Expertise for this he turned to the germans and in

expertise. For this he turned to the Germans, and in particular to a family
from which the kings of England had been borrowing money for a hundred
years. These were the Fuggers, directors of a great European banking house
established in Augsburg, Bavaria. It seems they had close connections with
another financial concern run by a man called David Haug, who had control
of mining operations in the Tyrol, near Innsbruck, where much copper was
already being produced. In 1564 Cecil invited the Germans to come
prospecting, and three prominent members of the Haug firm arrived in
England. By 1565 they had found copper in Cumberland, and proceeded to
bring in nearly four hundred Tyrolean miners to mine the deposits. Work
went ahead in spite of trouble with the local people, which at one point
caused Elizabeth to write to ask local Justices “to repress the assaults,
murders, and outrages on the Alamain [German] miners lately come there
for the purpose of searching”. In the summer of 1566 a rich copper mine
was found, and financial support began to increase. Two years later Cecil
ensured control over events by incorporating a company known as the
“Mines Royal”.

Mining operations in 1544. The mine is sited by a river where a barge (right) awaits loading with ore
and metal. Above, left, wagon loads of ore are brought down to the water-powered blast furnace.
Note the aqueduct bringing water from the distant mountain, and wooden trolleys running on wooden
rails at the mouth of the tunnel behind a man with a wheelbarrow.
Parallel with the copper-mining activity went Cecil’s other interest,
wool. Since the fourteenth century this industry had been the backbone of
the English economy; however, part of the processing involved combing the
wool in such a way as to matt the fibers together, and for this metal combs
were used, principally made in brass. Again, there was no brass industry to
speak of in England, and Cecil wished to establish one. The making of brass
—an alloy of copper and zinc—involved the use of another ore called
calamine, which had to be imported. Once more England turned to the
Germans. This time the initiative came from the Master of the Mint, who
helped a certain Christopher Shutz from Saxony to get a patent on a method
for beating brass ingots into flat plates, known as the battery method
because the metal was battered by trip hammers. Together with this patent
came authorization in 1565 to go on to any land anywhere in the country to
prospect for calamine. In June of the following year the foreign miners
found calamine, in the Mendip hills close to the coast. Within a few months
they had extracted twenty tons, an event considered of such national
importance that only Cecil and the Master of the Mint knew of it. So in
1568 another company was incorporated, the Society of Mineral and