About this time Sheffield began to be famous for the manufacture of falchion heads, arrows, files, and whittles.  Chaucer tells us of the miller that

   “A Sheffield thwytle bare he in his hose,
   Round was his face, and camysed was his nose.”

The ample water-power, the supply of iron ore close at hand, and in after times, when its value for smelting was discovered, the fields of coal—­all helped Sheffield.

“Another only daughter, and another Maud, transferred by her marriage the lordship of Sheffield to the more noble family of Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury.  William Lord Furnival died 12th April 1383, in his house in Holborn, where now stands Furnival’s Inn, leaving an only daughter, who married Sir Thomas Nevil, and he in 1406 died, leaving an only daughter, Maud, who married John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury.  George, fourth Earl of Shrewsbury, built the lodge, called Sheffield Manor, on an eminence a little distance from the town, and there he received Cardinal Wolsey into his custody soon after his apprehension.  It was on his journey from Sheffield Manor up to London, in order to attend his trial, that the Cardinal died at Leicester Abbey.  In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, Mary Queen of Scots, who had been committed to the custody of George, sixth Earl of Shrewsbury, after being confined in Tutbury Castle, was removed in 1570 first to Sheffield Castle, and then to Sheffield Manor House, where she spent fourteen years.  It was for the alleged intention of moving her hence that Thomas Duke of Norfolk, an ancestor of the ducal family, still closely connected with Sheffield, suffered on the scaffold.  The grandson of this Duke of Norfolk, at whose trial the Earl of Shrewsbury presided as High Steward, afterwards married the granddaughter of the Earl, and thereby became possessed of this castle and estate.”  And now, in 1851, another son of Norfolk is about to acquire a large fortune by a Talbot.

During the reign of Elizabeth, the Duke of Alva, whose persecutions did more for extending and improving the manufactures of this country than any amount of parchment protection, drove over, in addition to the weavers of linen and fullers of cloth, artizans in iron and steel.  These, according to the wise rule of settling all one craft in one spot, were by the advice of the Queen’s Chamberlain, the Earl of Shrewsbury, settled on his own estate at Sheffield, and the neighbourhood thenceforward became known for the manufacture of shears, sickles, knives of every kind, and scissors.

About this time (1613), according to a survey, Sheffield contained about 2207 inhabitants, of whom the most wealthy were “100 householders, which relieve the others, but are poore artificers, not one of whom can keep a team on his own land, and above ten have grounds of their own, which will keep a cow.”  In 1624, an act of the incorporation of cutlers was passed, entituled “An act for the good order and government of the makers of sickles, shears, scissors, and other cutlery wares in Hallamshire and parts near adjoining.”