BL MSS Cotton Galba, c. i, 39(d)

From Waalt

BL MSS Cotton Galba, c. i, 39

Wright Vol 1, 4 Page 7-12

Transcribed by Thomas Wright, ‘Queen Elizabeth and her times,’ London, 1838

Minutes of Chaloner's Correspondence

Sir Thomas Challoner To The Queene

(18 Septembris, 1559)

The deliverie of your Majestie's letters of gratulation and creditt to the Regent, she being accompanied with Italian gentlemen, the chief of her court, she received gratefullie. I moved touching your licences for horses, and that other of Mr. Gresham (7) your agent for powder and colenderes, which I delivered the King before his departure, and he appointed to geve unto her Altesse, for soe they call her. She desired to enforme herselfe with some of her councell first, and then to answere. One Thomas Manethe, a Florentine, discoursed to me of a certeine devise for increasinge your revenues without offence of the subjects, discoursinge how commodious that province was through the scite, fertility, and ports, and therebie to bereduced to a rare forme of wealthe, whereas Flanders wantinge most of those aides, except Industrie, doth now arise to such a wealth both of prince and subject. I have sent you one of his devises. He brought with him an Almayne (8) myner, who comendeth much in likeliehood the mynes in Ireland.(9)

(7) Sir Thomas Gresham, second son of Sir Richard Gresham, an alderman of London, whom we shall find constantly mixed up with the money matters and the affairs of trade, during the first part of the reign of Elizabeth. He was the founder of the Royal Exchange and of Gresham College.

(8) German.

(9) In 1531, instructions were given by the privy council to Mr. Robert Record, surveyor of mines, to inspect the mines in Ireland, and to "make trial certain what gold, silver, leade, or other metall commeth of every hundred ower." Subsequent instructions, signed by King Edward VI., were given to William Williams and Sir Thomas Lutterell (chief justice of the Common Pleas) cc to repayre to Clonrnynes, and all other the mynes of the Kynge's Majestye in Ireland where the Almaynes have wrought ;" and among other directions to " attayn to som knowlege of the allam-mynes within the said realme." In their report on these instructions it appears that the produce of the mine for one year wrought by the Almayns was 45 tons 23 Ibs. of clean ore, which yielded 16 tons I cwt. 24 lbs. of pure lead, and this lead afterwards yielded four ounces of silver in the cwt. The ore dug and wrought by the English miners yielded six cwt. per ton of pure lead, and five ounces per cwt. of fine silver. The expense in working, &c. exceeded the value of the metal. Concerning the allom mines they had not time to do anything therein. In 1551, Joachim Gundelfinger, with a company of above fifty persons, came over from Flanders by invitation from the English government, to superintend the working of the mines in Ireland, among whom were several allom miners.