected no other industry of its day. From the start, coal separated itself as a commodity be- cause it provided an irreplaceable utility for numbers of manu- facturers and millions of people; indeed, by 1700, "Coal was supplying over half of the nation's fuel needs."6 Although few industries, such as glass and salt, burned huge quantities of the mineral in the early eighteenth century, it was coal's replace- ment of wood as England's principal source of home energy that made it a major national business before 1689. From Elizabeth's time, coal's "most important transition . . . was [its] progres- sive adoption . . . for domestic heating," particularly in Lon- don.7 By 1700, it was "only less indispensable . . . than bread" for those living in the capital and the surrounding regions.8 What was a non-essential mineral in the 1600s was rapidly becom- ing a necessity for millions by 1700. In London alone, cargoes of coal "rose fifteen fold from the 1580s to the 1700s, to reach an average of just over 450,000 tons a year by the early eight- eenth century."9 Newcastle's coal was unique in another way. Its bulk and place of origin made it highly visible as a revenue source for several levels of government. Coal's mass hampered smugglers, and its everyday usefulness created an irresistible bureaucratic urge to employ it as a viable, ever-expanding reservoir for taxes.10 Its growing indispensability as home fuel meant that state and local administrations could attach assessments to its price without fearing a permanent crippling of customer demand.11 By 1700, seventy to eighty per cent of Tyne Valley coal went from Newcastle to London by sea, and, as it did, cities, monarchs, and Parliaments "sought to tap" it at every stop along the way.12 Ship owners paid taxes to Newcastle's burgesses before coal left the North, and they paid even more duties when it arrived in Yar- mouth, King's Lynn, or Portsmouth.13 For London, coal meant money equal to almost half the city's revenue in the 1700s.14 For the Crown before 1689, coal meant tax farmers willing to advance funds that Parliament might not provide.15 For Parliament, after 1689, coal meant cash to pay interest on the National debt and funds to rebuild London.16 Northeastern coal mining was anomalous in yet one other way. After the Glorious Revolution, Parliament restrained, rather than liberated, this industry. Although Parliament, London, and other urban governments lived from coal revenues after 1689, these several authorities blocked most coal owner attempts to pass their industrial costs forward to householders and manufacturers. Parliaments that routinely produced bills to rescue shipbuilders and corn merchants after the Glorious Revolution, drafted stat- utes that curbed mine owner freedoms to price or trade coal between 1689 and 1722. In 1703, Queen Anne went so far as to request that legislators protect the English public from coal capitalists whom she accused of combining to "'enrich themselves by a general oppression of others, and particularly the poor.'"17 From 1689 to 1722, Parliament treated Newcastle's coal lobbyists with suspicion, and many Members regarded Northeastern mine owners as little better than conspirators who engrossed coal to profit from artificially inflated prices.18 Newcastle's coal owners, among them William Cotesworth, Henry Liddell, and James Clavering, faced a dual dilemma before and after 1689. They produced too much of an essential commodity for existent markets, and Parliament greeted their attempts to restructure their trade with suspicion, hostility, and statutory command. These severe constraints forced owners to search within their industry for expedients to sustain profit levels. One recourse was to reduce the percentage share of coal revenues that went to their trading partners, to their attendant commercial capitalists who shipped coals from Newcastle. The process where- by Newcastle's coal mine owners transformed their merchant part- ners into their commercial servants began just after Elizabeth I granted Newcastle businessmen a superb opportunity to get rich. The Peculiarities of Coal Capitalism in Newcastle, 1620-1660 When Queen Elizabeth needed cash at the end of the sixteenth century, she sent her ministers scurrying to find fresh sources of revenue. Inspired by earlier expropriations of church wealth, and impressed by the increasing sales of Northeastern coal, her advisers suggested that she exploit Newcastle's coal trade. Specifically, they counseled that she compel the Bishop of Durham to lease her the coal-rich manors of Whickham and Gateshead at a price that made it worthwhile for her to sublease them at much higher rents.19 Accordingly, in 1577, and again in 1582, Eliza- beth required the incumbent Bishop, Richard Barnes, to lease his Newcastle lands to the Crown at a minimal rent.20 The Bishops lands contained some of the richest coal deposits in the six- teenth century world, and the Queen's potential earnings were enormous.21 This lease augmented Crown earnings over the next hundred years, but it also made many Newcastle merchants into coal capitalists. Elizabeth, and her heir, James I, never operated coal mines. Instead, through complex negotiations between the Crown and Newcastle, begun in 1578 and solidified in 1598, they leased their coal rights to the city's leading burgesses.22 In that last year, Elizabeth sublet the mines to Henry Anderson and William Selby, two members of the Hostmen's Company, a minor merchants' guild that specialized in trading coal.23 After a year of intense negotiations, the lease became the property of all Newcastle's leading citizens, who added membership in the Host- men's Company to their other corporate positions, many already being members of Newcastle's Merchant Adventurers.24 From 1599 to 1604, this reinvigorated Hostmen's Company negotiated new char- ters with Elizabeth and, after her death, James I.25 By those grants, the Hostmen agreed to pay a rent to the Crown, and to apportion this "Grand Lease" to Northeastern mineral deposits among themselves. To avoid the charge that they were monopo- lists, the Hostmen opened membership within their Company to all Newcastle freemen, permitting them to partake of the Grand Lease according to their wealth.26 By 1604, this Lease had united the richest members of Newcastle guilds, and the original Hostmen, in a corporation that gave its shareholders the right to exploit the Northeast's coal mines.27 The Hostmen's Company bought a lease and captured an indus- try.28 Royal charters bestowed the prerogative on its members to dig for coal, and they transfigured these onetime merchants into mine owners and distributors of the Queen's coal with the privi- lege, or at least the "advantageous position," of owning lands that extended well beyond the Bishop's estates.29 Later charters increased shareholder rights to mine, transport, and sell all coal produced in the Tyne Valley. Owners sold it in Newcastle where--as Hostmen--they resold it to English and foreign ship owners. By contract, only Hostmen could load and sell "pit coals and grind stones, rubstones, and whetstones in, upon, and within our river and harbour of Tyne."30 To receive their coal preroga- tives, the Company paid the Crown one shilling per cauldron on coal shipped from Newcastle to other English ports until their charter expired or, as it would be, was re-negotiated with the monarch. The contract also placed a duty of five shillings per cauldron on coals exported overseas during the same period.31 For these considerations, Newcastle's Hostmen derived power to develop "the richest coalfield in the world and its seaborne trade."32 A royal charter had transformed town merchants into an influential coalition of landlords, direct-interest taking, industrial, and commercial capitalists. The transfer of the Grand Lease at the beginning of the seventeenth century carried the Hostmen's Company to an influen- tial position of a regional industrial authority for three rea- sons. First, the Crown's dependence on coal revenues prompted monarchs to protect their new industry; second, the lands around Newcastle were coal-plentiful; and, third, just as the Grand Lease passed into Hostmen hands, England experienced a fuel shortage. The sometimes exaggerated but, nonetheless, real "Timber Crisis" of the sixteenth century delivered an incompara- ble market opportunity to Newcastle's business community.33 Because wood prices "rose five and a quarter times between the 1530s and 1640s," the substitution of coal for timber in London alone would have made the Hostmen rich merchants, but as Grand Lease holders they were more than mere traders.34 In the 1600s, Newcastle's coal mine owners were unique industrialists: they possessed a large percentage of what was rapidly becoming the nation's fuel supply, and they owned that supply as a conglomer- ate rather than as individuals.35 Throughout England, Scotland, and Wales, landowners mined coal in the seventeenth century, but most of their