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An Oxford Brasiers' Dispute of the 1390s: Evidence for Brass-Making in Medieval England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2011

Claude Blair ,
John Blair  and
R. Brownsword
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Extract

A contract of 1392 between two Oxford brasiers, with an account of the ensuing dispute, provides important evidence for the organization of the medieval brasier's craft andfor technical aspects of his trade. One brasier employed another to make pots, bells and fawtys (probably faucets) for a flat payment by weight. The master-brasier provided the raw materials, comprising scrap brass on the one hand, and graycober (perhaps antimonial copper) and stelebake (probably zinc-bearing calamine ore so called from the place Stolberg) on the other. This, with newly discovered references to the importation of calamys and calamin in 1384, provides the first evidence yet found for the making of brass in England from its raw materials.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 66 , Issue 1 , March 1986 , pp. 82 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1986

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References

Notes

1 P.R.O. E163/6/7; printed by permission of the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office.

2 We owe this suggestion to Mr C. H. C. Whittick.

3 The most useful discussions of these crafts hitherto available are: Stahlschmidt, J. C. L., Surrey Bells and London Bell-Founders (London, 1884), 31Google Scholar; Harvey, J., Mediaeval Craftsmen (London, 1975), 91–3Google Scholar.

4 See Pirenne, H., ‘Les marchands-batteurs de Dinant au XIVe et au XVe siècle’, Viertel-jahrsschrift für Social- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, ii (Leipzig, 1904), 442–9;Google ScholarUnwin, G. in Unwin, G. (ed.), Finance and Trade under Edward III (Manchester, 1918), 31–4Google Scholar.

5 This point will be developed in the chapter by C. and J. Blair in J. Blair and N. Ramsay (eds.), English Medieval Industries, forthcoming.

6 Middle English Dictionary, s.v.

7 Unless, as suggested by Dr J. H. Harvey (pers. comm.), itmeans ‘saucers’; but as for salts, brass would be an unsuitable material for this purpose.

8 For a potter making a latten lavatorium with sixteen claves in 1288, see City of London Letter-Book A (London, 1899), 172Google Scholar.

9 Middle English Dictionary, s.v. Against this interpretation, however, should be noted Dr J. H. Harvey's view (pers. comm.) that ‘the primary sense of fausset, and of faucet in English, is for an unpierced vent-peg, spike or spigot, not for what we now usually call a tap’. Another possibility—though perhaps an unlikely one—is that it is intended to be sarcys, a type of sieve: see Cal. Plea & Mem. Rolls of London 1437-57, 80; O.E.D., s.v. searces.

10 O.E.D., s.v. brass.

11 O.E.D., s.vv.

12 See Friend, J. Newton and Thorneycroft, W. E., ‘Examination of a fifteenth-century “brass”’, J. Inst. Metals, xxxvii (1927), 71Google Scholar, whose analytical data were quoted by Cameron, H. K., ‘Technical aspects of medieval monumental brasses’, Arch.J. cxxxi (1974), 228Google Scholar. More recent sampling and analysis has been carried out by R. Brownsword and E. E. H. Pitt with the following results (averages for six of the castings): (per cent) copper, 84.3; zinc, 9.37; tin, 3.32; lead, 1.38; nickel, 0.2; iron, 0.58; antimony, 0.23; arsenic, 0.37; silver, 0.16. These data are in general agreement with the earlier results except in respect of iron (2.6 per cent); this suggests that the sample from the earlier work was contaminated with some iron during drilling.

13 cf. the complaint by London potters in 1316 that pots had been offered for sale which contained too much lead and consequently melted onheating: Riley, H. T., Memorials of London and London Life (London, 1868), 118–19Google Scholar(citing Letter-Book E, f-53).

14 Werner, O., ‘Analysen mittelalterlicher Bronzen und Messinge I’, Archäologie und Naturwissenschaften, i (1977), 145–220Google Scholar. See also Ruette, M. de, ‘Les résultats d'analyse de teneurs des laitons code's dans les anciens Pays-Bas méri-dionaux et la principauté de Liége (moyen âge et temps modernes)’, Revue des Archéologues et Historiens d'Art de Louvain, xvi (1983), 252–79Google Scholar; and Brownsword, R. and Pitt, E. E. H., ‘A technical study of some mediaeval steelyard weights’, Proc. Dorset Nat. Hist. &Arch. Soc. cv (1983), 83Google Scholar, for data on small castings believed to have been made in England in the late thirteenth to early fourteenth centuries, of which the finer examples are latten. The earlier Continental figures discussed in Brownsword, R. and Blackwell, R., ‘Four “bronze” figures in the Ashmolean Museum: reconsideration of their origins’, MASCAJ. iii (1984), 82Google Scholar, are seen to contain both zinc and tin in significant quantities. In Brownsword, R., ‘X-ray fluorescence analysis of non-ferrous archaeological metalwork. Part 2: archaeological applications’, Analytical Proceedings, xxii (1985), 73Google Scholar, otherwise unpublished information on late medieval spurs and purse-frames is given which indicates that the term bronze is entirely inappropriate for these objects: those analysed to date are all of latten. The material used in England in the sixteenth century to make candlesticks and chafing-dishes is best described as latten, although that used in Flanders at the time was a leaded brass; see Brownsword, R. and Pitt, E. E. H., ‘Alloy composition of some cast ‘latten’ objects of the 15/16th centuries’, Historical Metallurgy, xvii (1983), 44Google Scholar, and Brownsword, R., Pitt, E. E. H. and Rutland, R. A., ‘“Latten” candlesticks in the Leicestershire Museums' Collection’, Trans. Leics. Arch. & Hist. Soc. lvii (1981-1982), 17Google Scholar. From this rather complex picture one fact at least emerges clearly: bronze (a copper-tin alloy) was rarely used for fine metal castings in the late medieval period except for bells.

