Steel at the dawn of capitalism: reformation,

technology and enlightenment

Paul Belford

ABSTRACT: The history of the ways of thinking which characterise the Age of
Enlightenment can be traced back to late medieval humanism. The development
of cementation steelmaking in early 17th century England was one of the earliest
concrete expressions of an ‘enlightenment’ mode of thought. At one level there
is a material connection between the products of such furnaces and the growing
Enlightenment—cementation steel was used to create the weapons of the civil war,
and provided instruments which drove forward a scientific revolution from late in the
17th century. However, at another level there is a more complex relationship between
different ideas about how the world was structured. This paper will argue that the
design, construction and operation of these furnaces formed a deliberately rational
act at the dawn of the capitalist era: the very act of steelmaking was a bridge between
humanism and the Enlightenment.

Introduction 1605, cited in Kearney 1964, 122). Tracing the trajectory

The English Enlightenment is usually regarded as
being contiguous with the ‘long 18th century’, gaining
momentum after the Restoration and getting fully into its
stride in the early 1700s. Joel Mokyr has used the term
‘Industrial Enlightenment’ to describe the 18th-century
process of ‘studying natural phenomena and regularities,
reducing them to general principles’ and then applying
them to the processes of manufacture and trade (Mokyr
2006, 271–3). However it is difficult to ignore the
‘Scientific Revolution’ which informed and preceded
the Enlightenment; which in its turn was preceded
by the development of humanist individualism in the
16th century. In this context it is perhaps preferable to
define ‘Enlightenment’ not as a temporal construct with
a capital ‘E’ but as a philosophical one. In this form it
is a movement concerned with rationality, with making
empirical observations and developing ways of under-
standing the world that are independent of received
wisdom. Such an experiential or experimental approach
was explicitly set out early in the 17th century by Francis
Bacon, who valued the increase in human knowledge
gained ‘when the experience of several mysteries shall
fall under the consideration of one man’s mind’ (Bacon
of Baconian empiricism back further, it is possible to
argue that the ‘enlightenment’ began with the re-dis-
covery of Aristotelian thought in the Middle Ages and
the emergence of humanism—itself leading, one way or
another, to the Reformation.
Arts and mysteries of history and archaeology
‘The Monks all thought it was still the Middle Ages.
So Henry… told Cromwell to pass a very strong Act
saying that the Middle Ages were all over and the mon-
asteries were all to be dissolved’ (Sellar and Yeatman
1930, 64).
The notion that the process of Reformation and
Renaissance brought about the modern world is not
new; indeed it was one of the cornerstones of progress-
ive histories from late in the 19th century onwards.
Such whiggish narratives sought to emphasise the rise
of individualism at the expense of the corporate body.
The argument was taken a stage further by Max Weber
at the beginning of the 20th century, who regarded the
emergence of capitalist society as the consequence of
die protestantische Ethik (Weber 1904–5). The idea

