There were undoubtedly contacts between the mining fields, and the simplistic notion that Derbyshire miners "spread the word" was once so seductive that it blinded mining historians to the obvious for many years. The picture in Yorkshire (and other counties too - no doubt) was much more complex and since the late 1980s it has been increasingly accepted that customary mining law (and lore) was widespread during and immediately after the mediæval period.
The idea that miners from anywhere could arrive and simply convince powerful men like the Lords Bolton, Lords Wharton or the Earls of Cumberland to accept an alien system for regulating their mining fields is truly fanciful. In fact, it appears that these men "inherited" the customary laws with liberated monastic lands and then they either tolerated the laws or suppressed them.
The interesting things, to me at least, are:-
Why did the 'Derbyshire' system of soughing companies never catch on elsewhere. There were a few levels/soughs/adits in the Yorkshire Dales in the 17th and early 18th centuries, but all seem to have been driven to drain 'single owner' (which might have been a partnership) mines as opposed to a number of mines which paid composition to the soughers.
If Yvonne Luke's model for pre-Conquest mining is sound, what system of ownership and working was used before customary law.
Mike Gill
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