divisions had its steward under the Lord Warden,
who kept his court once in every three weeks. The
four stannary towns of Cornwall were Helston, Truro,
Lostwithiel, and Liskeard; and at Lostwithiel may
be seen the remains of the ducal palace; and at
Luxulyan the church, in the tower of which the stannary records and charters were formerly preserved.
In Devon the stannary towns were Tavistock, Ashburton, and Chagford, to which Plympton was added in the reign of Edward III., and Lydford was appointed as the stannary prison.
Ordinary justices of the peace had no jurisdiction over the miners in their disputes.
Carew, who was about the court of Queen Elizabeth, has furnished us with a valuable record of the state of the mines before the introduction of new German machinery and methods.
He notices both the stream-works and the lodes, and his opinion was that the deposits in the former were the result of the Deluge.
He then describes the process of shoding, that is of tracing the direction of a vein by fragments found near the surface. The shode pits, which are also called costeening pits, were holes sunk into the ground to no great depth till indications of the lode were reached. The miners next sank pits seven or eight feet deep till they reached the lode itself
"If they misse the load in one place, they sincke a like shaft" (pit) "in another beyond that, commonly further up the hill, and so a third and a fourth, until they light at last upon it."