Historical Metallurgy 42(2) 2008 89–99 89

BELFORD: STEEL AT THE DAWN OF CAPITALISM
that the Reformation (protestant and rational) marked
the end of the Middle Ages (catholic and superstitious)
remained dominant until well after the second world
war (Lehmann and Roth 1995). The study of the
economic history of English industrialisation, which
emerged in the 1920s and accelerated in the 1950s, did
little to challenge and much to support the idea of the
‘protestant ethic’. Notable among such early studies
was the work of Professor T S Ashton and the Quaker
historian Arthur Raistrick. Their perspective was
challenged in the 1980s by historians of the Annales
school, notably by Fernand Braudel, who sought to
explore ‘the structures of everyday life’ (Braudel
1981). Such approaches were in turn criticised for their
Eurocentricity, and from more recent developments the
term ‘early modern’ has emerged as a more widely ac-
ceptable period descriptor for historians (Bentley 2007,
14–19). Archaeologists, on the other hand, have only
recently come to agree that the period after c1500 is
even worthy of study—and are still far from decided
about the way in which that study should proceed.
Interestingly, archaeology is itself an outcome of the
enlightenment project to improve the human con-
dition through rational observation of the world. The
first classification of English archaeological sites and
landscapes was arguably John Aubrey’s (unpublished)
Monumenta Britannica of the late 17th century (Fowles
1982). The Society of Antiquaries of London was founded
in 1707. In part, the rise of antiquarianism in the 18th
century was associated with the development of national
and imperial identities. Equation of the newly ‘dis-
covered’ peoples of north America with ancient ‘Britons’
were being made as early as the 1590s, whilst the
association between Roman and British imperialism was
made more and more explicit as the 18th century went
on (Sloan 2007, 152–163; Sweet 2004, 162–187). By
the 1830s Charles Lyell had worked out the principles of
stratigraphy in geology, which assisted Charles Darwin
in understanding the processes of natural selection — in
turn standing on the shoulders of that great Swede of the
Enlightenment, Carl von Linné (Gribbin 2002). Another
Scandinavian, Christian Jurgensen Thompsen, used the
same enlightened principles of typology and stratigraphy
to develop the three ages of stone, bronze and iron which
still form the basis of prehistoric chronology.
As in the discipline of history, the 19th-century
foundations of archaeology were increasingly questioned
in the last few decades of the 20th century. After attempts
at a ‘processualist’ archaeology, which incorporated
a variety of scientific techniques, neo-Enlightenment
rationalist objectivity was largely abandoned in the
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HM 42(2) 2008
‘post-processualist’ and later developments of the 1970s
and 1980s. These developments are described by David
Cranstone elsewhere in this volume; it is sufficient to
note here two main changes. Firstly there is the increas-
ing recognition that an archaeology of the post-medieval
period can do so much more than act as the oft-quoted
‘handmaiden of history’ (Andren 1998, 106). Post-
medieval and industrial archaeologies have emerged as
fully-fledged components of the broader study of global
historical archaeology. Secondly, many organisations
have begun to build subjectivity into the creation of the
site record. At best this allows for a positive reflexive ap-
proach to dealing with archaeological remains. The ‘art’
of trying to extract meaningful stories from fragments of
peoples’ long-discarded rubbish and abandoned build-
ings is acknowledged. Thus archaeology—in its current
post-Enlightenment form—is eschewing the apparently
rigid boundaries between objectivity and subjectivity. It
can be argued that the discipline is at the forefront of a
return to the early Enlightenment continuum of ‘art’ and
‘science’. Such developments in archaeology perhaps
make it the most appropriate tool for the study of the
mysterious ‘art’ and ‘science’ of early steelmaking.
The science of the art of steelmaking
‘The science of the art of steelmaking is still in a very
imperfect state, however advanced the art may be. The
varieties of steel in commerce are exceedingly numerous,
but the causes of difference are in many cases unknown,
and the investigation of these causes is attended with
great difficulty.’ (Percy 1864, II, 764).
This, from one of the great 19th-century metallurgists is
illuminating. Steelmaking was an ‘art’ which produced
a wide range of steely materials, but the enlightenment
