y 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 ironstone, 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 under ground, 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
ironstone, and 20 pounds will be given for it."

According to a paper examined by Mr. Mushet, and referring probably to
the year 1720 or 1730, the iron-making district of the Forest of Dean
contained ten blast furnaces, viz. six in Gloucestershire, three in
Herefordshire, a