Industrial Biography: Iron Workers and Tool Makers. Samuel Smiles

be inserted into this Bill."

      [12] Mr. Mushet, in his 'Papers on Iron,' says, that "although he had carefully examined every spot and relic in Dean Forest likely to denote the site of Dud Dudley's enterprising but unfortunate experiment of making pig-iron with pit coal," it had been without success; neither could he find any traces of the like operations of Cromwell and his partners.

      [13] Dudley says, "Major Wildman, more barbarous to me than a wild man, although a minister, bought the author's estate, near 200L. per annum, intending to compell from the author his inventions of making iron with pitcole, but afterwards passed my estate unto two barbarous brokers of London, that pulled down the author's two mantion houses, sold 500 timber trees off his land, and to this day are his houses unrepaired." Wildman himself fell under the grip of Cromwell. Being one of the chiefs of the Republican party, he was seized at Exton, near Marlborough, in 1654, and imprisoned in Chepstow Castle.

      [14] June 13, 1661. Petition of Col. Jas. Proger and three others to the king for a patent for the sole exercise of their invention of melting down iron and other metals with coal instead of wood, as the great consumption of coal [charcoal?] therein causes detriment to shipping, &c. With reference thereon to Attorney-General Palmer, and his report, June 18, in favour of the petition,—State Papers, Charles II. (Dom. vol. xxxvii, 49.)