Industrial Biography: Iron Workers and Tool Makers. Samuel Smiles
the gaolers, Dudley, with Sir Henry Bates, Major Elliotts, Captain South, Captain Paris, and six others, succeeded in getting away, and making again for the open country. Dudley had received a wound in the leg, and could only get along with great difficulty. He records that he proceeded on crutches, through Worcester, Tewkesbury, and Gloucester, to Bristol, having been "fed three weeks in private in an enemy's hay mow." Even the most lynx-eyed Parliamentarian must have failed to recognise the quondam royalist general of artillery in the helpless creature dragging himself along upon crutches; and he reached Bristol in safety.
His military career now over, he found himself absolutely penniless. His estate of about 200L. per annum had been sequestrated and sold by the government;[11] his house in Worcester had been seized and his sickly wife turned out of doors; and his goods, stock, great shop, and ironworks, which he himself valued at 2000L., were destroyed. He had also lost the offices of Serjeant-at-arms, Lieutenant of Ordnance, and Surveyor of the Mews, which he had held under the king; in a word, he found himself reduced to a state of utter destitution.
Dudley was for some time under the necessity of living in great privacy at Bristol; but when the king had been executed, and the royalists were finally crushed at Worcester, Dud gradually emerged from his concealment. He was still the sole possessor of the grand secret of smelting iron with pit-coal, and he resolved upon one more commercial adventure, in the hope of yet turning it to good account. He succeeded in inducing Walter Stevens, linendraper, and John Stone, merchant, both of Bristol, to join him as partners in an ironwork, which they proceeded to erect near that city. The buildings were well advanced, and nearly 700L. had been expended, when a quarrel occurred between Dudley and his partners, which ended in the stoppage of the works, and the concern being thrown into Chancery. Dudley alleges that the other partners "cunningly drew him into a bond," and "did unjustly enter staple actions in Bristol of great value against him, because he was of the king's party;" but it would appear as if there had been some twist or infirmity of temper in Dudley himself, which prevented him from working harmoniously with such persons as he became associated with in affairs of business.
In the mean time other attempts were made to smelt iron with pit-coal. Dudley says that Cromwell and the then Parliament granted a patent to Captain Buck for the purpose; and that Cromwell himself, Major Wildman, and various others were partners in the patent. They erected furnaces and works in the Forest of Dean;[12] but, though Cromwell and his officers could fight and win battles, they could not smelt and forge iron with pit-coal. They brought one Dagney, an Italian glass-maker, from Bristol, to erect a new furnace for them, provided with sundry pots of glass-house clay; but no success attended their efforts. The partners knowing of Dudley's possession of the grand secret, invited him to visit their works; but all they could draw from him was that they would never succeed in making iron to profit by the methods they were pursuing. They next proceeded to erect other works at Bristol, but still they failed. Major Wildman[13] bought Dudley's sequestrated estate, in the hope of being able to extort his secret of making iron with pit-coal; but all their attempts proving abortive, they at length abandoned the enterprise in despair. In 1656, one Captain Copley obtained from Cromwell a further patent with a similar object; and erected works near Bristol, and also in the Forest of Kingswood. The mechanical engineers employed by Copley failed in making his bellows blow; on which he sent for Dudley, who forthwith "made his bellows to be blown feisibly;" but Copley failed, like his predecessors, in making iron, and at length he too desisted from further experiments.
Such continued to be the state of things until the Restoration, when we find Dud Dudley a petitioner to the king for the renewal of his patent. He was also a petitioner for compensation in respect of the heavy losses he had sustained during the civil wars. The king was besieged by crowds of applicants of a similar sort, but Dudley was no more successful than the others. He failed in obtaining the renewal of his patent. Another applicant for the like privilege, probably having greater interest at court, proved more successful. Colonel Proger and three others[14] were granted a patent to make iron with coal; but Dudley knew the secret, which the new patentees did not; and their patent came to nothing.