project of empirical observation, cataloguing, and
rational deduction had barely touched this significant
enterprise. As Göran Rydén argued (unpublished) at
the Cardiff meeting where this paper was presented,
steel was defined more by its consumers than its pro-
ducers. Indeed, understanding of the ‘science of the art’
in Percy’s time was in many ways little further forward
than it had been when the first cementation steel fur-
naces were built in England some 250 years previously.
These first furnaces (in operation from c1619 to c1686,
and extant until 1726) were located in Coalbrookdale,
Shropshire. They were undoubtedly coal-fired, contained
many of the same features, and were operated in much
the same manner as later furnaces which would have
been familiar to Percy and his contemporaries. A report
on the excavation of these furnaces has recently been
published in this journal (Belford and Ross 2007).
HM 42(2) 2008
During the course of preparing that report, samples of
the refractory materials used in its construction were
submitted for scientific analysis by English Heritage
scientists (Fig 1). The results of the analysis—under-
taken using a scanning electron microscope (SEM)
with an attached energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometer
(EDS)—identified ten different chemical elements.
As well as compounds of iron (Fe), calcium (Ca) and
silicon (Si), the analysis also revealed oxides of man-
ganese (Mn), aluminium (Al) and titanium (Ti). The
results of this analysis showed that three outwardly
similar, but chemically and mechanically subtly dif-
ferent types of sandstone were used to build the furnace.
The silica (SiO2) content provided an indication of the
refractory potential of the sandstone. Interestingly the
sandstone used inside the furnace had a lower silica
content than the ordinary building stone used elsewhere
in the structure, but had better mechanical properties for
withstanding consistently higher temperatures (Belford
and Ross 2007, 115–118).
Early in the 17th century the furnace-builders knew no-
thing about silica, titanium or oxides. Indeed even that
most basic alloying element for all ferrous metallurgy—
carbon—was not identified for another hundred years
(Smith 1964, 149–152). Furthermore, the very notion
of ‘science’ was not distinguished from other forms
of philosophical enquiry for another generation, and
was not even named as such until 1833 (Holmes 2008).
Nevertheless the creators of the furnace were able to
make appropriate choices between three visually similar
types of rock for its construction. One of these would
have melted, one would have crumbled apart, and only
BELFORD: STEEL AT THE DAWN OF CAPITALISM
Figure 1: Post-enlightenment
archaeometallurgy in ac-
tion. Justine Bayley and
David Dungworth discuss-
ing samples of refractory
material during a site visit
to the excavations of the
Coalbrookdale steel fur-
naces in June 2005. (Paul
Belford).
one combined sufficient refractory qualities with ad-
equate mechanical strength.
So was the choice of stone for the Coalbrookdale fur-
nace an ‘enlightened’ choice based on empirical data
collection and analysis? Not in the sense of it being an
‘Enlightened’ choice following, say, Rene Descartes’
Neoplatonist hierarchy of universal forms. However,
by using the small ‘e’, it is possible to perceive this
as an enlightened choice based on entirely rational
observations made over many generations by people
familiar with the raw materials and the processes which
made use of them.
A similar intuitive understanding, of how metals behave
under different conditions, is a well-known aspect of
traditional blacksmithing. It has been regarded as one
of the factors which held back the adoption of mineral
fuels in the forging and refining processes late in the
18th century (Hayman 2003). Such conservatism is
understandable in an industry where scope for experi-
mentation is limited by economic constraints. Even
interrupting the chain of supply to try a slightly different
charge in the furnace risked disaster; to try and introduce
new fuels or refractory materials would have been even
more risky. Traditional histories of the iron industry have
therefore argued that innovation in ferrous metallurgy
was only possible once the Enlightenment programme
of scientific rationalism was well under way (Schubert
1957; Mott 1983). Such analysis is in keeping with well-
established ideas in economic history of the essentially
static nature of pre-industrial society. Thus, despite
occasional fits and starts of innovation—what Jack
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Goldstone referred to as ‘efflorescences’ — long-term

