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withal took his leather guns which proved very serviceable to* * * § the King.” 4 * - 
I find that in 1626, the 2nd of King Charles I., some improvement was 
attempted in the Ordnance, for one Arnold Kotispen obtained a patent for 
fourteen years “ for making guns of all sorts, both great and small, after a 
new way or manner, not formerly practised by any within these dominions.”t 
It is possible that this refers to leather guns, for Gustavus first used them 
in 1625. Under any circumstances they fell into disrepute ere long, and 
a later writer speaks of “ the leather guns by which the King and Country 
hath been cheated. 
Early in October, 1642, Charles the First took the field. The Parlia¬ 
mentary General, Essex, chose the Earl of Peterborough as his General of 
Artillery,§ and possessed a large train, some of his guns being “ in a very 
splendid equipage.”§° The King’s faithful Master General of Ordnance, 
Sir John Heydon, commanded the Kovalist Artillery, which at first appears 
to have been inferior to that of the Koundheads, but was later in the year 
in “ very good order.”|| Lord Macaulay considers it “a remarkable cir¬ 
cumstance that the officers who had studied Tactics in what were considered 
the best schools under Yere in the Netherlands and “ under Gustavus 
Adolphus in Germany, displayed far less skill than those commanders who 
had been born to peaceful employments, and who never saw even a skirmish 
till the civil war broke out.”||° I can see but little real foundation for the 
imputation contained in this imposing sentence. Lord Chancellor Clarendon 
plainly says that, in the Koyalist army at least, “ the soldiers were the 
least part of the army and the least consulted withA^f The dregs of those 
who had served abroad attained to commands; but they were appointed, 
not because they had seen service, but because they had great influence. 
Lords Holland and Arundel were despicable as soldiers, and were put in 
authority solely by Court favour; and the Marquis of Hamilton boasted 
openly that all lie had brought home with him from his German campaigns 
was the truculent High Hutch Maxim— ff ein barmherziger Soldat ist ein 
Hundsfot vor GottA^J 0 Further, Lord Macaulay implies that to see service 
is the one thing needful to make a good soldier, an assertion which all 
history proves false. There is a kind of stupidity impervious even to 
experience, there are men who are incapable of learning on the battle field; 
and poeta nasciiur , non fit is as applicable to soldiers as to poets. 
At the outset of the war the King, starting from Shrewsbury, is said to 
have turned the flank of the Boundheads by a brilliant stroke of strategy, 
and to have interposed between Essex and London. The King’s object no 
* Gwynne’s “ Military Memoirs of the Great Civil Wars,” p. 42. 
f Grose’s “Military Antiquities,” Vol. I. p. 403. 
X Dinning’s “Light to the Art of Gunnery,” 1689, p. 104. 
§ “ List of the Army raised undet the command of His Excellency, Robert, Earl of Essex.” 
London, 1642. 
§° Clarendon’s “ History of the Great Rebellion,” p. 310. 
|| Ibid’s 325. 
" ||° Macaulay’s “ History of England,” Vol. I. pp. 112,117. 
“History of the Great Rebellion,” p. 206. 
®1[ 0 Cust’s “Warriors of the Civil Wars,” Vol. II. p. 438; 