Dudley continued to address the king in importunate petitions, asking to be restored to his former offices of Serjeant-at-arms, Lieutenant of Ordnance, and Surveyor of the Mews or Armoury. He also petitioned to be appointed Master of the Charter House in Smithfield, professing himself willing to take anything, or hold any living.[15] We find him sending in two petitions to a similar effect in June, 1660; and a third shortly after. The result was, that he was reappointed to the office of Serjeant-at-Arms; but the Mastership of the Charter-House was not disposed of until 1662, when it fell to the lot of one Thomas Watson.[16] In 1661, we find a patent granted to Wm. Chamberlaine and—Dudley, Esq., for the sole use of their new invention of plating steel, &c., and tinning the said plates; but whether Dud Dudley was the person referred to, we are unable precisely to determine. A few years later, he seems to have succeeded in obtaining the means of prosecuting his original invention; for in his Metallum Martis, published in 1665, he describes himself as living at Green's Lodge, in Staffordshire; and he says that near it are four forges, Green's Forge, Swin Forge, Heath Forge, and Cradley Forge, where he practises his "perfect invention." These forges, he adds, "have barred all or most part of their iron with pit-coal since the authors first invention In 1618, which hath preserved much wood. In these four, besides many other forges, do the like [sic ]; yet the author hath had no benefit thereby to this present." From that time forward, Dud becomes lost to sight. He seems eventually to have retired to St. Helen's in Worcestershire, where he died in 1684, in the 85th year of his age. He was buried in the parish church there, and a monument, now destroyed, was erected to his memory, bearing the inscription partly set forth underneath.[17]
[1] As late as 1790, long after the monopoly of the foreign merchants had been abolished, Pennant says, "The present Steelyard is the great repository of imported iron, which furnishes our metropolis with that necessary material. The quantity of bars that fills the yards and warehouses of this quarter strikes with astonishment the most indifferent beholder."—PENNANT, Account of London, 309.
[2] STURTEVANT'S Metallica; briefly comprehending the Doctrine of Diverse New Metallical Inventions, &c. Reprinted and published at the Great Seal Patent Office, 1858.
[3] Reprinted and published at the Great Seal Patent Office, 1858.
[4] Among the early patentees, besides the names of Sturtevant and Rovenzon, we find those of Jordens, Francke, Sir Phillibert Vernatt, and other foreigners of the above nations.
[5] Mr. Parkshouse was one of the esquires to Sir Ferdinando Dudley (the legitimate son of the Earl of Dudley) When he was made Knight of the Bath. Sir Ferdinando's only daughter Frances married Humble Ward, son and heir of William Ward, goldsmith and jeweller to Charles the First's queen. Her husband having been created a baron by the title of Baron Ward of Birmingham, and Frances becoming Baroness of Dudley in her own right on the demise of her father, the baronies of Dudley and Ward thus became united in their eldest son Edward in the year 1697.
[6] Patent No. 117, Old Series, granted in 1638, to Sir George Horsey, David Ramsey, Roger Foulke, and Dudd Dudley.
[7] By his own account, given in Metallum Martis, while in Scotland in 1637, he visited the Highlands as well as the Lowlands, spending the whole summer of that year "in opening of mines and making of discoveries;" spending part of the time with Sir James Hope of Lead Hills, near where, he says, "he got gold." It does not appear, however, that any iron forges existed in Scotland at the time: indeed Dudley expressly says that "Scotland maketh no iron;" and in his treatise of 1665 he urges that the Corporation of the Mines Royal should set him and his inventions at work to enable Scotland to enjoy the benefit of a cheap and abundant supply of the manufactured article.
[8] The Journals of the House of Commons, of the 13th June, 1642, contain the resolution "that Captain Wolseley, Ensign Dudley, and John Lometon be forthwith sent for, as delinquents, by the Serjeant-at-Arms attending on the House, for giving interruption to the execution of the ordinance of the militia in the county of Leicester."
[9] Small pieces of artillery, specimens of which are still to be seen in the museum at Woolwich Arsenal and at the Tower.
[10] State Paper Office, Dom. Charles II., vol. xi. 54.
[11]