15 The Statutes of the Realm, ii (London, 1816), 651:Google Scholar 19 Hen. VII cap. vi.

16 Guildhall Library, London Commissary Court Wills: MS 9171/3, fos.7Iv-72.

17 Chesterfield Wills and Inventories 1521-1603, ed. Bestall, J. M. and Fowkes, D. V., Derbyshire Record Soc. i (1977), 141Google Scholar.

18 See Coghlan, H. H., Notes on the Prehistoric Metallurgy of Copper and Bronze in the Old World, Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, Occasional Papers on Technology 4 (2nd edn., 1975), 20Google Scholar; Tylecote, R. F., A History of Metallurgy (London, 1976), 130Google Scholar.

19 Gras, N. S. B., The Early English Customs System (Cambridge, Mass., 1918), 502, 509Google Scholar; cf. also 456. We owe this reference to Mme Monique de Ruette, to whom we are very grateful for her helpful comments on various aspects of this paper.

20 Doorslaer, G. van, L'Ancienne Industrie du cuivre à Malines, i–vGoogle Scholar(repr. from Bull, du Cercle Archéologique, Littéraire et Artistique de Malines, 1910-1924)Google Scholar, i: ‘Organisation’ (1910), 14. We owe this reference to M. Jean Squilbeck, who believes, in contrast to our own interpretation, that wit copermeans metallic zinc (cf. his contribution to Rhein und Maas (Cologne and Brussels exhibition catalogue, 1972), French version). For pottijts cf. note 21.

21 For the first possibility, cf. Tylecote, , op. cit. (note 18), 130Google Scholar, for the term ‘white metal’ used in recent times for the penultimate stage in the production of metallic copper from ore. For the second possibility,cf. Doorslaer, Van, op. cit. (note 20), ivGoogle Scholar: “La fonderie du laiton et du bronze’, Bulletin du C.A.L. et A. de Malines, xxvii/xxviii (1922-1923), 140Google Scholar(p. 28 in the reprint): ‘le potin jaune, un alliage de cuivre jauneou de laiton et de quelques parties de cuivre rouge; le potin gris, un alliage de lavures de laiton etde plomb ou d'étain’. But Henckel, J. F., Pyritologia (Leipzig, 1754), 529Google Scholar, defines potin as an alloy made from the metal of old pots.

22 See aBlair, and Blair, , op. cit. (note 5)Google Scholar; The Statutes of the Realm, iii (London, 1817), 290:Google Scholar 21 Hen. VIII cap. x.

23 Cameron, , op. cit. (note 12), 230Google Scholar. Large quantities of copper appear in the customs account of 1384 cited in note 29 below.

24 See Haedeke, H.-U., Metalwork (London, 1970) 49Google Scholar; Collon-Gevaert, S., Histoire des arts du metal en Belgique, Mémoires de l'Académie Royale de Belgique vii, fasc. I (Brussels, 1951), 248–52Google Scholar.

25 Werner, , op. cit. (note 14), 157Google Scholar. The earliest evidence for a brass industry at Stolberg is in 1497 ( Schleicher, R., Geschichte der Stolberger Messing-industrie (Stolberg, 1974), 13)Google Scholar. But it could well have been a source for calamine ore earlier in the Middle Ages, as it was a major production centre during the Roman period ( Davies, O., Roman Mines in Europe (Oxford, 1935), 61, 178–9Google Scholar; we owe this reference to Dr Paul Craddock).

26 Beschreibung allerfürnemisten mineralischenErzt und Berck-wercksarten, trans. Sisco, A. G. and Smith, C. S. (University of Chicago Press, 1951)Google Scholar, frontispiece.

27 For these technical developments see Tylecote, , op. cit. (note 18), 71Google Scholar.

28 Hamilton, H., The English Brass and Copper Industries to 1800 (2nd edn., 1967), ch. 1Google Scholar.

29 P.R.O., EI22/71/8.

30 aTheophilus, , On Divers Arts, trans. Hawthorne, J. G. and Smith, C. S. (reprint, New York, 1979), 143–4-Google Scholar

31 Werner, , op. cit. (note 14)Google Scholar.

32 Lewis, J. M., Medieval Pottery and Metalwork in Wales (Cardiff, 1978), 81Google Scholar; Brownsword, R., Pitt, E. E. H. and Symons, D. J., ‘The analysis of some metal objects from Weoley Castle’, Trans. Birm. & Warwicks. Arch. SocGoogle Scholar. forthcoming.

33 We are grateful to E. E. H. Pitt, D. R. Hook and T. Ciuffini, who carried out these analyses.