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Phillip, The person to talk to is Lynette Costello <[log in to unmask]>, senior lecturer in Law at Guildhall and a post grad. researcher at Exeter, specialising in mining law. There are parallels between mining law in England and Wales and that in the USA. Prior to the nationalisation of coal, gas and oil resources in the UK - as early as 1937 in the case of coal - as a rule minerals were the property of the owner of the land with leases drawn up between the owner and the miner or mining company. Until the Mines Royal Acts of 1689 and 1693 the position regarding metalliferous ores was complicated by the rights of the Crown to ores bearing precious metals and copper but after those Acts only free gold was regarded as Crown property. In a number of mining fields custom dictated the method in which leases were granted but the minerals were never the less private property. It would be interesting to know which aspects of English regarding mineral ownership were adopted by the USA after independence in the late 18th century and how they were adapted to serve a frontier society. Peter ______________________________________________ Peter Claughton, Blaenpant Morfil, Rosebush, Clynderwen, Pembrokeshire, Wales SA66 7RE. Tel. 01437 532578; Fax. 01437 532921; Mobile 0831 427599 University of Exeter - Department of History School of Historical, Political and Sociological Studies E-mail: [log in to unmask] Co-owner - mining-history e-mail discussion list. See http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/mining-history/ for details. Mining History Pages - http://www.exeter.ac.uk/~pfclaugh/mhinf/ _____________________________________________ %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%