technological and economic growth was unsustainable
(Braudel 1981; Goldstone 2002).

Yet cementation steelmaking was introduced as a new

technology at Coalbrookdale, requiring substantial
investment in plant, equipment and workforce-skills. It
evidently worked sufficiently well to be commercially
viable for over half a century. This was no serendipitous
discovery by a skilled artisan; rather this was a deliberate
and scientifically designed programme of metallurgical
innovation, based on previous and ongoing system-
atic research and experimentation. Moreover it was
designed to make money — and it succeeded in doing
so, only being stopped by external events. To under-
stand this very Enlightenment development in pre-En-
lightenment rural Shropshire, it is necessary to look at
the people behind it.

Idolatry and industry: continuity and change

in Shropshire
‘He was a zealous and loyal subject of Queen Mary, and
assisted her in securing her rights in opposition to the
violent factions of the time... After study of jurisprudence
and science, being of an extensively liberal mind and
universally beloved, he made a Christian-like end…’
(Extract from the epitaph of Sir John Brooke (d.1598),
Madeley, Shropshire; trans. in Randall 1880, 11).
The Coalbrookdale steel furnaces were built by Sir Basil
Brooke (Fig 2), who was the son of Sir John, whose
epitaph is cited above, and was the third generation of a
dynasty of landowners and industrialists who had been
exploiting the mineral resources of Coalbrookdale since
the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The Dissolution
can be considered as the most significant material con-
sequence of reformation in England, and at one level
there is a clear parallel between reformation and early
proto-scientific empiricism. Just as Nicholas Copernicus
made the case that empirical observations of the universe
required a new understanding of the nature of celes-
tial relationships, so Martin Luther argued that people
should be allowed to study the scriptures directly and
draw their own conclusions about the nature of God. Of
course the reality of the situation was more complex,
and, as the story of Copernicus’ own life suggests, a
fervent belief in the Catholic church did not preclude the
development of scientific rationalism.1 So it was with
the Brooke family, who remained staunch Catholics
throughout the 16th and 17th centuries yet nevertheless
developed a successful capitalist enterprise based on
scientific experimentation and application.
Figure 2: Sir Basil Brooke’s funerary effigy at St. Michael’s
Church, Madeley. This was originally part of a tomb which was
dismantled when the church was rebuilt in 1797 to a design by
Thomas Telford. The figures of Sir Basil, his wife and parents were
relocated to niches on the exterior of the new church. (Photograph
reproduced courtesy of the Reverend Henry Morris).
Until 1540, Coalbrookdale had been a possession of
the Priory of Much Wenlock. A 7th-century foundation,
Wenlock was a Cluniac house from late in the 11th
century and had extensive agricultural and woodland
holdings. The Priory also granted various leases for
mining and ironworking from the 14th century onwards,
mainly around Coalbrookdale, which had two forges by
the 1540s (Belford and Ross 2004, 215–217; Belford and
Ross 2007). Coalbrookdale was acquired in 1544 by Sir
Robert Brooke, an evidently ambitious lawyer, courtier
of Henry VIII, and sometime Speaker of the House of
Commons. This ‘zealous papist does not seem to have
baulked at receiving the spoils of reformation in the form
of the relict estate of Wenlock priory’ (Baugh 1985, 35).
His son John Brooke (an equally passionate recusant)
inherited the estate c 1572. He was responsible for much
of the early industrial development at Coalbrookdale,
enlarging the existing forges and investing in capital
works on new sites—opening up new coal and iron
mines and building at least one new forge. By 1600 there
were three forges in Coalbrookdale, including the ‘Great
Forge’ (or Upper Forge) which became the centre of the