enterprises were "modest ventures, often comparable in terms of capital invested and numbers employed with thriving artisans' work- shops."36 The Byrons, Beaumonts, and Willoughbys opened such pits in England, and the Dundases, Wauchopes, and Prestons mined them in Scotland.37 True, the Lowther family mined extensively in Cumberland and sold large quantities in Ireland, but the Mansells, Bowens, Thomases, and Evans, who owned coal in Glamor- gan, were more typical of the coal-mining landlords who produced mostly for local markets.38 No single family dominated Newcastle politically or economically in the way that the Lowthers con- trolled Whitehaven. In Newcastle, a merchant syndicate not only owned the commodity that it marketed, but it also controlled the municipal government.39 Nowhere else did capitalists become owners of, and political spokesmen for, a strategic English industry.40 From 1604 to 1612, the Hostmen contracted to buy or lease other coal rich lands north or south of the Tyne, mined coal, shipped it to themselves in Newcastle, and tightened their grip on Northeastern political leadership. Once their coal reached Newcastle from its hinterland, the powerful Hostmen sold their equivalent of America's gold. As William Ellis declaimed, "England's a Perfect World! has Indies too! Correct your Maps: Newcastle is Peru."41 In many respects, Newcastle became an alien land within its own nation; it was a semi-foreign country licensed, for a price, to sell energy to England. From the start, however, its contract with the state created a tension between public claims to natural resources and the Hostmen's private ownership of England's best coal fields. For centuries to come, this disharmony inhibited the growth of a symbiotic relationship between the English state and the Northeastern mine owners. Although the Crown granted comprehensive privileges to the Hostmen, it remained ever watch- ful of how the Company exploited its charter rights to England's fuel supply. On the one hand, monarchs offered the Hostmen expansive mining prerogatives because they coveted as much reve- nue as the Company could deliver from mining Northeastern coal and selling it, mostly, to other English cities. On the other hand, the Crown insisted on "provision of an adequate supply of fuel at reasonable prices for London and southeastern England," a requirement that could only inhibit the coal mine owners' freedom to sell coal in foreign markets.42 This discrepancy between private ambitions and public exigency built conflict into the relationship between mine owners and several levels of govern- ments during the next 250 years. However, for the first forty of those years, the Hostmen struggled mostly with monarchs. In 1602, Queen Elizabeth threatened revocation of the Host- men's charter in response to their resistance to her royal order that Company men become coal owners as well as coal merchants.43 From 1602 to 1604, instead of mining their own coal, as Elizabeth had mandated, as many as one third of the Hostmen opted to sell their share of Grand Lease privileges to Durham and Northumber- land mine owners outside the Hostmen's Company. Fearing lost revenue if the Hostmen disbursed their privileges too widely throughout the Northeast, Elizabeth insisted that such "abuses . . . in and about the loadinge of Coles" cease, and that the Hostmen mine and distribute all regional coal themselves.44 After Elizabeth's death, James I renewed these royal threats to cancel Newcastle's monopoly if Company men authorized trading in non-owned coals. Before 1605, the Hostmen promised obedience, and swore to supervise the "orderlie loadinge" of only Hostmen coals. They pledged to run an industry in which they alone leased or owned Tyne Valley coal mines. In this way, the Crown could audit coal sales at the central location of Newcastle, and it could also hold one business community accountable for the honest collection of its Northeastern coal revenues. As the Hostmen adjusted their business conduct to satisfy monarchical complaints, they restructured corporate affairs to assure prompt payments to the Crown and a profitable trade for themselves. During the next two decades, the Company's standing orders streamlined the mining, selling, and transporting of Northeastern coal through Newcastle.45 In 1603, for "reformacion of the said abuses" the Hostmen named eight of their members as "surveyors" whose task it was to certify the "loadinge of Coles, and that noe concelement be hadd therein."46 The Company's re- cords contain the names of the surveyors, who, from the Hostmen's first days, comprised the most substantial mine owners of Newcas- tle, many of whom became the later "Lords of Coal."47 By 1616, the surveyors included Sir George Selby, Nicholas Tempest, Sir Thomas Riddell, Henry Chapman, Francis Anderson, Francis Burrell, Michaell Milborne and Raiphe Cole, all "brethren of the said ffelloshipp of Hostmen," all coal mine owners, and all individu- als who became mayors, aldermen, or members of Parliament during the next decades.48 In 1626, the surveyors swore to "true entrie in the Kings Custom House . . . of all Coles by him sold and Layd abord of any ship and [to] paie the duties for the same."49 By controlling the Hostmen's Company, Newcastle's most influential coal men could react quickly to any Crown displeasure over inade- quate revenue, high prices, or fraudulent bookkeeping. Early on, a diminishing number of coal magnates, such as the Liddells and the Claverings, added to their political influence by holding major offices within the Hostmen's company and other town corpo- rations; coal owners were Hostmen, but they were also "powers in the Merchant Adventurers who were able to exercise a growing monopoly over local government."50 However, their municipal leadership always relied most on how much coal they owned, how well they pleased monarchs, and how carefully they avoided public outrage at the amount, quality, and price of coals when it ar- rived in London for distribution throughout Middlesex and sur- rounding counties. From the 1590s to the 1640s, Newcastle's Hostmen worried about public opinion. They understood that the Southeast, and London in particular, held them responsible for surveillance of coal's price, its quality, and the regularity of its delivery. During the first decades of trading Newcastle coals to London, the privy council received a host of complaints about Hostmen who fixed prices, forestalled, substituted inferior qualities of coal, and combined to control coal supplies.51 Fearing that Parliament might force Elizabeth, James I, or Charles I to re- scind their contract, the Hostmen contrived to establish creden- tials as trustworthy conservators of England's fuel. They moni- tored their Members' behavior, and they offered written justifi- cations--often to a skeptical nation--for any changes in the price or quality of their seaborne coal. They contended that coal "be such a comoditie" that they could not produce it "at one settled price."52 They alleged that it was London's increasing demands that pressured them to raise prices because they had to find fresh supplies of coal, and that meant spending more, "To sinke newe pytts, and sett on more worke, both further distant from the water side and deper."53 They added that, "The price of Coles is here increased by reason of cariage," and that "the Rent of wayleave and staithroomes is of late so far inhansed by the ffreholders" that the mine owners had to raise prices to survive.54 During the reigns of James and Charles I, the Hostmen ex- plained their actions, enjoined their members, contributed reve- nue to kings, and delivered coal to the Southeast. Their regard for Kings won royal protection from 1603 to 1640, and, surpris- ingly, their respect for public opinion also created Parliament's support for their monopoly of Newcastle's coal fields. Although Parliament resisted most Crown attempts to raise revenue by selling patents during their years of struggle with James I, its Members exempted "the Hoastmen of the Town of Newcastle uppon Tyne" from their groundbreaking 1623 statute outlawing monopo- lies. Despite the substantial revenues that James received from the Hostmen, Parliament's anti-monopoly act explicitly declared the King's contract, exchanging ownership of Newcastle coal for a permanent duty, proper.55 Whether legislators did this, as some historians have argued, because they sympathized with merchant ambitions to expand trade, Parliament endorsed the liaison that Elizabeth had originally negotiated with Newcastle as the best method for assuring adequate supplies of coal and, without taxing themselves, Crown revenue.56 However, implicit in the statute was the idea that if the Hostmen charged too much for coal or delivered inferior goods in an unpredictable manner, Parliament would demand that the Stuarts cancel Newcastle's special status as conservator of the nation's fuel supply. This Parliamentary determination to monitor the coal indus- try