THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
Regum,” written by Walter de Millemete in 1325, and preserved in the 
library of Christ Church, Oxford, one illustration shows a pot with a 
narrow neck, loaded with short thick bolt; it lies on a trestle table, and 
is directed towards a door; the gunner is applying a light to the touch -hole 
by a match held in a linstock. This is the earliest known illustration of 
a gun. 
If we may believe John Barbour, Archdeacon of Aberdeen, who wrote 
in 1375 of the expedition made against the Scots in 1327 by Edward HI, 
“ crakys of war ” were then used by the English, weapons which the Scots 
had never before seen. It is very possible that this tradition was correct, 
and that some primitive form of gun was brought from Flanders with the 
contingent which John Hainault raised for the expedition. Towards the 
close of the same century the knowledge of guns was sufficiently general 
to enable Chaucer to substitute for the hackneyed simile “ swift as an 
arrow from a bow ” the new one 
“Swift as a pillet out of a gonne 
When fire is in the pouder yronne.” 
From 1340 the mention of guns in war gradually becomes more frequent, 
though it is doubtful whether there is any foundation for the often -repeated 
statement that they were used at the battle of Cr6cy in 1346. 
It is impossible to say what length of time firearms might have taken 
to come into use had the demand for such weapons been for sporting 
purposes only. Their development was due to war. The next stage after 
the pot was that of a straight tube of iron with a prolongation to the rear 
serving as a stock. The shooter applied by hand a light to the touch -hole, 
which was on the top of the barrel. The earliest firearms were, in fact, 
hand cannon. Later, a wooden stock after the fashion of that of the cross- 
bow was introduced to hold the tube, and to enable it to be directed at a 
mark, but the recoil of the hand gun was taken by the hands holding it, 
and not by the body. The earliest firearms were of very rough workman- 
ship, but when the possibilities of the new weapons were understood, 
skilled armourers applied their experience to producing and mounting 
barrels strong enough to be safe, yet of manageable size and weight, with 
admirable results. The art of war, if we except the cult of the long-bow 
by the English in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, was almost entirely 
developed on the Continent. Similarly, in the production of firearms for 
sporting purposes , England lagged behind until comparatively recent times . 
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