After the passing of the Act, it seems that Dudley Dudley made “great store of iron and sold it at 12 pounds a ton, and also cast-iron wares, as brewing cisterns, pots, mortars;” but, being ousted of his works, he again set up a furnace at “Himley, in the county of Stafford.”  Himley Hall is the present residence of Lord Ward, the representative of the Dudley family.  From that time forward, the life of the unfortunate inventor was but one series of misfortunes.  Under Charles I. he got into law-suits, was the victim of riots set on by the charcoal ironmasters, and was eventually lodged in prison in the Compter.  Then came the Great Rebellion, during which he had the disadvantage of being a Royalist as well as an inventor, and of having “Cromwell, with Major Wildman and many of his officers, as opponents in rival experiments tried in the Forest of Dean, where they employed an ingenious glassmaster, Edward Dagney, an Italian then living in Bristow,” but they failed.  And so he was utterly ruined.  On the accession of Charles II., he petitioned, and eventually sent in the statement from which the preceding extracts have been made, but apparently without any success.  The king was too busy making dukes and melting the louis d’ors of his French pension, to think of anything so common as iron or so tiresome as gratitude.

The iron manufacture, for want of the art of smelting by coal, and of a supply of wood, which the march of agriculture daily diminished, dwindled away, until, in the middle of the eighteenth century, it was revived at Colebrook Dale by the Darbys.  In the intermediate period, we were dependent on Russia, Spain, and Sweden for the chief part of the iron used in manufactures.

But one of the most curious passages in Dudley’s Metallum Martis, is the following picture of the Dudley coal-field:—­“Now let me show some reasons that induced me to undertake these inventions.  Well knowing that within ten miles of Dudley Castle, there be near 20,000 smiths of all sorts, and many ironworks within that circle decayed for want of wood (yet formerly a mighty woodland country); secondly, Lord Dudley’s woods and works decayed, but pit-coal and iron stone or mines abounding upon his lands, but of little use; thirdly, because most of the coal mines in these parts are coals ten, eleven, and twelve yards thick; fourthly, under this great thickness of coal are very many sorts of ironstone mines; fifthly, that one-third part of the coals gotten under the ground are small, when the colliers are forced to sink pits for getting of ten yards thick, and are of little use in an inland country, unless it might be made use of by making iron therewith; sixthly, these colliers must cast these coals and slack out of their ways, which, becoming moist, heat naturally, and kindle in the middle of these great heaps, often sets the coal works on fire and flaming out of the pits, and continue burning like AEtna in Sicily or Hecla in the Indies.” (sic.)