became unmistakable during the reign of Charles I when public displeasure erupted over the King's re-negotiation of the Host- men's contract without Parliamentary approval. When Charles' political struggles with his legislators ended in dissolution during the late 1620s, he sought new ways to raise funds without Parliament. After 1629, and until the Civil Wars, the King tried various stratagems to gain revenue. Ship money was the most famous, but Charles also attempted to profit from greater person- al control of the coal trade.57 In 1637, he contracted with the Hostmen to sell Newcastle's coal to himself for resale to the nation. Although the Company would pay no more taxes than it had been paying to that time, Charles projected that his monopoly on the sale of coal to Southern counties would add an extra shilling to the one he already received from each Newcastle cauldron shipped to a home port. To accomplish his goal, the King author- ized the Hostmen to apportion the quantity of coal that each owner delivered to the Crown's agents for sale at Newcastle. Charles' action infuriated Southern ship owners because it added to the cost of Northeastern coals, and they combined in their refusal to pay more for coals loaded at Newcastle. Their resist- ance inflated London's coal prices, and predictable public demon- strations followed. Southeastern shippers had begun the confron- tation with Charles, but it was civic outrage that forced his capitulation; before the year 1638 was over, the King canceled the monopoly that he had just created. The political public obviously hated Charles' manipulation of the Grand Lease, but its is worth noting that Parliament, for two centuries after this event, never revoked the Hostmen's original contract. Legislators legalized the Company's monopoly with their 1623 statute, and, in normal times, Parliament remained faithful to that act. However, the Civil Wars were not normal times, and Parlia- ment abandoned its allegiance to statute when Newcastle's coal men sided with Charles I after 1641. Because their charter came from the Crown, most Hostmen, the father-in-law of Sir John Hotham, Sir Henry Anderson being a major exception, took Charles' side during the Wars.58 When the Hostmen united with the King, Parliament ended the Company's monopoly and canceled its leases. The Parliamentary leadership opened free trade in coal to the Scots and to any competing coal mine operators or ports north or south of the Tyne. Northeastern coal mine owners--even those "persons not free of [the Hostmen] Companie"--could now ship coals without clearing them at Newcastle.59 The Hostmen fought back. They ordered their members to "Seize upon All Coles as shall be Carried downe to Shieles or shipt att Sheeles from the Staithes there by any person or persons whatsoever" who were not Hostmen, but the illegal sales continued even into the Interreg- num.60 This is not the place to detail the history of coal during the era of War and Interregnum, but a brief account will clarify Newcastle's later relationship with the English state. While the King's army held sway in the Northeast, Parliament declared the Hostmen's privileges invalid, and warfare transformed the indus- try. Parliament's navy blockaded both Newcastle and Sunderland, and over the next years the "occupation and reoccupation of Newcastle by the Scots, the manipulation of the coal trade first by the Crown and then by Parliament, the sequestration of the estates of royalists, and the physical damage sustained by col- lieries, all hastened change" within the coal business.61 Per- haps the greatest alterations manifested themselves in the pro- liferation of competitive mines that sprouted up throughout the Northeast. By 1659, owners complained nervously about the coal piled high on their Tyne and Wear valley staithes. Political upheaval alone did not create independent, compet- itive, and productive Northeastern coal mines in the period between 1620 to 1660. Even before king and country fought, coal had become big business throughout the nation, and particularly in Durham and Northumberland. Wherever Northeastern landlords found coal on their land, they contracted with Hostmen (or inter- lopers) to open fresh mines, and many of these were further and further from Newcastle. Some of these coal owners sought secret- ly to ship their coal from other ports, most notably South Shields and Sunderland, without paying duties leveled at Newcas- tle by the Hostmen. As coal became an essential Southeastern fuel, these producers traded independently (and illegally) of Newcastle. While Newcastle remained in the King's hands, Parlia- ment encouraged this illegal trade, and freed these nonconformist mine owners to ship openly "Coles att Sheiles and other places."62 Even after the Commonwealth reconfirmed the Hostmen privileges in the 1650s, desperation for coal, and the taxes it paid, caused Cromwell's government to ignore illicit coal ship- ments when they arrived in the Thames. The Company found outsid- ers, and sometimes its own members, selling coal without approv- al. Frustrated by Hostmen restrictions that limited the quantity and price of coal at which members might sell their cauldrons, these freelancers, such as Ralph Gardiner, shipped their coal from South Shields or Sunderland.63 The Company responded by excluding or fining interlopers, but punishments did little to stop illicit practices.64 As coal prices fell, the number of interlopers multiplied, and Parliament, ever desperate for coal and its revenues, refused to separate the illegitimate from the legitimate commodity when it came South. During the Cromwellian era, the Hostmen faced other commer- cial enemies besides intruding mine owners. In 1655, "Captaines, Masters, and Owners of Shippes Tradeinge for Coles" petitioned Parliament to bar the Hostmen from raising taxes on coals leaving Newcastle for the South.65 The Hostmen, who employed coal reve- nues for civic purposes, such as harbor maintenance, ordered three of their most influential members, "Mr. James Claveringe, Major Jeremie Tollhurst, and Mr. John Butler . . . to make their repaire to the Citie of Westminster" to defend their added tax, and to explain their industrial dilemmas to "his Highnes" Crom- well.66 The three swore before the Protector's council that high prices resulted because "most of the cole mynes wch laie neere the River of Tyne were worne out and wasted," and that owners had to open new mines further and further from the river.67 The "scarcitie of hay and corne" in the North meant that Hostmen had to pay workers more for digging and carrying coals to Newcastle.68 Despite all these hardships, the Company spokesmen avowed that its members mined, loaded, and shipped coal "for Supportacon of many Thousand poor families dependinge thereupon," and to fuel the Southeast.69 Cromwell, and the Protectorate, died before Parliament resolved this battle between the ship owners and the Hostmen, but both groups continued a struggle that had begun against Charles I in 1637 and lasted into the Restora- tion era and after. During the final years of the Interregnum, Northeastern coal men faced one other business horror that visited all English industries at the end of the 1650s. Despite Crown taxes, public controls, and Civil Wars, Newcastle's production of coal output expanded too rapidly for existent markets from 1600 to 1659. The Civil Wars, and international conflicts with the Dutch, slowed the rate of growth from 1640 to the early 1650s, but coal sup- plies increased rapidly during the Cromwellian period, and, shortly before the Restoration, "Coal shipments from Newcastle were on a greater scale than ever before."70 However, coal mine owners took little pleasure in this good fortune because their "industry was over-capitalized," and its markets "were glutted."71 Despite Newcastle's monopoly, success had bred cutthroat competition in coal mining, and, in the lower Wear valley, Sunderland, unfettered by the Crown's shilling tax at- tached to Newcastle's charter, sold less expensive coal.72 In- creased production beyond Hostmen authority made Newcastle's Northeastern monopoly more symbolic than real by 1660. From this point forward, England's coal supply outran demand and threatened the Hostmen's future.73 The story of Newcastle coal-capitalism now becomes one of contracting markets, falling prices, and coal mine owner restructuring business practices to compensate for decreasing rates of profit. Legislation and Consolidation, 1660-1689 To the great disappointment of the Northeastern mine owners, and especially to the Hostmen, the Restoration governments placed heavier burdens on the seaborne coal business than those enforced during the Interregnum. The mine owners' problems began in 1665, when Parliament passed its first statute regulating the "Measures and Prices" of "Coale commonly called Sea Coales brought into the River of Thames."74 Newcastle's "Lords of Coal" sent seventy to eighty percent of their coals by sea, and