338 Medieval and Modern Ordnance. (July, 
having been fabricated at the town of that name in Flanders; 
and the probability seems to gather strength from the cir- 
cumstance of the great gun of Ghent resembling it so closely 
in model and construction. ‘These medizval wrought-iron 
bar and hoop guns were manufactured up to the middle of 
the sixteenth century; and there are yet in existence in the 
Tower and in the Repository at Woolwich some very perfect 
specimens, which, together with brass cannon, were re- 
covered by Mr. John Deane in the summer of 1840 from the 
wreck of the ‘*‘ Mary Rose” at Spithead, which ‘ goodlie 
shippe of England was by too much folly drowned in the 
middest of the haven; for she was laden with much 
ordinance, and the portes left open, which were very lowe, 
and the great ordinance unbreached; so that when the shippe 
should turne the waters entered, and so dainly she sank.” 
This occurred during the reign of Henry VIII., in 1545, 
the very year in which cast-iron cannon were first made 
in England. One of the guns is in an excellent state of 
preservation, considering it to have been immersed for 300 
years: it is composed of a tube of iron, whose joint or over- 
lap is as its length; upon this is a succession of iron hoops 
composed of iron 3 inches square; these appear to have 
been driven on whilst red-hot. It has a movable breech 
chamber, and is let into a solid block of elm, hollowed out 
to allow of the breech-piece being drawn back for loading, a 
wooden chock and iron wedge being used to keep the chamber 
in position when forced home. Both the brass cannon (then 
a new invention according to Grose, who dates the first 
founding of brass cannon in England as 1537), and these 
hoop and bar guns were found loaded, the brass guns with 
iron shot, and the iron guns with stone shot. Stone shot 
appear to have been common up to this period, as we learn 
in Rymer’s Federa of two hundred stone shot being made 
in the Folkestone limestone quarries as early as the 17th 
year of Edward III., 1334; and in the same author is an 
order of Henry V. to a mason of Maidstone to provide 7000 
stone shot from the quarries there, which, like the Folkestone 
beds, consists also of the lower greensand limestone for- 
mation, and, besides, several ancient cannon shot have been 
found there in the débris of the old workings. We cannot 
leave this portion of the subject without regretting that 
Captain Brackenbury has not yet been able to carry on his 
history of the ancient cannon in Europe beyond the date of 
1400, since February, 1866. ‘The Artillery Institution has 
looked for Part III. on the ordnance of the fifteenth century, 
which is not yet forthcoming. We must hope that the 
