Hilderston or Hilderstone in West Lothian, Scotland, was the site of the discovery of a vein of silver in 1606 and a mining operation that attracted international interest. King James used rumours of a silver bonanza to leverage a loan in the City of London. He took over the mine works, an act sometimes regarded as an example of nationalization. The enterprise may have inspired a satirical stage play. On 8 May 1608 work commenced under royal supervision. Miners from Cornwall and Germany were employed in the works.
Hilderston is near Cairnpapple Hill in the Bathgate Hills. Contemporary descriptions of the silver ore seem to refer to native silver, mercury amalgams, arsenical content, and nickeline, found in "native silver bearing carbonate veins".
The God's Blessing shaft Silver was discovered on lands at Hilderston in June 1606. The find was attributed to a collier called Sandy Maund by another prospector Stephen Atkinson. The landowner was the King's Advocate, Sir Thomas Hamilton, who managed the initial mining works for a while. He had acquired the estates of West Binny and Orchardfield east of Hilderston in 1601 and these lands, including a former property of Robert Hamilton of Briggis, were made into a free Barony of Binny. The mine site was sometimes called "Binnie". Hamilton obtained a specific "tack" to work mine and minerals in Linlithgowshire on 26 June 1606 (presumably after the silver discovery), and subsequently gained permission to "draw levels, waterways, sinks, conducts, shafts" and build "fire-works (furnaces), water works, dwelling houses" and cut peats and timber, to extract his Majesty's metals. Hamilton employed the English mining entrepreneur Bevis Bulmer partnered with his brother-in-law, the Scottish goldsmith and financier Thomas Foulis. Hamilton sent "little parcels" of native silver and ore and topographic details to King James in London, and the King asked Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury to conduct chemical assays of the ore in April 1607. Hamilton was appointed Master of Mines and Metals in Scotland on 25 March 1607, and put in charge of crown revenue from gold and other mines. He was able to use the Privy Council to browbeat other Linlithgowshire landowners, like James Ross of Wardlaw, who held Tartraven, just east of Hilderston and had refused to allow the miners on his land. Bulmer christened the shaft at Hilderston "God's Blessing". Some miners from the Earl of Pembroke's works in Cornwall were sent to Bulmer in April 1607. One of the accounts identifies Cornish workmen as "Inglish pickmen". The partnership of Hamilton and Bulmer broke up. Bulmer wrote to Hamilton on 10 August 1607 that he was unable to pay the workmen at Hilderston, and Hamilton should take over the mine. He left the site to Hamilton's own management. By this witnessed "bond and deposition" Bulmer quit the works. On 17 and 18 August, equipment and mine buildings erected by Bevis Bulmer at the gold mines at Bailgilhead and Lang Cleuch near Wanlockhead were destroyed by saboteurs, possibly a hostile act against Thomas Hamilton, as Master of Mines and Metals. In September 1607 a general order from the Privy Council prevented mine workers absconding. A "miner, pick-man, windaisman (winch-handler), fire-man (furnace workers) or any workman" departing without written licence was liable to arrest. Secondly, "masterless vagabonds and sturdy beggars" could be taken and put to work.
King James takes an interest
Thomas Hamilton had fielded some inquiries from King James about the mine in 1607 while Bulmer was still working for him. The current arrangement was that the King received a tenth of the profit. Hamilton wrote in detail to King James about Bulmer and mining in Scotland on 12 September 1607. He had not recently sent any reports of Bulmer's other projects in Scotland. He felt that he had been "credulously induced" to place his own mine in Bulmer's management. Bulmer had been advertising in London the "exorbitant value" of the silver to be extracted. Bulmer did not have sufficient capital of his own to work the mine at Hilderston for Hamilton and had made his "voluntary renunciation". Hamilton paid the miners' back wages. Hamilton stated that he was continuing the work at Hilderston to the king's benefit (the king received 10% and other benefits), although several miners had left due to an outbreak of plague. Bulmer had accused Hamilton of concealing the true value of his mine from the King, but Hamilton pointed out that the large industrial operation could hardly have been a secret. Bulmer had been in charge at Hilderston for four months (April to August 1607), and could have kept Hamilton himself better informed. Hamilton had several times asked him to maximise the king's profit. Hamilton had also hoped that Bulmer would train up local people, also to the king's benefit. On 25 November, King James gave a commission to an official from the Royal Mint, Edmund Doubleday (a tall Middle Temple lawyer said to have arrested Guy Fawkes), and Bevis Bulmer to survey the site and examine the stockpiled ore in the winter of 1607/8, and take a quantity for assay. The Privy Council of Scotland had reservations about this apparent appropriation of private property, but John Arnot of Birswick produced Hamilton's letter agreeing to satisfy the royal commission in all points. In early January the Privy Council of Scotland planned to assay the ore for themselves using the most "experimented men" in Scotland. The Chancellor of Scotland, the Earl of Dunfermline felt all the metallurgy was beyond his expertise, and "professed plain ignorance of all experience in these subterraneall works". Later in January, Thomas Hamilton wrote to the King of the continuing hopes for the "largeness and richness of the vein". Hamilton thought the ore ought to be processed in Scotland, rather than shipped elsewhere for refining.
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