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Coalbrookdale ferrous metalworking business during the
17th century (Belford 2007, 134–6).
Sir John used his industrial wealth to develop the
former monastic grange at Madeley Court into a sub-
stantial Elizabethan country house. This house had
begun in the 13th century as a single hall with under-
croft. Successive additions resulted in a large building
with two wings providing comfortable accommodation
for visiting priors; by the end of the 15th century the
complex included ‘a chapel chamber, tower, hall,
parlour and outhouses’ (Baugh 1985, 37). Sir John
Brooke was the first of his family to reside at Madeley
Court, and he wasted no time in creating an impressive
and fashionable mansion, complete with magnificent
gatehouse. The grounds included a walled garden
which featured an exceptionally complex three-sided
polyhedral sundial (Fig 3). Interestingly Sir Robert
Brooke’s acquisition of Madeley had occurred the year
after Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus was published.
Not long after Sir John inherited the estate, Thomas
Digges published the first English-language discussion
of the Copernican universe (Gribbin 2002, 12–18).
The sundial at Madeley Court reflects the Brookes’
strong and active interests both in abstract knowledge
of science and natural philosophy, and in applied
knowledge of technology, commerce and industry.2
Industrial enterprise was a way in which the Catholic
Brookes could make their way in life when many of
BELFORD: STEEL AT THE DAWN OF CAPITALISM
Figure 3: The sundial at
Madeley Court, the Brooke
family home built from the
proceeds of industrial enter-
prise in the 16th and 17th
centuries. (Paul Belford).
the conventional routes of social advancement were
closed to them.
Sir John Brooke’s carefully-developed portfolio of
industrial enterprises was inherited by his son Basil in
1598. Evidently well schooled in the natural sciences,
mathematics, languages and the usual renaissance
accomplishments, Sir Basil was an ambitious and tech-
nically informed entrepreneur who travelled extensively.
As well as operating his own ironworks and mines, he
also leased and ran the Crown ironworks in the Forest
of Dean. After travelling to Germany and the Low
Countries early in the 17th century, Brooke became in-
volved (c1615) in a patent to make steel. Cementation
steelmaking had first been described in 1574, by Lazarus
Erker, and was certainly being undertaken in Nuremburg
by early in the 17th century (Barraclough 1984, 48–49).
It seems likely that Sir Basil had seen this process at first
hand, and used the information he had gleaned from
his travels to replicate the process at his own works.3
Within four years England’s first cementation steel fur-
nace was in operation at Coalbrookdale (Belford and
Ross 2007, 105–121). This first furnace was sufficiently
successful to be later enlarged and then copied, so that
by the end of the 1630s there were two steel furnaces
side by side (Fig 4). These operated as part of a fully-
integrated steelworks capable of preparing wrought-iron
bars, converting them to steel, and further processing
them in the forge to improve homogeneity and quality,
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BELFORD: STEEL AT THE DAWN OF CAPITALISM
Figure 4: Plan of the Coalbrookdale steel furnaces as excavated,
showing the first furnace of c1619 to the north and the second
furnace, in operation by the late 1630s, to the south. The furnaces
and related structures are shown shaded; later features are shown
in outline or omitted. (Sophie Watson).
thus adding value to the finished product. The value of
Coalbrookdale steel—even in its relatively raw state as
bar—was at least twice that of wrought iron. When the
Brooke complex was sequestered by Parliament in June
1645, the stock at the works included a ton and a half
of iron worth £27, and a similar quantity of steel which
was valued at £66 (NA SP 23/105 f.201).
The Coalbrookdale steelworks had therefore developed
in an enlightened fashion: from rational observation,
through experimentation to prototype, and then to
final functioning form as a profitable and sustainable
business. Coalbrookdale cementation steel would have
had several advantages over other types of steel then
94
HM 42(2) 2008
available. Firstly, it would have been much more homo-
geneous than a case-hardened artefact, especially after
re-forging, giving greater reliability to the finished
product. Secondly, consistency of carbon content be-
tween individual bars and batches would have been
much greater than ‘natural’ or ‘Brescian’ steel. Moreover
the carbon content of cementation steel would have been
higher, giving greater hardness (Craddock and Wayman
2000, 17–23). Thirdly, Coalbrookdale steel would have
been available in relatively large quantities.
The consumption of steel and ideas
The Brookes’ steelmaking enterprise was a business
which sold a high value product into various markets.
Shipments of Coalbrookdale steel down the River Severn
are recorded in the Gloucester Port Books from 1619
to the 1680s. The Severn was already long established
as a major artery of trade, with Gloucester marking the
boundary between the inland and estuarine sections of
the river. Goods usually needed to be trans-shipped from
shallow-draught boats operating on the upper river to
vessels more suitable for coastal trade (Hussey 2000,
13–14). The Port Books recorded boats, their cargoes
and their places of origin. On 17th January 1637, for
example, the George of Madeley was transporting five
tons of bar steel down river on behalf of the merchant
Francis Wolfe (GPR 1248/10/02/19). Wolfe, another
prominent Shropshire Catholic, was an associate of
the Brookes and was involved in the operation of the
Coalbrookdale complex.4 The final destination of the
steel being sent down-river is not known. Coastal trade
was extensive along both the north and south shores of
the Bristol Channel; there was a substantial market for
Shropshire ferrous metals in Bristol itself, and much
trade further afield to places such as Belfast, Dublin
and even London (Trinder 2005, 89–92). The quantities
of steel exported from Coalbrookdale in this way were
not large: five tons probably represents the product of
a single ‘heat’ of the furnace. It seems likely that the
long-distance river trade only accounted for part of the
output of the Brooke steel furnaces.
A much larger market for Coalbrookdale steel would have
been in Birmingham, which had emerged as the main
centre for the manufacture of knives and armaments by
early in the 16th century. John Leland recorded ‘many
smiths in the towne that use to make knives and all
mannour of cuttinge tooles’ in the 1530s, and when
William Smith visited 50 years later he found it a place
‘where a great store of Knyves are made, for almost all
the townes men are cutlers or smithes’ (both cited in
Upton 1993, 12–13). Birmingham-made weapons were
HM 42(2) 2008 BELFORD: STEEL AT THE DAWN OF CAPITALISM

(a)

(b)

Figure 5: Enlightened swordsmanship made possible by Coalbrookdale steel. The unsuitability of the rapier for parrying (a) usually
required the additional use of a dagger or buckler; the development of the lighter and more flexible ‘small sword’ and (b) enabled rapid
parrying and counter-moves.

supplied to the Board of Ordnance from at least 1511, the Royal Armouries has revealed Birmingham makers’
and X-ray analysis of 17th- and 18th-century weapons in marks (David Starley pers comm). Sir Basil Brooke’s