this meant that Parlia- ment had now determined to measure, inspect, and regulate their commodity before they could sell it in its principal market. Members designed this act to halt the "deceits exactions and abuses" of coal dealers, and to calm public petitioners who condemned the "blatantly dishonest practices of the profiteer" in coal.75 With this post-Restoration statute, Parliament announced that it would monitor the quality and quantity of Newcastle's coal on the wharves of the Thames. Two years later, in 1667, as a result of the Great London Fire, Members began heaping customs taxes on Northeastern coal, in this case to rebuild the city.76 Legislators announced, that "Forasmuch as the Citty of London being the Imperiall Seate of His Majestyes Kingdomes and renowned for Trade and Commerce throughout the world" has recently been "burnt downe . . . and now lyes buryed in its owne Ruines," all coal imported into London must pay a 1s. per chaldron tax "to defray the expenses of street widening and ground acquisition."77 In 1670, when London required further funds to enlarge "the Streete called Pater- noster-row, the Lane called Warwicke lane, . . . Watling streete," and for replacing Parish Churches, Parliament added a 2s cauldron tax, raised to 3s in 1677, on all seaborne coal as it arrived in London.78 In 1685, Parliament placed yet another tax on coal to raise revenue, this time for "Rebuilding Finishing and Adorning of the Cathedrall Church of St. Paul's."79 The tax for restoring and remodeling St. Paul's was 3s per cauldron beginning in 1687, and continuing for 13 years. When renovating London proved more costly after 1689 than before, Parliament enacted continuing acts or raised coal customs duties even higher. In total, from 1667 to 1720, legislators wrote eleven statutes taxing coal for city or Church repairs, four before and seven after 1689.80 John Nef estimated that, before 1700, these various taxes yielded London L40,000 a year.81 Although these statutes made London richer, they left coal consumers poorer and mine owners frustrated. William Hausman has noted that, "The two major goals of public policy--an adequate supply of coal at a reasonable price to consumers and maximum tax revenue--were not compatible."82 Just at the time when Newcastle's competitors were adding more coal to the market, Parliamentary taxes slowed the rate at which city dwellers or manufacturers could afford to consume that coal. Besides, these incremental taxes to rebuild London and its churches affected Newcastle's coals more than those from any other Northeastern ports. After 1667, coals from Newcastle carried a double burden because they funded the king and the capital city. Decades earlier (1623), Parliament acknowledged the Crown's right to collect a 1s per cauldron tax on coals shipped from Newcastle to any other domestic port, and this duty continued into the Restoration and beyond. When the old leases on Hostmen coal lapsed in the 1660s, Charles II sold this 1s revenue per cauldron to several high-bidding favorites before he decided to bestow it on "his mistress, the Duchess of Portsmouth, to hold for her [and his] son, the Duke of Richmond and Lennox."83 Later famous as the "Richmond Shilling," Parliament collected and transferred this tax on Hostmen coals to the Duke and his heirs until 1799, when legislators bought the privilege from the resident Duke for L400,000. The state collected this tax on just Newcastle coals until 1831.84 After the Restoration, Parliamentary law presupposed that Newcastle's coal mine owners, in exchange for the continuation of their monopoly, would deliver adequate quantities of quality coal to Southeastern populations without raising prices at Newcastle, and, at the same time, that seaborne coal sales would produce substantial government revenues. If mine owners carried out their side of this statutory contract, they faced the multiple dilemmas of finding compensation for increased market competi- tion, of finding adequate funds to cover natural rises in the costs of mining coal, and of finding ways of delivering predict- able, cheap, and quality coal to the Southeast without raising prices at Newcastle. To meet these challenges, most mine owners turned to cost cutting and consolidation tactics to maintain profits while satisfying an always suspicious national govern- ment. As competition became cutthroat between Tyne and Wear coal mine owners, the Hostmen of Newcastle offered customers "gift coal" with purchases, but such strategies only added to their costs and encouraged copycats.85 Ultimately, from 1660 to 1689, owners required expensive modifications in the way they mined coal, and a reorganization of social relationships within the coal trade to safeguard their investments. During these restruc- turing years, the wealthiest owners positioned themselves to dominate the coal industry. The holders of extensive mines, such as Liddells, Riddells, Carrs, and Claverings, slashed industrial expenses by upgrades and amalgamation. They spent funds to construct wooden waggonways because savings from such improve- ments "could be enormous."86 Others invested capital to buy farm tenants' copyhold rights, thereby avoiding expensive court fights with local farmers over claims to shared lands.87 Before they made these so called "liquidation" purchases, farmers who held customary tenures retained traditional rights to take fuel for their own use, and to refuse access to "minerals beneath their soil."88 Buying these copyholds provided already formidable mine owners, including the Claverings and Riddells, with greater control over their lands, and it cut greatly the expense of wayleave access from their mines to nearby rivers. It also provided coal mine owners with rentable farm lands if coal mining became too unprofitable.89 Consolidation strategies proved as crucial for profiting from coal as cutting costs of production. The richest coal mine owners confronted hard Restoration times by buying coal lands from those "shaken out" of business.90 Mining coal at further distances from Newcastle and its river increased costs, and this prompted many a Hostman to sell his coal rights to wealthier brethren. As early as the 1630s, the more successful Hostmen increased their mine holdings by these individual purchases, or they formed risk-sharing partnerships to buy out the less effi- cient or less fortunate.91 As coal mining became more competitive after 1660, these concentrations multiplied. The Liddells took large shares of the "Grand Lease" and added mines in "Lumley and Chester-le-Street collieries on the river Wear."92 Sir Francis Anderson claimed part ownership of the coal-filled manors of "Whickham, Crawcrook, Winlaton, and Kippier on the South bank, and Denton and Sugley on the north bank, of the Tyne."93 Similar lists "of colliery interests could be drawn up for Henry Ander- son, Sir George Selby, Sir Lionel Maddison, Ralph Cole, and other local merchants" who became the most powerful "Lords of Coal" by the end of the seventeenth century.94 To "be born in the town of Newcastle an Anderson, a Selby, a Liddell, a Carr, a Blackett, or a member of any one of a score of mercantile families, was to be born with an interest both in collieries and in the coal trade," and, by the 1660s, was to be part of the "inner rings of all the chief partnerships."95 During these years, it also meant to be born a landlord with House of Commons aspirations. Shareholders of the original Grand Lease followed the lead of Liddells and Claverings, and became "substantial landlords while maintaining their position as major players in colliery."96 William Jenison's mines provided money for his heirs' estate at Elswick Hall, and William Riddell's children settled at Fenham.97 Queen Elizabeth's original Charter named a Liddell, a Jenison, an Anderson, a Dudley, a Riddell, and a Selby.98 Their heirs built estates, ran mines, and rented lands to coal mine adventurers or to North country farmers. Blacketts, Claverings, Ridleys, and Ords, who joined the Hostmen later in the century, united with these founding fathers of coal to combine trade, mines, and land. They joined the Hostmen, bought and leased coal lands, co-part- nered mining operations, built manor houses, marketed fossil fuel, and rented farm lands. Blacketts, Liddells, Ellisons, Andersons, and Carrs all held seats in the House of Commons after 1660.99 Newcastle's largest mine owners remained "Lords of Coal," but they also became Northeastern bankers to the city's major business. Coal mining demanded abundant capital, and the "larger collieries were almost invariably run by groups of investors who shared the risks, costs, and profits."100 During these years, the leading Hostmen spread liability among themselves, and uni- fied all capitalist functions as they became interest-bearing, industrial, and commercial capitalists. Sir Thomas Riddell, Sir Francis Anderson, Sir Thomas Liddell, Sir William Selby, and James Coles all made loans to mine owners, owned