and a year after the patent was granted he was able to send a considerable quantity of the new iron for trial to the Tower of London. Under the King's command, many experiments were made with it: its qualities were fairly tested, and it was pronounced "good merchantable iron". The Black Country, including Dudley, was already a major centre of iron manufacture in England ("Within ten miles of Dudley Castle there were 20,000 smiths of all sorts and many iron works at that time within that circle decayed for want of wood"). With such an obvious abundance of coal, some places being found in seams up to ten feet thick, and ironstone four feet in depth immediately under the coal, and with limestone adjacent to both, the ability to make iron with coal (coke) held out the prospect of great profits, but Dudd Dudley failed to obtain them. As water power was the main means of driving bellows for furnaces, as well as drop hammers, rolling and sharpening mills, iron production and working in Staffordshire and Worcestershire was concentrated along the small rivers: the Worcestershire Stour, its main tributary, the River Smestow, and many smaller streams in their catchment. The Great Mayday Flood The new works had been in successful operation little more than a year, when a flood swept away Dudley's principal works at Cradley, and otherwise caused considerable damage downstream. "At the market town called Stourbridge," according to Dudd, "although the author sent with speed to preserve the people from drowning, and one resolute man was carried from the bridge there in the day time, the nether part of the town was so deep in water that the people had much ado to preserve their lives in the uppermost rooms of their houses". Dudd, undaunted and with a passion, set to work repairing his furnaces and forges at some great cost; and in a short time was again back in full production. However, the "charcoal ironmasters ... did him much prejudice, not only by detaining his stock, but disparaging the iron". In order to ascertain the quality of the product by testing it on a large scale, the King commanded Dudd to send to the Tower of London quantities of all the various sorts of bar iron made by him, fit for the "making of muskets, carbines, and iron for great bolts for shipping; which iron", records Dudd,