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BELFORD: STEEL AT THE DAWN OF CAPITALISM
steel came on to the market at precisely the time when
styles of swordsmanship and weaponry were changing.
The rapier had evolved beyond practical usefulness: by
the end of the 16th century it was an extremely long (up
to 1.5m), flat and relatively heavy weapon which did not
permit rapid disengagement and counter-action in single
combat. Instead the so-called ‘small sword’ began to
evolve (Fig 5), with a lighter, shorter and more flexible
blade which enabled the fencer to recover quickly from
a lunge, and parry the riposte (Castle 1885, 130–141;
Valentine 1968, 7–11). Despite the well-chronicled
failure of Sir Basil’s steel from early experiments to
gain Royal Armouries approval, subsequent output
was of higher and more consistent quality (Jenkins
1923, 18–21; Schubert 1957, 233–5). Coalbrookdale
steel, a homogeneous, flexible, consistent and readily-
available product, would have been ideal for these new
weapons.
Perhaps the most interesting of the markets for Sir
Basil Brooke’s steel was itself emerging through the
same related lines of post-Reformation thinking that
had given rise to the process by which it was manufac-
tured. At the same time as the Brookes were creating
a new industrial world, so Raleigh, Frobisher, Somers
and others were discovering an entirely different New
World elsewhere. This brought about the realisation
that European hierarchies were not the only ways by
which human beings could organise their societies.
The existence of civilisations beyond the known world
profoundly changed European ways of thinking. This
curiosity about the ‘other’ also extended to aspects of the
physical world. The need to quantify and discuss these
new discoveries led to a number of developments includ-
ing the sciences of navigation and astronomy, printing,
map-making and mathematics—all of which needed new
precision instruments. High-quality steel was therefore
in demand for clock springs to measure time, surveying
tools to measure space, and printing and engraving
tools to describe these new advances. Sir Basil Brooke,
accomplished polymath that he was, would have been
reminded of these sorts of uses for his steel every time
he walked out of his front door and was confronted by
his exceptionally complex polyhedral sundial.
Towards Enlightenment — or already there?
The work of early thinkers such as Bacon, Galileo and
Descartes paved the way for later developments by
scientific pioneers such as Boyle, Hooke and Newton.
Central to the Newtonian project was the development
of methodologies to identify the basic structures of the
universe, in order to enable the best use to be made
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HM 42(2) 2008
of them for social and economic gains (Shapin 1994,
89–92). Eventually the work of these early scientists
—what would now be called ‘pure science’—informed
improvements in real-world technologies, in other words
‘applied science’. This provoked what David Cranstone
has referred to as a ‘chemical industrial revolution’ during
the 17th and 18th centuries (Cranstone forthcoming).
However, as we have seen in the case of steelmaking,
‘pure’ chemistry was seemingly unable to provide useful
and practical solutions for problems in the real world
much before the 19th century. This was not only the
case in the ferrous industries, but in other concerns as
well. One area where chemical reactions were key to the
success or otherwise of the manufacturing process was
the in dyeing of textiles. As Barbara Keyser has pointed
out, until the 1790s the ‘pure science’ of chemistry
barely scratched the surface of understanding many of
the ‘applied’ issues surrounding fastness and durability
(Keyser 1990, 221–3). Peter Burke has suggested that
scientific ‘research’ was only regarded as a valuable
tool for economic and technological development in
the post-Newtonian 18th century (Burke 2000, 42–49).
Moreover, it is conventionally suggested that even when
pre-Enlightenment scientific research took place, society
was unable to benefit due to its limited understanding
of economics (Mokyr 2002; 2005, 19–24). Society was
only released from the self-limiting restrictions of mer-
cantilism when the system was subjected to eloquent
critique by the Enlightened brains of thinkers such as
David Hume and Adam Smith.
Yet clearly it is not the case that the firmly pre-Newtonian
steel furnaces at Coalbrookdale were simply an ac-
cidental application of certain yet-to-be-quantified
laws of physics and chemistry to various materials.
Nor was the resulting metal a serendipitous discovery
which was not fully exploited by its creator. In fact, the
archaeological and historical evidence suggests precisely
the opposite. Sir Basil Brooke used his learning and
experience to observe a technology in action, experi-