mines, and sold coal.101 The Hostmen, the "great traders of the town had become the bankers for the whole of North England from the Tweed to the Tees" by the 1650s.102 The influence of these direct interest- taking coal-capitalist spread further after the Glorious Revolu- tion. John Ord and William Ramsay Jr. operated at the center of a Newcastle's money market during the 1690s where they special- ized in financing mines, securing mortgages, and locating pro- spective investors for mine owners. Ord and Ramsay "lent out their own surplus capital," and Ramsay lent L5,000 to the Mon- tagues in 1709 when they had financial difficulties with their collieries.103 These Northeastern capitalists began in coal, but they quickly learned to diversify with investments in ancillary indus- tries. Leonard Carr, Robert Anderson, Sir Nicholas Tempest, Thomas Ledgard, George Milburn, and William Chapman owned shares in collieries; they were also members of the Society of Salt Makers.104 Sir William Blackett, William Cotesworth, Colonel George Liddell, Enoch Hudson, and William Ramsay, mined lead as well as coal.105 William Cotesworth swapped coal for alum and traded "grindstones, lead, glass bottles, and later salt to Holland, Hamburg, and the Baltic ports."106 William Ramsay the elder, speculated in lead mining, and his son, William Ramsay, Jr., the owner of the Grand Lease after the first Lease lapsed, was a goldsmith, a Baltic trader, and a lender on mortgages.107 Coal magnates combined socially as well as industrially. Never having left the coal producing North, "Liddells, Carrs, Ellisons, Ridleys, and Blacketts, for example, continued to reinvigorate their stock and their purses by marrying into local merchant families."108 Historians comment correctly on the lon- gevity and social coherence of Newcastle's coal community. Lid- dells, Bowes, Cotesworths, Ords, Clavernings, Delevals, and Montagu-Wortleys signed marriage contracts, co-partnered mines, took shares in colliers, and ran Newcastle government as an ensemble. They began as merchants, leased or bought coal mines, and acquired estates. The wealthiest became bankers, industrial- ists in collateral trades, and landlords to coal mine owners and farmers. Coal dominated their life, but swollen markets and Parliamentary restraints compelled them to diversify. Legislation and More Consolidation, 1689-1722 The Glorious Revolution did not liberate coal mine owners from either surpluses or state controls. After 1689, Newcastle's coal capitalists battled municipal assessments, glutted markets, and Parliamentary statutes that girdled their free vending of coal in England and abroad. Perhaps the most exasperating burden for mine owners to bear during these years was Parliament's continuous stifling of their attempt to gain an economy of scale through cheaper prices. Although the wholesale price of coal at Newcastle hardly rose, and sometimes even fell from 1689 to 1722, the taxes on its sale caused its selling price at home and over- seas to jump during this period: "If the best coal sold in London for 27s a chaldron, the duties accounted for just under a third of the price but the proportion increased to three-eighths on coal selling 3s cheaper, and both the price-differential and the fiscal burden could be considerably larger."109 For almost the entire eighteenth century, any additional price on Newcastle coal resulted from export taxes or duties on coal entering Southeast- ern cities, and not from the costs of mining Northeastern coal. Although high taxes explain partly why coal never became a great English export commodity during the seventeenth and eight- eenth centuries, this situation also resulted from the state's concern that adequate amounts of quality fuel at reasonable prices reach Southeastern markets.110 Until the middle of the seventeenth century, public fears of fuel shortages, often accom- panied by civic protests when coal prices climbed too quickly, forced monarchs and Parliaments to ration (usually through high export taxes) the quantity that Newcastle merchants sold abroad. In short, legislators placed "extremely onerous customs duties" on Welsh or English coals headed for export.111 In the 1590s, Elizabeth began the process of encumbering coal sold to foreign- ers by adding a 5s per Newcastle cauldron tax to a much smaller already existing duty.112 James and Charles I heaped more taxes on coal exporters during the first forty years of the seventeenth century, and, by the time of the Civil Wars, "Coal for export stood burdened with a tax larger than the value of the fuel itself."113 As Nef points out, it was "a remarkable testimony to the need for coal abroad that the foreigner should have continued to buy it in England at all."114 In 1663, just after the Restora- tion, and because the problem "was no longer whether there would be enough" coal to meet demand, "but whether a market could be found to relieve the owners" of their supply, Parliament lowered export tax on coal shipped to America from 5s to 1s 8d per New- castle cauldron.115 By 1671, legislators who were even more concern about surfeits of coal debated a bill to reduce the tax on coals "exported in English ships" to any destination to 1s, but Parliament never enacted this legislation during the 1660s.116 Members reintroduced two similar acts in 1670 and 1677, but neither bill found enough votes to become law until after 1689. In 1693, Newcastle's coal industry won a great, but short- lived, victory. Parliament reversed a century long state coal- export policy when legislators decided that "the imposition upon Coals exported to Forreign Parts is soe great that it is almost a prohibition to the great diminution of his Majesties Customs the lessening of the English Navigation and the exportation of coals beyond the Seas."117 To stimulate the coal (and shipbuilding) industry, exporters would now pay only 3s per cauldron to ship coal in English vessels, and 10s if they hauled it in foreign bottoms. Although Newcastle coal mine owners celebrated this statute, iron, beer, and glass manufacturers responded with fury because, at the same time that the act lowered export taxes, it increased duties on coal shipped to Southeastern cities. If Parliament had implemented this bill, which it seems never to have done, Dutch ironworkers could have bought Newcastle's coal more cheaply than English ironworkers.118 Public protests, led by manufacturers in the affected industries, stopped Parliament from enforcing this statute, and the old tax continued in place until 1713, when Members made prohibitive export taxes official state policy. In that year, Parliament added another 3s tax to the original 5s tax on coal exports, shrinking the export trade for the remainder of the century.119 The results were catas- trophic for the coal industry, and it denied Northeastern dealers their best opportunity to unlock continental markets for English seaborne coal. Hatcher comments correctly when he writes that, "Despite substantial potential demand overseas, the high prices at with which English and Scottish coal had to be sold abroad severely curtailed the market."120 However, after 1697, even the most sympathetic Parliamentarians did not dare to reduce export taxes for fear of riling householders or industrialists reliant on Northeastern coal supplies. As a result of curtailed exports, over ninety percent of Newcastle's seaborne coal continued to go to London, Yarmouth, King's Lynn, and other Southeastern cities where their govern- ments routinely added to its price through municipal taxes.121 Members of Parliament wrote almost two dozen statutes that in- creased duties from 1695 to 1722. Legislators taxed coal to rebuild London, to fund payment of an outstanding London debt known as the "Orphans' duty," and to pay interest on the National Debt.122 Flinn estimates that the customs added at least thirty percent to the price South-Easterners paid for coal, and he concludes that there "can be no doubt that" taxes on seacoals "exercised a most powerful break on the development of the indus- try."123 Northeastern coal was an English fuel and a tax cow for revenue dependent governments. Although part of these taxes went to build churches, to construct public works, and to "employment in London," the "vast majority" of money went to pay interest on London's and the Nation's Debt.124 In 1702, to carry on the "War against France and Spain," Parliament legislated an additional 5s. to coal's price to borrow L500,000.125 The statute that brought this loan into being granted Anne's government authority to offer varied rates of 5 or 6 percent interest to those with money to invest, and it guaranteed interest payments four times a year until the state returned the "Principal Sums." Further, none of these "Moneys so to be lent shall be rated or assessed to any Tax or Assessment whatsoever," and, of course, any holder of the debt could "transfer his Right Title Interest and Benefit" to anyone else in Exchange Alley.126 Later, in 