Hi,
Sorry to raise this issue again, but list members were left with two very opposing interpretations of the importance, or otherwise, of silver to operations at Keswick.
I wrote that "I do not remember silver featuring that much" whilst Peter Claughton wrote "As I recall, it was Hammersley's view that silver kept the whole Mines Royal/ Lakes venture going for as long as it did when there was no market for the copper".
To me, at least, this was unsatisfactory and I have taked the opportunity to return to Hammersley's book. There are some minor ambiguities in his figures and the odd contradiction, but this is the gist of what I found (the various spellings of Hechstetter are Hammersley's).
p.33 From 1568 to 1580 Around 30 tons of copper + 33 lbs of silver annually, "was respectable rather than spectacular".
He footnotes this - copper sold at around £3/cwt and silver at no more than £0.27/oz. i.e. around 8 percent of income came from silver.
p.37 Speaking of the Hechstetters' surrender of the Goldscope lease to the Society of Mines Royal in 1597, he felt that it "would not be entirely misleading to treat ... [this] ... as tantamount to bankruptcy", but then cautioned that this conclusion was impressionistic. "Thus the Hechstetters used at least some of the retained royalties for work on mines, which yielded predominantly silver bearing lead rather than copper, although neither lead nor silver were apparently subject to royalties after 1601".
"Silver may have been the prize which originally attracted Hoechstetter and the Haugs, but 36 lbs a year between 1570 and 1580, falling to less than 14 lbs annually between 1580 and 1585 was disappointing enough; between 1590 and 1600 they produced only 67½ cwt of rich lead containing under 26 lbs of silver".
By comparison, copper output was:-
1585-1594 25 to 30 tons per year.
1595-1597 30
1597-1600 14
1601 5
A source of silver lead was discovered c1613 .. but "the younger Hechstetters clearly regarded copper as the central part of their business" having "concentrated their prospecting upon potential sources of copper as the central part of their business ...".
p.51 "Perhaps it was the silver content of some local copper ores which determined Daniel Hoechstetter senior to establish himself at Keswick; it was clearly the wealth of the initially rich copper deposits at Goldscope, combined with their significant silver content, which made him concentrate primarily upon its exploitation".
p.58 He suggests that "mining and smelting of copper in the Lake District had petered out by the end of 1638".
p.62 The instructions to George Bowes and Francis Needham give a clue as to the true purpose of the venture "Where the said company hath heretofore bestowed very great sums of money upon the works there as well in hope of that benefit which her majesty and the State might reap by making copper within her realm thereby to be provided of a competent store for her necessary services without being beholden to other foreign princes ...".
List Members can make of that what they want, but it is clear to me that silver was never more than a useful by-product of other metals. If they were there, I missed figures for the output of silver from 1602 to 1638, but the apparent failure to collect royalties makes it highly unlikely that silver production was ever significant then (Mineral Lords simply did not remit duties for long if output increased). Furthermore, it is quite clear that talk of an English copper (mining) industry in Elizabethan times is inappropriate.
Mike Gill
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