INDUSTRIES 



Presumably at this date he must have been 

 dependent upon foreign supplies for his salt- 

 petre. 



Not quite a year had elapsed since Honrick 

 had agreed to instruct the English in the art 

 of saltpetre making when, on 26 February 

 1561-2, the Bishop of Winchester, then Lord 

 Treasurer, forwarded to Sir William Cecil a 

 bill or tender put to him and the lieutenant 

 of the Ordnance for making of gunpowder, 

 ' which,' he writes, ' the lieutenant and I 

 allow very well for that the realm shall be 

 served within itself without seeking of any 

 foreign countries.' ' The tender was made 

 by three gunpowder makers, who stated that 

 they had erected at great cost five new 

 powder mills with which they could supply 

 the queen yearly with a hundred lasts ot fine 

 cornpowder and another hundred of serpen- 

 tine powder over and above all that was re- 

 quired by the merchants and others of the 

 kingdom. The cornpowder they would sup- 

 ply to the queen at the rate ot ^^3 5j. the 

 hundredweight, the serpentine at £2 i bs. 8d., 

 the price to private subjects being 8^. per 

 pound for the former, "jd. for the latter. 



The terms here used, as they appear to 

 have remained fixed throughout the period 

 we are now especially dealing with, may be 

 briefly explained. 



Cornpowder, as may be inferred from its 

 higher price, was the superior powder of the 

 two, being well corned or granulated and 

 better able to withstand the effects of damp. 

 The last, the usual term in which gunpowder 

 was reckoned in consignments of any large 

 quantity, consisted of 24 cwt., the hundred- 

 weight in the case of gunpowder being 

 always exactly lOO lb. With saltpetre, on 

 the other hand, it is always stated in the 

 later contracts that the hundredweight is to be 

 of 1 12 lb., the extra 12 lb. being the quantity 

 which the powder maker was permitted to 

 allow for waste in the process of double 

 refining, before converting it into gun- 

 powder. 



The names of the three makers who were 

 thus prepared to contract for the gunpowder 

 supply of the whole kingdom were Brian 

 Hogge, Robert Thomas, and Francis a Lee, 

 or Francis Lee as he is called in later docu- 

 ments. Of them the last at any rate was a 

 Surrey man. In 1578 he is described as of 

 Rotherhithe (Redreff), and was still gun- 

 powder maker to the queen.* It is possible 

 he then owned the mill which Reve had set 

 up some time before 1555. In November 



1 S. P. Dom. Eliz. xxi. 56. 

 i Ibid, gxxiv. 8, 



1566 he was appointed to the office of a 

 gunner in the Tower of London.' 



But little evidence is forthcoming respect- 

 ing the way in which these three makers 

 carried out the terms of their contract. On 

 3 April 1564 the lieutenant of the Ordnance, 

 writing to Cecil to complain of the terms 

 which certain foreign makers of gunpowder 

 were willing to make with the government, 

 adds his opinion that ' our powder makers be 

 talked withal and to learn what price they 

 will demand and what quantity they will 

 take upon them to make and in what time 

 for I see no reason to seek for powder beyond 

 the seas if it may be made as good cheap at 

 home. Two of our powder makers not long 

 since offered me to deliver for ready money 

 twenty lasts between this and midsummer.' * 



It is evident that at this time and indeed 

 for some time later the government did not 

 venture to be wholly dependent upon the 

 home produced powder. As late as 1589 we 

 hear of it being brought from abroad into the 

 queen's store, the price being as high as 1 2d. 

 the pound, or half as much again as that for 

 which English makers were prepared to sup- 

 ply it.* Moreover the accepted method of 

 making saltpetre was apparently not at once 

 altogether satisfactory, for experiments were 

 being tried in other methods.' Thus in 1575 

 John Bovyat had a grant for twenty-one years 

 of the exclusive privilege of manufacturing 

 saltpetre and gunpowder from stone mine- 

 rals.* Of this we hear no more. Nor in- 

 deed do we of the experiments at Fulstone 

 in Yorkshire, reported successful in 1583, of 

 making saltpetre from a mineral substance 

 found in the cliffs.'' 



The year of the Armada, 1588, was one 

 of those periods, not very rare in our history, 

 when the country was perforce awakened to 

 its unpreparedness for war. According to a 

 memorandum made in 1600,' and based 

 upon the accounts of the ordnance up to the 

 year 1588, there had never been above 

 20 or 30 lasts of English gunpowder 

 delivered into the queen's stores. This was 

 partly because of the want of skilled makers, 

 but chiefly because no certain person was 

 enjoined to bring in any fixed quantity. 

 Even with all that foreign merchants could 

 provide the supply was greatly deficient, so 

 that it is not surprising that, once the business 

 of the threatened invasion was disposed of, 



3 Exch. of Receipt, Auditors' Pat. Bks. ix. fol. 

 140. 



♦ S. P. Dom. Eliz. xxxiii. 40. 



5 Ibid, ccxxlv. no. « Ibid. cvi. 53. 



7 Ibid. clxi. II. ' Ibid, cclxxv. 76. 



311 



