forerunner of later success by Abraham Darby and others in smelting iron with coke in the 18th century. However it remains unclear to what extent he was its technological ancestor rather than a mere precursor. For example, in the 1950s it was shown by chemical analysis that the coal that Dud Dudley used was not suitable as a raw material for coke while the coal used by Abraham Darby was suitable, leading Richard Kirby to state in 1990 that "The consensus among experts is that Dudley was a wishful thinker ... and that he never did what he set out in his youth to do". In Metallum Martis, Dudley named a relative of his first wife to whom he would leave his knowledge, but nothing came of that. However, there are two possible linkages to later developments: Abraham Darby, who took over the ironworks at Coalbrookdale in 1709, was descended from Dudd's older full sister (also the daughter of Elizabeth Tomlinson). Sir Clement Clerke, a partner in the Dudley furnace, developed lead smelting in reverberatory furnaces. He and his son Talbot Clerke then applied this method to copper smelting and to iron foundry work. Associates in the latter business, floated as the Company for Making Iron with Pitcoal, built a coke furnace at Cleator in Cumberland in the 1690s. That company had some dispute with Shadrach Fox of Coalbrookdale, who was casting shot for the Board of Ordnance, and it may have used coal at another furnace at Wombridge. Notes References Further reading 1600 births 1684 deaths Royalist military personnel of the English Civil War British metallurgists English ironmasters