three cartloads of these lumps; that was when tin
was at £60 a ton.
From a speech of Sir Walter Raleigh in Parliament in 1601, when Lord Warden of the Stannaries, it would appear that the pay of a working tinner was then four shillings per week, finding himself. Of this he boasts as a great change for the better, inasmuch as previously the tinner had received but half that amount. By all accounts the tinners were in a worse condition than the agricultural labourers.
The Stannary Parliament for the tinners on Dartmoor sat on Crockern Tor till the court was removed to Truro.
The first Parliament held there of which records remain was on September 11th, 1494; the last I have heard of was held at the close of last century.
The Cornish tinners had their Stannary Court on Caradon.
Already in Carew's time mines had been driven into the bowels of the earth. It would appear that levels were at about five fathoms under each other, and the water was raised to the surface by means of "a winder and keeble, or leathern bags, pumps, or buckets."
Dr. Borlase describes the engines that were employed just after the middle of last century. He took a mine in Illogan as typical.
There were seven shafts upon the lode, upon one of which there was a fire-engine working the pumps, and raising the water of the mine to the adit level, twenty fathoms from the surface. Another shaft had a whim upon it, and the remaining six had common