ment with it in a methodical fashion, make it work, and
then successfully market and sell the resulting product
in the most profitable way. So much so that he doubled
his production capacity within 20 years.
Unfortunately for Brooke, wider events overtook him.
As a Catholic and a Royalist he was ill-suited to the
rapidly changing world of the middle of the17th century.
In 1641–42 he was prosecuted for recusancy, and was
imprisoned at Newgate. Although released, in the follow-
ing year he was implicated in a Royalist plot, and taken
to the Tower of London (NA SP 23/64 ff.892,895). By
HM 42(2) 2008
this time, the cash flow at the Coalbrookdale works was
severely restricted, and mining activities were threatened
by lack of capital. In June 1645 his Coalbrookdale
complex was seized, and eventually handed over to
Richard Foley who ran the ‘iron and steel works’ for
the next four years. The vicissitudes of this period
evidently took their toll on Sir Basil, who died on 31
December 1646 (NA SP 23/105 ff.199, 201; Gardiner
1906, 298–299; Hammersley 1972, 172). Eventually Sir
Basil’s son, Thomas, was able to regain the estate, but
the Brooke fortunes never recovered. Rival steelmak-
ing concerns began to emerge elsewhere. Cementation
steel furnaces were in operation in Bristol by the 1660s
and in Birmingham by the 1670s, closer respectively
to sources of iron, either from the Forest of Dean or
imported from the Baltic, and to the market for the
finished product (Belford and Ross 2007, 108; Evans
and Ryden 2007). Shipments of Coalbrookdale steel
down the River Severn through Gloucester finished
during the 1680s, and although still extant, the furnaces
were probably no longer in use when Abraham Darby
took over the lease in 1708. They were demolished in
the summer of 1726.
Lucifer’s metal? Steel as the bringer of
enlightenment
By this time, the Enlightenment was well under way,
and re-writing its own history in the protestant ascend-
ancy from the 18th century onwards. The inheritance of
Francis Bacon was overshadowed by the achievements of
the relentless plagiarist and self-publicist Isaac Newton,
one of the key figures in the establishment of ‘science’
as a learned discipline (Jacob and Stewart 2004). Early
exploration of the transatlantic New World was in turn
superseded by more ambitious and scientifically in-
formed investigations of other parts of the globe, such
as the expeditions of James Cook and Joseph Banks to
find Terra Australis. Such journeys were not merely the
pursuit of knowledge for its own sake; rather this was
the continuation of ‘the Baconian ideal that the purpose
of knowledge was to bring about material progress to
mankind’ (Mokyr 2006, 272).
Steel weapons and instruments were of course critical
to this pursuit of knowledge and wealth, as Sir Basil
Brooke had realised early in the 17th century. Brooke’s
Catholicism was ultimately his undoing, yet it was
also the force which shaped him and indeed created
the English steel industry. The tradition of Catholic
humanism into which he was born encouraged rational
observation and experimentation as a means of finding out
how the world worked. It was a tradition which arguably
BELFORD: STEEL AT THE DAWN OF CAPITALISM
began with Francesco Petrarch’s 14th-century critique
of Aristotelian scholasticism, and continued through
the works of Desiderius Erasmus and Thomas More in
the 15th and 16th centuries (Grant 2001, 284–316). 5
Mathematics and celestial observation were valued
as a means of better illuminating the glory of God’s
creation—hence the sundial at Madeley Court. Scientific
discovery (or natural philosophy as it might be better de-
scribed) was part of the very broad fabric of knowledge
which also included art, music, language and theology.
The contrast between Brooke’s devout Catholicism and
his free-thinking proto-scientific empiricist capitalism
is striking only to 21st-century eyes. In fact, despite
theological differences, there is much in common be-
tween Brooke’s approach to understanding the world
and that of later Enlightenment scholars. Key thinkers
such as Robert Hooke in the 17th century and Carl
Linnaeus in the 18th century were sons of clergymen;
Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace’s development of
the theory of natural selection was inspired by a desire
to demonstrate humanity’s special place in the eyes of
God (Gribbin 2002).
Yet beneath the surface the world had changed. The
Henrican Dissolution had unleashed the powerful forces
of protestant capitalism. Luther and Copernicus had
opened the floodgates of philosophical enquiry which
challenged the church and ultimately called into ques-
tion the very existence of God. The Coalbrookdale steel
furnaces lie at the very centre of the transition which
Sir Basil Brooke, and indeed society at large, made
from Cartesian neo-platonism to the later Rational