1710, to finance "the present War," Parliament permitted Anne's government to borrow "Fifteen hundred thousand Pounds by way of a Lottery." Legisla- tors funded the loan by placing taxes "upon several Commodities to be exported and certain Duties upon Coals to be waterborn and carried coastwise."127 This twenty page statute added a 5s tax on seaborne coal to guarantee interest payments to any "Natives or Foreigners Bodies Politick or Corporate" who contributed toward the L1,500,000 needed to defeat Louis XIV.128 By 1715, Parliament had designed a seaborne coal industry that paid part of the interest on the National Debt and supplied predictable fuel for the Southeast. Legislators taxed coal, and decided that they, and not the coal barons of the Northeast, would monitor market supplies, and that the political nation assembled in Parliament would determine what a just coal price should be. Because post-1689 legislators wrote so many laws that reduced the coal owners' ability to exploit either foreign or domestic markets through cheap prices, the Lords of Coal turned their attention to fresh industry-wide cost savings to maintain their profit margins. Streamlining delivery systems, and buying land titles had reduced coal mine owner costs before 1689, and they continued apace, but neither had produced an economy of scale or guaranteed coal owners the profits they desired or expected from their mines. The largest owners now sought methods other than the introduction of expensive technologies to secure coal incomes. With revolutionary inventions, such as Newcomen's engine decades away, the coal elites reduced the revenue shares of their coworkers within the coal industry itself. Substantial savings came, for example, from lower wages, and from sharing investment risks by leasing mines to outside adventurers during recessions.129 However, the most profitable long-term innovation of these years resulted from the mine owners' invention of the Newcastle "fitter." The first use of the term "fitter," meaning a paid servant or agent of a Hostman coal mine owner, probably occurred in 1638.130 During the Civil Wars and the Interregnum fitters, Mem- bers of the Hostmen who owned no coal mines but sold it for others, multiplied in number within the Company. Crown and Host- men rules, of course, forbade this practice of selling someone else's coal, but unless the "surveyors," now the richest coal mine owners in the North, stopped this fitters' fraud, some Hostmen specialized in selling the coal of non-Hostmen to ship- pers. In the 1650s, as the more legally minded Hostmen discov- ered fitters fronting for even non-Hostmen, they feared that they might lose their state given privileges if these frauds trans- forming the members of the Company "from a fraternity of coal owners to a fraternity of chartered fitters or privileged agents" continued.131 However, the Civil Wars, the Dutch Wars, the expansion of the coal industry beyond Newcastle's control, and increased competition ended Hostmen resistance to change. Al- though as late as 1661 the Hostmen ordered membership restricted to those who had "a visible working Colliery," during the next decades a minority of Hostmen remained owners, while the majority became fitters.132 By the end of the century, all "semblance of equality among its members was lost and the relative status of the rank and file deteriorated."133 During the last three decades of the seventeenth century, most coal mine owners remained nomi- nal members of the Hostmen, but they no longer sold their own coal directly to ship owners; instead, they hired fitters to carry out this function of their trade. By the 1690s, the Claverings, the Liddells, the Carrs, and the Blacketts remained Hostmen, but they did so only to supervise their personal fitters within the Company.134 Many other promi- nent colliery owners, landlords who came to the industry late when they discovered new mines on their estates, such as the Montagu-Wortleys and the Delavals, hired fitters from the start, and new coal men, such as William Cotesworth, never joined the Hostmen. These early eighteenth-century giants of the coal industry employed Newcastle's coal merchant-fitters, many of whom had once been Hostmen coal mine owners themselves, as paid sales- men of their coal. As early as 1703, Attorney General, Sir Edward Northey, summarized the state's understanding of what had transpired within Newcastle coal industry when he wrote, that it "'is now become a practice for these Hostmen to buy coals at certain prices of the owners of collieries, and to carry them in keels and sell them to the ship masters, and sometimes they are paid at certain rates for their negotiations between the owners of the adjacent collieries and the ship masters.'"135 The politi- cal nation thus recognized that the Lords of Coal had transformed the Hostmen Company, and the owners relationship to most of its members. In its dealings with Newcastle, Parliament now accepted this serious modification in the original Elizabethan contract with the owners of Northeastern coal, but its Members still in- sisted that the coal industry provide adequate amounts of quality coal at the price that legislators determined.136 In Newcastle, the Lords of Coal reaped substantial bookkeep- ing benefits from reducing the status of most former Hostmen from coal owners to franchise salesmen or hired hands. In some cases, colliery owners sold coal to individual fitters at prices con- trolled by the mine owner, forcing these contracted fitters to compete with ship owners over profit shares before the coal left Newcastle. Under these circumstances, fitters became commercial capitalists whose revenue shares resulted from the cleverness of their negotiation skills with shippers. In other cases, mine owners simply hired fitters to carry out the coal proprietor's orders. When this happened, ownership gave Claverings, Cotes- worths, Liddells, and Montagu-Wortleys power to employ fitters as their agents "for selling and furnishing keels for conveying the coals from staith to ship, and for making out the required cer- tificate."137 In either case, the landlord-mine owning capital- ists now commanded Newcastle's merchants on the industrial bat- tlefield of the Northeast. Epilogue: Parliament and the Regulators Although the Lords of Coal determined the distribution of Newcastle's coal profits between producers and sellers by 1700, their coal still sold within a restricted market, and they mined in a world of overall declining profit rates. Rather than rais- ing total revenues, their tactics within the Hostmen Company had merely redistributed existing profits of trade to benefit the owners of coal mines over the franchised sellers of the end product. Although the social results were spectacular (Newcas- tle's coal mine owners increased their political and economic power along the Tyne and the Wear), the coal elites remained proprietors of a shackled industry. From 1700 to the 1720s, their desire to break these bonds propelled them toward industri- al conspiracy and another confrontation with Parliament. After 1698, when Parliament refused to enforce its statute lowering export duties, many owners thought that combination to regulate production was a realistic method to "achieve a reasona- ble return on their investment."138 Earlier rivalries among mine owners had removed all but the largest owners from coal competi- tion in the Northeast, and this meant that a "small number of producers operating in a restricted area of production had a fair chance of reaching an agreement to promote their common aims."139 Although coal combinations occurred long before the Regulator plot of 1708, the earlier associations had limited themselves to controlling supply at the Newcastle end of the trade. The Regu- lators dreamt of governing the entire seaborne trade, including the London market.140 Their scheme was beyond doubt the "most advanced experiment in industrial organization that England had yet seen."141 The Regulators intended to thrust Northern coal owners' power South to begin a process that they hoped would eventually constrain London's merchants as thoroughly as they dominated Newcastle's fitters. The plan began when Newcastle's foremost mine owners signed secret "Articles of Agreement Tripar- tite" in 1708.142 The three sides included ten powerful coal mine owners, twenty-three Newcastle Hostmen-fitters, and "a certain Daniel Poyen 'ye principal agent' on the third part."143 The schemers chose Henry Liddell, John Ord of the Montagu-Wort- leys, James Clavering, Matthew White, and John Wilkinson to handle daily operations. They excluded small western Tyne valley and Sunderland mine owners from their association because their venture included driving many of these mine-owning competitors from the industry. Briefly, the Regulators launched a conspiracy to get Lon- don's largest coal merchants, known by contemporaries as "the Lightermen ten" or the London "Dons," to market Regulator coal before they