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MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS OF 
The Koyal Arsenal was not so named till the year 1805. Before that 
date it was styled the “Tower Place" or “King's Warren. 5 ' There exists 
no record whatever of the time, or manner, in which the Board of Ordnance 
acquired this property, comprising, as shown on the accompanying plans, 
the forty-two acres at the west end of the present Boyal Arsenal. I am of 
opinion, however, that it was first taken in June, 1667, as a site for the 
60-gun battery thrown up to protect Woolwich against the invading 
Dutch fleet; and my reasons are as follows. Amongst the State papers 
preserved in the Becord Office is a letter, from the King to Prince Bupert, 
dated the 13th June, 1667, and setting forth that “having ordered works 
and batteries to be raised in or near Woolwich, for better security of the 
river against attempts of the enemy, he wishes him to go thither and 
direct the same; also charging persons of all ranks to obey his orders 
therein.' 5 A letter written seven days later from Whitehall, by Henry 
Muddiman to Sir George Cooke at Wheatley, Doncaster, mentions that 
there had been built a platform* at Woolwich with 60 pieces of ordnance. 
Now, the Boyal Military Bepository at Woolwich possesses the oldest 
known plan of the Warren—bearing the date 1701 and the signature of the 
celebrated general Albert Borgard—and this plan shows a parapet, along the 
river wall, 13 feet thick and pierced with 40 embrasures at central intervals 
of 18 feet, there being room for at least 20 more guns oil the parapet if 
required. It also shows, in rear of the parapet, “Prince Bupert's Walk;" 
and, in rear of that, a wet ditch surrounding what appears to have originally 
been a triangular demi-bastioned work, such as were common in England 
towards the middle of the seventeenth century. Moreover, the old tower 
which formerly stood near the present Boyal Laboratory pattern-room 
was always known, and shown on old plans, as “Prince Bupert’s Tower." 
I think that the foregoing particulars tend to prove that the Warren was 
the site of the batteries thrown up at Woolwich in 1667.t That the 
Warren was not Ordnance property prior to that year, I conclude from the 
non-existence, in the Becord Office, of any documents referring to it and 
bearing earlier date; though there have been preserved therein innumerable 
orders and letters relating to the Woolwich dockyard, and its rope yard, 
and to the several ordnance stations in England. Amongst them, for 
example, is the correspondence between the Office of Ordnance and the 
Admiralty, in October 1667, for the charge of the timber provided to the 
former by the latter department for “ the late batteries at W oolwich." 
The accompanying Plan No. 1, reduced from a drawing of the Warren 
dated 1717, is identical with General Borgard's old plan in the positions 
and designations of the buildings, except that a “ Greenwich Barne" seems 
to have in 1701 occupied the site on which the Brass Gun Foundry was 
afterwards built in the year 1717. In the Ordnance “ Journall Bookes," 
now stored in the Tower of London, I have found the authority dated 
the 19th December, 1695, for taking down this “Barne" in the Greenwich 
Tilt Yard, and re-erecting it at Woolwich. 
Amongst these Ordnance records in the Tower, I have also found a 
manuscript dated 9° July 1664, “Estimate of Beparatons y t must of 
* i.e. rampart. 
f Some contemporary accounts of these batteries are related in p. 242» 
