m 
MINUTES OE PROCEEDINGS OE 
use of artillery, . . . maintained at tlie very few places where it was 
thought necessary or practicable to keep up the show of defence * * * § 
The artillery, field and siege, of the middle of the 17th century was in a 
backward and neglected state, and it cannot be looked on as an arm of the 
service but merely as an auxiliary, and a feeble one, to the cavalry and 
infantry of an army. After three years fighting so little importance did 
Charles I. attach to his field guns that in the plan he caused to be drawn 
out of the battle of Naseby, no place is assigned to them, and judging only 
from this plan one would suppose that no artillery was used in the battle.t 
The siege artillery, too, must have been mean indeed against which private 
houses, not very strongly fortified, could hold out for weeks and months.J 
Lathom House, garrisoned by 300 men and armed with 8 guns, successfully 
resisted 2000 besiegers with a train of artillery for nearly three months, and 
Basing House was in a state of almost continuous siege for two years, and was 
only taken at last by Cromwell in person. The impotence of the artillery was 
due to the total absence of artillery officers, the scarcity of trained artillery¬ 
men, the wretched construction of the carriages, and the badness of the 
gunpowder and ammunition; for the guns in themselves were not very far 
behind those in use at the outbreak of the Peninsular War. “ Any one 
who examines the old guns in the Tower of London, or in the Museum of 
Artillery at Woolwich may see that they are of the same genus as modern 
smooth-bores, and even notice some specimens quite as soundly and as 
artistically cast as any of those of the present century; nay more, he may 
infer that our modern cast guns can scarcely be superior to their prototypes 
in range power, or susceptibility to rifling.”§ Add to these causes that the 
importance of mobility, too little appreciated in the 19th century, had only 
been recognised by one man in the 17th century, Gustavus Adolphus, and 
he was, as a gunner, a century in advance of his age. 
Of the state of artillery when the Great Bebellion broke out we have 
full particulars in two books that have come down to us :— 
“ The Gunner, shewing the wliole practice of Artillery; by Robert Norton, one 
of his Majesties Gunners and Enginiers ; London, 1628.” 
“ The Gunner’s Glasse; by William Eldred, sometimes master gunner of Dover 
Castle; London, 1646,” 
These books contain tables which often differ in the dimensions, weights; 
charges, and ranges of the guns they relate to; but the writers were 
evidently painstaking men, and they no doubt give, as correctly as the 
careless and inaccurate printers of the day would allow them to give, the 
details of the guns they actually practised with, the imperfections in the 
construction of their ordnance being sufficient to explain away many dis¬ 
crepancies. There are other old works on artillery extant, such as Smith's 
“ Art of Gunnery,” 1600, black letter; Browne's " Art of Shooting Great 
Ordnance,” 1643; and Binning's “ Light to the Art of Gunnery,” 1689; 
* Hallam’s “Constitutional Hist, of England/’ Vol. II. p. 131. 
f Warburton’s “Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers,” Vol. III. p. 103. 
X Sir S. Scott’s “ History of the British Army.” 
§ Captain Stoney, R.A., see p. 90. 