sold that of any other Northeastern mine owners supplies in the Southeast.144 In the glutted coal markets of 1709, this would have been disastrous for smaller coal mine owners, particularly for those trading in Sunderland coal. The Regulators chose Henry Liddell to negotiate a secret contract with the Dons, and they assigned him "ultimate responsibility for relations with the London dealers."145 If London's Dons sold Regulator coal before any other, the owner-plotters promised to supply these select Lightermen with ample supplies of high quali- ty coal. They also promised grants of special "premiums," or discounts. Liddell did his best, but in the depressed London market of those years he found the Dons too powerful and too demanding of excessive premiums. Regulators and non-Regulators coal continued to flood London's coal market during the two years that Liddell negotiated with the Lightermen. After multiple meetings, his letters to his co-conspirator, William Cotesworth, complained of Lightermen obstructions to a settlement. Mean- while, the Queen's Privy Council learned of the conspiracy, and, soon thereafter, Parliament began its investigations. By 1710, legislators passed a temporary "Act to dissolve the present and prevent the future Combination of Coal Owners Lightermen Masters of Ships and others to advance the Price of Coals in prejudice of the Navigation Trade and Manufactures of this Kingdom and for the further Encouragement of the Coal Trade."146 In 1714, during the first year of Hanoverian rule, Parliament made this statute perpetual.147 Parliament broke this coal cabal, but it never totally stopped the Regulators' from controlling Newcastle's coal output. By 1711, Parliament accepted the idea that large coal mine own- ers, who were landlords, capitalists, and members (or potential members) of Parliament, would dominate the output of coal in the Northeast. However, Parliament would not permit either the Regulators, or the later Grand Alliance of Coal conspirators of the 1720s, to interfere with the price, quality, or quantity of England's overall fuel supply.148 Parliament's 1710 statute declared to coal mine owners, as well as Lightermen Dons, that the "Cities of London and Westminster and other Places" survived only because the "Counties of Durham Northumberland and Town and Country of Newcastle upon Tine" provided them with "cheap" coal at "reasonable Prizes." These provisions tend "greatly to the Improvement of the Manufacturers and Encrease of Trade and Navi- gation of this Kingdom by breeding and employing many Thousands of skilful Mariners . . . and for that End and for the better advancing of the Duties upon Coals granted to her Majesty" for fighting the French.149 It is true that Parliament legislated against "Combination of Coal Owners" in 1710 to fight the French. It is truer that they legislated against this combination to pay the interest on the National Debt, to keep public sector shipbuilding booming, and to help English manufacturers to compete successfully on world markets where supplies of commodities so often outdistanced demand. Chapter Ten: Endnotes (1) This Chapter is based on the following primary and secondary works: J. V. Beckett, Coal and Tobacco: The Lowthers and the Economic Development of West Cumberland, 1660-1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Neil K. Buxton, The Economic Development of the British Coal Industry: From Industrial Revolu- tion to the Present Day (London: B. T. Batsford, 1978); The Correspondence of Sir James Clavering, ed. H. T. Dickinson, Surtees Society, vol. 178, (Gateshead: Northumberland Press, 1967); Joyce M. Ellis, A Study of the Business fortunes of William Cotesworth: c 1668-1726 (New York: Arno Press, 1981); The Letters of Henry Liddell to William Cotesworth, ed. Joyce M. Ellis, Surtees Society, vol. 197 (Leaminington Spa: James Hall, 1987); Michael Flinn, with the assistance of David Stoker, 1700- 1830: The Industrial Revolution, vol. 2 of The History of the British Coal Industry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984); John Hatcher, Before 1700: Towards the Age of Coal, vol. 1 of The History of the British Coal Industry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993); William John Hausman, "Public Policy and the Supply of Coal to London, 1700-1770," Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1976; John Langton, Geographical Change and Industrial Revolution: Coalmining in South West Lancashire, 1590-1799 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); David Levine and Keith Wrightson, The Making of an Industrial Society: Whickham, 1560-1765, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991); John U. Nef, The Rise of the British Coal Industry 2 vols. (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1932). (2) Hatcher, Age of Coal, 554. (3) Hatcher, Age of Coal, 95, and Ellis, Cotesworth, 138. (4) Levine and Wrightson, Whickham, 44. (5) Hatcher, Age of Coal, 67. (6) Ibid., 55. (7) Ibid., 39. (8) Nef, British Coal, 2:103. (9) Christopher C. A. Clay, Economic Expansion and Social Change: England, 1500-1700, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- sity Press, 1984), 2:47. See also Hatcher, Age of Coal, 5 (10) For a summary of state regulations and taxation see, Flinn, British Coal Industry, 279-285 (11) Hausman, "Public Policy," 2. (12) Ibid., 46. (13) Hausman, "Public Policy," Chapter III, "The Tax on Coal," 114-175a, Flinn, British Coal Industry, 220-221, and Hatcher, Age of Coal, 503. (14) Hausman, "Public Policy," 144-145. (15) Nef, British Coal, 2:207. (16) Hausman, "Public Policy," 45. Hausman lists 80 statutes for the period between 1695 and 1770, most of them concerned with prices, taxes, or duties. (17) Hatcher, Age of Coal, 542. (18) These controls on private enterprise remained into the nineteenth century. See, [J. R. McCulloch], Remarks on the Coal Trade, and on the Various Duties and Charges on Coal in the Port of London, &c. (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1830). (19) Nef, British Coal, 1:151. (20) Hatcher, Age of Coal, 514. Robert Galloway tells the story of Elizabeth and the "Grand Lease" to Gateshead and Whickham in Annals of Coal Mining and the Coal Trade: The Invention of the Steam Engine and the Origin of the Railway, a reprint with a new introduction and bibliography by Baron F. Duckham, First Series, up to 1835, 2 vols. (1898; reprinted, London: David and Charles Reprints, 1971), 1:93-101. See also, Nef, British Coal, 1:133- 156; Roger Howell, Jr., Newcastle Upon Tyne and the Puritan Revolution: A Study of the Civil War in North England, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 23-28; and, Levine and Wrightson, Whick- ham, 15-23. (21) Nef, British Coal, 1:150. (22) Ibid., 1:154-155. (23) Several historians tell this story, but the most concise presentation appears in Hatcher, Age of Coal, Chapter 15, "The Organization of the East Coast Trade," 508-546. (24) Levine and Wrightson, Whickham, 18-23, and Howell, Newcas- tle, 45-47. (25) F. W. Dendy, ed., Extracts from the Records of the Company of Hostmen of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Publications of the Surtees Society, vol. 105 (London: Andrews and Company, 1901), xxxii. (26) For a copy of Elizabeth's charter to Newcastle, which in- cludes the names of the most important Merchant Adventurers see, John Collier, An Essay on Charters in which are Particularly Considered those of Newcastle with Remarks on its Constitution, Customs, and Franchises (Newcastle: Thomas Slack, 1777), 30. (27) Howell Jr., Newcastle, 47. (28) Paul M. Sweezy, Monopoly and Competition in the English Coal Trade, 1550-1850 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1938), 9. (29) Hatcher, Age of Coal, 521. (30) Collier, Charters, 46. (31) For a history of the export duty see, Nef, British Coal 2:218-238. (32) Hatcher, Age of Coal, 510. (33) Nef, British Coal, 1:156-164. In 1977, Eric Kerridge and D. C. Coleman briefly debated Nef's assertions about the extent of the English "Timber Crisis," and his estimates of the amount of coal used by the English nation during Tudor and Stuart times in Eric Kerridge, "The Coal Industry in Tudor and Stuart Eng- land: A Comment," and D. C. Coleman, "The Coal Industry: A Re- joinder," Economic History Review, 2nd. ser, 30 (May 1977), 340- 345. Whether there was a real shortage of timber or not, the English government thought one existed. See Robert Greenhalgh Albion, Forests and Sea Power: The Timber Problem of the Royal Navy, 1652-1862, (Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1965), Chapter 3, "England's Diminishing Woodlands," 95-138. For an update on this debate see Brinley Thomas, "Was there an Energy crisis in Great Britain in the 17th Century?" Explorations in Economic History 23 (1986), 124-52. (34) Clay, Economic Expansion, 2:47. (35) William Robert Scott, The Constitution and Finance of Eng- lish, Scottish and Irish Joint-Stock Companies to 1720, 3 vols. (1912; reprinted, Gloucester, Massachusetts: