re, easily and quickly to be wrought into manufacture, over what
any other iron is, and it is the best in the known world; and the
greatest part of this sow iron is sent up Severne to the forges into
Worcester, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Cheshire, and
there it's made into bar iron: and because of its kind and gentle
nature to work, it is now at Sturbridge, Dudley, Wolverhampton,
Sedgley, Wasall and Burmingham, and there bent, wrought, and
manufactured into all small commodities, and diffused all England
over, and thereby a great trade made of it; and, when manufactured,
into most parts of the world. And I can very easily make it appear,
that in the Forest of Dean and thereabouts, and about the material
that comes from thence, there are employed and have their subsistence
therefrom no less than 60,000 persons. And certainly, if this be
true, then it is certain it is better these iron works were up and in
being than that there were none. And it were well if there were an
Act of Parliament for enclosing all common fit or any way likely to
bear wood in the Forest of Dean and six miles round the Forest; and
that great quantities of timber might by the same law be there
preserved, for to supply in future ages timber for shipping and
building. And I dare say the Forest of Dean is, as to the iron, to
be compared to the sheep's back as to the woollen; nothing being of
more advantage to England than these two are. . . .

"In the Forest of Dean and thereabouts, the iron is made at this day
of cinders, being the rough and offal thrown by in the Romans' time;
they then having only foot blasts to melt the iron stone; but now, by
the force of a great wheel that drives a pair of bellows twenty feet
long, all that iron is extracted out of the cinders, which could not
be forced from it by the Roman foot blast. And in the Forest of Dean
and thereabouts, and as high as Worcester, there are great and
infinite quantities of these cinders, some in vast mounts above
ground, some underground, which will supply the iron works some
hundreds of years, and these cinders are they which make the prime
and best iron, and with much less charcoal than doth the ironstone. .
. . Let there be one ton of this bar-iron made of Forest iron, and
20 pounds will be given for it."

The 4th "Order" of the Mi