Empiricism espoused by John Locke, David Hume and
Adam Smith.
Conclusion
The discovery of the Coalbrookdale steel furnaces
has called into question a number of assumptions that
have been made about the history of Coalbrookdale,
the history of ferrous metallurgy more widely, and the
origins of Enlightenment thought. The story of indus-
trialisation has largely been told from the perspective
of an 18th-century Protestant Enlightenment, yet the
existence of Coalbrookdale as one of the centres of
post-medieval industrial development owes as much
to activities in the 16th and 17th centuries as to the
more widely celebrated 18th-century developments
by the Quaker Darby family. Likewise, the history of
steelmaking is often told through the lens of Sheffield’s
19th-century domination of the industry. However
Sheffield only achieved this dominance in the crucible
era, and it is evident that the formative development
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BELFORD: STEEL AT THE DAWN OF CAPITALISM
of cementation technology took place in the West
Midlands and the North East during the previous 150
years (Belford 1997; Cranstone 1997). The role played
by the Catholic Brooke family in the development of
steelmaking technology was clearly significant, as was
their promotion of neo-Enlightenment attitudes towards
rational scientific discovery and capitalist exploitation
of resources. It can be suggested that cementation steel
was the material which enabled the Enlightenment.
Equally the design, construction and operation of the
furnaces themselves was an act of proto-Enlightenment
rationalism at the dawn of the capitalist era. Thus the
very act of steelmaking in Coalbrookdale provided a
bridge between Catholic humanism and the Protestant
Enlightenment
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Chris Evans and Göran Rydén for invit-
ing me to contribute to the colloquium in Cardiff in 2007,
and to this volume. Research on the Coalbrookdale
steelmaking site was undertaken with the support and
collaboration of Professor Ronald A Ross. Many thanks
are also due to others with whom I have discussed
some of the ideas in this paper; they include but are by
no means limited to: David Cranstone, Michael Darby,
Edward Impey, Marilyn Palmer and Paul Stamper. Very
special thanks to Kate Page-Smith.
Notes
1. Copernicus was a canon in the Catholic cathedral at Frombork
(Poland), and his model of the planets moving around the sun
was contested on its first publication not by Rome but by Martin
Luther. Indeed an early lecture by Copernicus on this subject was
attended by Pope Clement VII. Copernicus’ work was not out-
lawed by the Vatican until over 70 years after his death (Gribbin
2002, 11–17).
2. The date of this sundial is debated. Dr. Paul Stamper (pers
comm.) regards it as an early-17th-century feature and thus an
addition made by Sir Basil Brooke after he inherited the estate.
Paula Henderson, in her extensive history of The Tudor House
and Garden, describes it as ‘late 16th century’ (Henderson 2005,
181)—in which case it is more likely to have been installed by
Sir John Brooke.
3. The technical details of the cementation process have been de-
scribed in this journal recently (Mackenzie and Whiteman 2006;
Belford and Ross 2007), so are not repeated here. A summary of
the differences between various types of steel and their manu-
facturing processes can also be found in Craddock and Wayman
2000.
4. Francis Wolfe acted as clerk of the works during the 1640s and
1650s when the Brooke ironworking complex at Coalbrookdale
was sequestered by Parliament. Wolfe lived at Upper House in
Madeley, which, despite its location close to the parish church,
was where local recusant families gathered to celebrate Mass.
Wolfe’s most famous moment came in September 1651 after the
98
HM 42(2) 2008
Battle of Worcester, when King Charles slipped away from his
Royal Oak at Boscobel and was hidden for the night in the barn
at Upper House; he later helped the King on his passage to France
(Randall 1880; Baugh 1985).
5. Incidentally—or perhaps not—one of Sir Basil Brooke’s daughters
married Sir Thomas More’s grandson (Randall 1880).
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The author
Paul Belford is Head of Archaeology and Monuments
at the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust. He is an
archaeologist whose interests include post-medieval
ferrous industries, the reformation, early industrial-
isation, colonialism, and contemporary and historical
archaeology. He has been Conservation Officer of the
Historical Metallurgy Society since 2003, and also chairs
the Society’s Archaeology Committee.
Address: Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, Coach Road,
Coalbrookdale, Telford, Shropshire, TF8 7DQ
e-mail: paul.belford@ironbridge.org.uk
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