Peter Smith, 1968), 2:461. (36) Hatcher, Age of Coal, 244. See also, J. T. Ward, "Landown- ers and Mining," in Land and Industry: The Landed Estate and the Industrial Revolution; a Symposium eds. J. T. Ward and R. G. Wilson (London: David and Charles, 1971), 63-116. (37) Nef, British Coal, 2:6, 12. (38) Beckett, Coal and Tobacco, 13, and, Philip Jenkins, The Making of a Ruling Class: The Glamorgan Gentry, 1640-1790 (Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 58. (39) Paul M. Sweezy, Monopoly and Competition in the English Coal Trade, 1550-1850 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1938), 9. See also, Peter Cromar "Economic Power and Organiza- tion: The Development of the Coal Industry in Tyneside, 1700- 1828" (Ph.D. diss., St. Catherine's College, Cambridge, 1976), 55-56. (40) Howell, Newcastle, 28. (41) William Ellis, News from Newcastle (1651) as quoted in Levine and Wrightson, Whickham, 1. (42) Nef, British Coal, 2:203. (43) For Crown complaints, see Dendy, Hostmen, 43-44 and 51-53. (44) Dendy, Hostmen, 51. (45) Standing orders divided the right to sell on the basis of the numbers of mines leased or owned by individual members. The lists appear in the "Orders and Minutes" of the Hostmen Company. For names of patentees in 1604-5, in 1616-1617, and in 1626-27, see Dendy, Hostmen, 53, 65-6, 70-71. (46) Ibid., 52. (47) For two uses of the phrase see, Nef, British Coal, 2:120, and Hatcher, Age of Coal, 516. (48) Dendy, Hostmen, 64. (49) Ibid., 72. (50) Howell, Jr., Newcastle, 47. (51) Hatcher, Age of Coal, 515. (52) Dendy, Hostmen, 60. (53) Ibid., 58. (54) Ibid, 59. Wayleaves: "The right to cross land when trans- porting coal to the staithe," or riverside wharfs, by cart or wooden railway. See Levine and Wrightson, Whickham, for a useful glossary of coal terms, 447-449. (55) 21 Jac. I, c. 3, section 12. (56) Hatcher, Age of Coal, 518. (57) Nef, British Coal, 2:275-284 digests this complex tale. (58) Ibid., fn. 2:285 (59) Dendy, Hostmen, 90. (60) Ibid. (61) Hatcher, Age of Coal, 527. For brief discussions of the economic impact of Civil War and the Interregnum on the trade see Hatcher, Age of Coal, 525-530, Nef, British Coal, 2:284-300. For a detailed account, see Howell, Jr., Newcastle, chapters 7 (274- 334) and 8 (335-349). (62) Dendy, Hostmen, 90. (63) Ibid., xxxiv. (64) Ibid., 91-92. (65) Ibid., 109. (66) Ibid. (67) Ibid., 110. (68) Ibid., 111. (69) Ibid., 110. (70) Howell, Jr., Newcastle, 347. (71) Levine and Wrightson, Whickham, 44. (72) Nef, British Coal, 1:29-32. (73) Ibid., 2:75-77. (74) 16 & 17 Car. II, c. 2. (75) 16 & 17 Car. II, c. 2, and Nef, British Coal 2:304-305. (76) Hausman, "Public Policy," 133-134, and Nef, British Coal 308-309. (77) 18 & 19 Car. II, c. 8, sections 34-38, and Hausman, "Public policy," 133. (78) 22 Car. II, c. 11, sections 33-37. (79) 1 Jac. II, c. 15. (80) See Hausman, "Public Policy," 132-141 for discussion of these acts. (81) Nef, British Coal, 2:309. (82) Hausman, "Public Policy," 47. (83) Nef, British Coal, 2:305-307 (84) Dendy, Hostmen, 28, 223-224. (85) Gift coal was an "allowance of several extra chaldrons for every 20 bought, designed to encourage sales without lowering the nominal price" (Ellis, Liddell, 271). (86) Levine and Wrightson, Whickham, 49. (87) Edward Hughes, North Country Life in the Eighteenth Century: The North-East, 1700-1750, (London: Oxford University Press, 1952), 128-129, Nef, British Coal, 1:312-313, 316, and Levine and Wrightson, Whickham, 106. (88) Nef, British Coal, 1:310. (89) Levine and Wrightson, Whickham, 143-144. (90) Ibid., 46. (91) Ellis, Cotesworth, 185-186. (92) Nef, British Coal, 2:64. (93) Ibid. (94) Ibid. (95) Ibid, 20, 65. (96) Levine and Wrightson, Whickham, 23. (97) William Jennison, spelled with two 'ns', was Mayor at the time of Elizabeth's charter. He became Governor of the Hostmen's Company in 1605 and was reelected in 1606. Collier, Charters, 30; Dendy, Hostmen, 263. One of his heirs, Ralph Jenison of Elswick, served in Parliament from 1723 to 1714. "John Ord, bought the Fenham estate from the Riddells in 1695" (Paul Brass- ley, "Northumberland and Durham," in The Agrarian History of England and Wales: Volume V, 1640-1750, part I, Regional Farming Systems, ed. Joan Thirsk [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985], 44). (98) Collier, Charters, 30. (99) Basil Duke Henning, The House of Commons, 1660-1690: The History of Parliament, 3 vols. (London: Secker and Warburg, 1983), 1:347-349, and Romney Sedgwick, The House of Commons, 1715-1754: The History of Parliament , 2 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 216-217. (100) Hatcher, Age of Coal, 260. (101) Nef, British Coal, 2:120-121. (102) Howell, Jr., Newcastle, 3. (103) Ellis, Cotesworth, 188-189. (104) Nef, British Coal, 2:120 fn. See, C. T. Carr, Select Charters of Trading Companies, A.D. 1530-1707 (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1913), 142-8, for the charter and names of other mem- bers of this Society. (105) For William Blackett II and Enoch Hudson, see Richard Wel- ford, Men of Mark 'Twixt Tyne and Tweed, 3 vols. (London: Walter Scott, 1895), 1:302, 2:586. For Cotesworth and Ramsay, see Hughes, North Country Life, 7, 43. For more on Liddell see, Edward Hughes, "The Eighteenth Century Estate Agent," in Essays in British and Irish History in Honour of James Eadie Todd, eds. H. A. Cronne, T. W. Moody, and D. B. Quinn (London: Frederick Muller, 1949), 192-93. (106) Hughes, North Country Life, 7. (107) Ibid., 46-50. (108) Ibid., p. xix. (109) Ellis, Cotesworth, 78. (110) Hatcher, Age of Coal, 503-507, and Flinn, British Coal Industry, 216-229. See Nef, British Coal, 2:211-238 for the most thorough treatment of the export trade. (111) Hatcher, Age of Coal, 507. (112) Nef, British Coal, 2:219-220. (113) Ibid., 2:223. (114) Ibid. (115) Nef, British Coal, 232, and 15 Car. II, c.7, section 8. (116) Nef, British Coal, 234. (117) 6 and 7 W. & M., c. 18, section 16. (118) Nef, British Coal, 235-236. (119) 13 Anne, c. 18, section 9. (120) Hatcher, Age of Coal, 507. (121) Hatcher, Age of Coal, 503-507 and Flinn, British Coal Industry Revolution, 216-218 digest this data. My discussion below is based on reading the statutes and William Hausman's dissertation on Public Policy, Chapter III, "The Tax on Coal," 114-175. (122) Rebuilding Acts including those continued from the reigns of Charles and James II, and the folowing: 8 & 9 Will., c. 14, 1 Anne, Stat. 2, c. 12, 1 Geo. I, Stat. 2, c. 23, 5 Geo. I, c. 9, 6 Geo.I, c. 4. The Orphans duty act was 5 & 6 W. & M., c. 10. Coastal duty acts included: 6 & 7 W. & M., c. 18, 7 & 8 Will., c. 31, 9 & 10 Will., c. 13, 1 Anne, Stat. 2, c. 4, 4 & 5 Anne, c. 18, 8 Anne, c. 14, 9 Anne, c. 6, 3 Geo. 1, c. 9, 5 Geo. I, c. 19. One other statute should be added to this list, 13 Anne, c. 20: it added to the taxes on coal for "the speedy and effectual preserving the Navigation of the River of Thames by stopping the Breach in the Levels of Havering and Dagenham in the County of Essex," and also set new standards for measuring coal. (123) Flinn, British Coal Industry, 283. (124) Hausman, Public Policy, 167. (125) 1 Anne Stat. 2, c. 4. (126) Ibid., sections 4 and 14. (127) 9 Anne c. 6. (128) Ibid., section 23. (129) Ellis, Cotesworth, 64-65. (130) Dendy, Hostmen, xlvii-xlviii. (131) Ibid., p. xlviii. (132) Ibid., 119. (133) Hughes, North Country, 165. (134) Ellis, Cotesworth, 117-118. (135) Dendy, Hostmen, xlviii. See also, Hatcher, Age of Coal, 532-533. (136) For a discussion of this new relationship, see Ellis, Cotesworth, 95-97, Nef, Coal Industry, 2:98-99, 132-3, and Hughes, North Country Life, 164-66. (137) Ray B. Westerfield, Middlemen in English Business: Partic- ularly Between 1660 and 1760 (1915; reprinted New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1968), 226. (138) Ellis, Cotesworth, 111. (139) Ibid. (140) Dendy, Hostmen, xliv-xlv. For seventeenth century combi- nations see: Ellis, Cotesworth, 114-116; Nef, British Coal, 2:110-119; Raymond Smith, Sea-Coal for London: History of the Coal Factors in the London Market (London: Longmans, 1961), 8-14; Hatcher, Age of Coal, 1:522-526. (141) Hughes, North Country, 166. (142) Hughes, North Country Life, 167. For the history of the Regulators, see Ellis, Cotesworth, 111-138. (143) The proprietors included Henry Liddell, Sir John Claver- ing, James Clavering, John Wilkinson, Sir Ralph Carr, George Pitt, Matthew White, Philip Hodgson, Robert Fenwick, and James Montague (Hughes, North Country Life, 167). For more on Poyen, who seems to have been a secretary to the dominant owners, see Hughes, 174-179. Joyce Ellis, ed., Liddell Letters, identifies Poyen as a Newcastle merchant an coal agent, 288. (144) Ellis, Liddell Letters, 32. (145) Ellis, Cotesworth, 116. (146) 9 Anne, c. 30. (147) 1 Geo. I, stat. 2, c. 26. (148) See Ellis, Cotesworth, "Combinations in the Coal Trade," for the best recent treatment of the continued efforts by the major coal owners to combine, 111-137. (149) 9 Anne, c. 30.