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Thomas Thurland

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Thomas Thurland was Master of the Savoy Hospital in London and a mining entrepreneur. His family was from Nottinghamshire.

Newlands Valley in Cumbria

Partnerships and mines

In 1564, Elizabeth I granted Thurland and Sebastian Spydell, and then Thurland and a German partner Daniel Hochstetter a patent to mine and refine gold, copper, silver, and mercury (quicksilver), in England and Wales. Hochstetter was an associate of an Augsburg partnership, David Haug and Hans Langnauer. They were allowed 24 partners or investors. This arrangement was dissolved in 1577.

The copper mines at Keswick were at first a success. The mines were located at Newlands in the parish of Crosthwaite in Allerdale. Thurland, known as the Provost of the Mines, wrote to William Cecil, a shareholder, about the successes, sending plans of the works and smelting house, and mentioning that Daniel Hechstetter had to buy more timber to prop up the workings at Newlands because the seam was so large. Some of the timber was brought from Ireland.

In October 1566, Thurland was approached at Keswick by a Dutch prospector Cornelius de Vos who brought a sample of gold ore from Scotland. Cornelius was a shareholder in the Company of Mines Royal, but Thurland was not pleased by this development and reported the find to the Company of Mines Royal. Thurland wrote to Queen Elizabeth in alarmist terms about "secret practices with merchant strangers and by some foreign princes to have of the Scottish queen (Mary, Queen of Scots) the mines in Crawford Moor nigh adjoining to your majesty's west borders", mines he hoped to work himself.

Stephen Atkinson, who later wrote about gold mines in Scotland, claimed to have worked with Thurland's partner Daniel Hochstetter. Atkinson said that Hochstetter had told him of injuries suffered by George Bowes (or his brother Robert Bowes) in an accident in a Cumbrian copper mine.

Challenges

The Earl of Northumberland disputed their right to the copper and sent men to occupy the works in October 1569. Arguments were made that copper, a base metal, was not usually reserved to the crown. The courts decided that the monarch possessed the mineral rights and Thurland and Hechstetter's patent was valid.

Despite Thurland's upbeat reports, the venture proved financially unsuccessful, due to high costs and low copper prices. The German and English workers quarrelled. Thurland's ideas of discipline did not create respect. One German mine manager, Hans Loner, wrote that Daniel Hochstetter had insisted on using older methods and technology.

Thurland was dismissed from the Savoy Hospital in 1570 for misappropriating funds and property to pay his personal debts.

Mining work in the Newlands and Keswick continued, managed by a local landowner Richard Dudley of Yanwath, and George Nedham. From 1581, some technological improvements were trialled by Joachim Gans from Prague. He used methods outlined by Lazarus Ercker.

References

  1. Calendar State Papers Domestic (London, 1856), p. 244.
  2. William Page, Letters of Denization and Acts of Naturalization for Aliens in England (London, 1893), p. xlviii: Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office: Elizabeth 1558-1572 (London, 1960), p. 119.
  3. W. G. Collingwood, Elizabethan Keswick: Extracts from the Accounts of the German Miners at Augsburg (Kendal, 1912), pp. 1-2
  4. J. Collingwood & J. Trier, Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1575-1578 (London: HMSO, 1982), p. 336 no. 2303: George Hammersley, Daniel Hechstetter the younger, Memorabilia and letters, 1600-1639 Copper Works and life in Cumbria (Stuttgart, 1988).
  5. Robert Hunt, British Mining: A Treatise on the History, Discovery, Practical Development (London, 1887), p. 92.
  6. Joseph Nicolson & Richard Burn, The History and Antiquities of the Counties of Westmorland and Cumberland, vol. 2 (London, 1778), p. 68.
  7. Susan Watson, The Making of the Modern Company (Bloomsbury, 2022), p. 29.
  8. Robert Lemon, Calendar State Papers Domestic (London, 1859), p. 289.
  9. Mary Anne Everett Green, Calendar State Papers Domestic, Addenda (London, 1871), p. 19.
  10. W. G. Collingwood, Elizabethan Keswick: Extracts from the Accounts of the German Miners at Augsburg (Kendal, 1912), p. 3.
  11. Eric H. Ash, Power, Knowledge, and Expertise in Elizabethan England (Baltimore, 2004), p. 45 citing TNA SP12/40/175.
  12. Eric H. Ash, Power, Knowledge, and Expertise in Elizabethan England (Baltimore, 2004), p. 45, quotations from TNA SP12/40/175 (modernised).
  13. Stephen Atkinson, The Discoverie and Historie of Gold Mynes in Scotland, 1619 (Bannatyne Club, 1825), p. 32
  14. Carolyn Sale, 'The Treasurer of the Realm in Plowden's Report of the Case of Mines and Shakespeare's Hamlet', Paul Raffield & Gary Watt, Shakespeare and the Law (Oxford & Portland, 2008), pp. 138-145.
  15. 'Case of Mines', The Commentaries, Or Reports of Edmund Plowden (Dublin, 1792), 310-340.
  16. Raingard Esser, 'German in Early Modern Britain', Panikos Panayi, Germans in Britain Since 1500 (Hambledon, 1996), pp. 23-25.
  17. John Strype, Brief Annals of the Reformation and Establishment of Religion (London, 1731), pp. 11-13.
  18. The Manuscripts of S. H. Le Fleming, Esq., of Rydal Hall, HMC volume 12, Part 7 (London, 1890), pp. 10-11.
  19. Israel Abrahams & Cecil Roth, Jewish Life In The Middle Ages (repr. Routledge, 2005), pp. 245-6.
Masters of the Savoy
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