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Seeing how commerce was retarded by the small accommodation provided for shipping at the then principal ports, Yarranton next made surveys and planned docks for the city of London; but though he zealously advocated the subject, he found few supporters, and his plans proved fruitless.
Yarranton regarded this state of things as most discreditable, and he urged the establishment of various branches of home industry as the best way of out-doing the Dutch without fighting them. Wherever he travelled abroad, in Germany or in Holland, he saw industry attended by wealth and comfort, and idleness by poverty and misery.
There were many persons, indeed, who held that it was better we should be supplied with iron from Spain than make it at home, in consequence of the great waste of wood involved by the manufacture; but against this view Yarranton strongly contended, and held, what is as true now as it was then, that the manufacture of iron was the keystone of England's industrial prosperity.
Dove says of this book that "Yarranton chalks out in it the future course of Britain with as free a hand as if second-sight had revealed to him those expansions of her industrial career which never fail to surprise us, even when we behold them realized."
In this respect he was nearly a hundred and fifty years before his age, and the London importers continued to conduct their shipping business in the crowded tideway of the Thames down even to the beginning of the present century. While carrying on his iron works, it occurred to Yarranton that it would be of great national advantage if the manufacture of tin-plate could be introduced into England.
All attempts made to manufacture them in England had hitherto failed; the beating out of the iron by hammers into laminae sufficiently thin and smooth, and the subsequent distribution and fixing of the film of tin over the surface of the iron, proving difficulties which the English manufacturers were unable to overcome. To master these difficulties the indefatigable Yarranton set himself to work.
It would appear from subsequent letters that Yarranton must have lain in prison for nearly two years, charged with conspiring against the king's authority, the only evidence against him consisting of some anonymous letter's. At the end of May, 1662, he succeeded in making his escape from the custody of the Provost Marshal.
These two men were held in great regard by the Duke of Saxony as well as by the people of the country; for their ingenuity and industry proved the source of great prosperity and wealth, "several fine cities," says Yarranton, "having been raised by the riches proceeding from the tin-works" not less than 80,000 men depending upon the trade for their subsistence; and when Yarranton visited Awe, he found that a statue had been erected to the memory of the Cornish miner who first discovered the tin.
Yarranton afterwards succeeded in making a friend of Lord Windsor, as would appear from his dedication of England's Improvement to his Lordship, whom he thanks for the encouragement he had given to him in his survey of several rivers with a view to their being rendered navigable. The following is a copy of the document from the State Papers: "John Bramfield, Geo. Moore, and Thos.
Arrangements were made to carry on the manufacture upon a large scale; but the secret having got wind, a patent was taken out, or "trumpt up" as Yarranton calls it, for the manufacture, "the patentee being countenanced by some persons of quality," and Yarranton was precluded from carrying his operations further.
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