But the more successfully he worked his new system, the more unrelenting and fierce grew the opposition he encountered from his rivals of the old charcoal order. They seem to have ousted him from his works in Worcestershire; but nothing daunted, he set up a furnace at Himley, where he produced a quantity of pig iron; but having no forge for working it into bars, he was obliged to sell it in that state to the charcoal ironmasters, who conspired to disparage it in the market. The history of his trials, persecutions, tribulations, and triumphs, as written by himself, is exceedingly interesting, and we would commend it to those who read with admiration the lives of the martyr-heroes of science and scientific industry. As the book is rare we give one more extract from it, showing what such men have had to endure in all ages from those most indebted to their genius and labours. Being thus cramped and thwarted at Himley, he says:
"The Authour erected a new Furnace on purpose 27 foot square, all of stone, at a place called Hasco Bridge, in the parish of Sedgley, and county of Stafford: the Bellows of which Furnace were larger than ordinary Bellows are, in which works he made 7 Tuns of Iron per week, the greatest quantity of Pit-cole Iron that ever yet was made in Great Brittain; near which Furnace the Authour discovered many new Cole-mines 10 yards thick, and Ironmines under it, according to other Cole-works, which Cole-works being brought unto perfection, the Authour was by force thrown out of them, and the Bellows of his new Furnace and Invention by riotous persons cut to pieces, to his no small prejudice and loss of his Invention of
