££ 
MINUTES OF PKOCEED1NGS OF 
cost only 40<?. The guns were made of iron or brass, and one great gun 
had three pots or chambers. This one seems to have been a breech¬ 
loader, but the others were not so. 
The powder was made in the manner which we have already described, but 
we gain the additional information that it was dried over a fire or in the sun, 
in wooden trays, or brazen or earthern pots or dishes. It was then deposited 
in large leathern bags, and transferred to small leathern bags for distribution 
when required. The charcoal was entirely of willow; indeed the properties 
of this wood which made it so valuable for this purpose had been found out 
a century before. Sir F. Palgrave writes as follows :— 
“Another of the works of Ferrarius, an unedited epistle addressed to one Anselm, 
preserved or buried in the Bodleian, is of very great importance in the history of 
science. * * * ■ The MS. appears to be of the age of Edward I. It 
contains several receipts for making ‘ Greek fire’ and c Flying fire;’ the second of 
which contains the mode of compounding the nitrate powder, composed of one part 
of sulphur, two of charcoal of the wood of the willow or lime tree, and six of salt¬ 
petre to be very finely ground upon marble or porphyry, &c. &c. 551 
The manufacture of the bullets, and their storage, was identical with that 
already described, and the stores or side-arms in no way differed from those 
accounted for by John Derby. 
About this time was written a curious treatise, “Practica” by one John 
Arderne, an eminent surgeon of the time of Edward III. In it we find the 
following receipt:— 
" Pour faire un fewe volant;— 
“Pernez j. li. de soufre vif, ij. li. de charbones de saux, vi. li. de salpetre, si les 
fetez bien et sotelment moudre sur un piere de marbre, puis bultez le poudre panny 
un sotille coverchief. Cest poudre vault a gettere pelottes de fer, ou de plom, ou 
d’areyne, ove un instrument qe l’em appelle Gonne.” 1 2 3 
This projection of iron and brass balls by means of the gun was either a mere 
theory, or at most an experiment of the laboratory, unless Arderne had learned 
from the Italians to make use of these projectiles. Certainly neither the one 
metal nor the other had yet been used for shot in England, or in France: though 
in Italy in the first half of the century they were so employed. Indeed it is 
only at this time, corresponding almost exactly with the deductions drawn 
from French documents, that stone shot began to make their appearance in 
the English garrisons. Hitherto lead and arrows have been the only 
projectiles employed. But in 1378, as we learn from a document produced 
by Bymer, the king (Bichard II.) gave directions to Thomas Norwich to 
purchase for the armament of the castle of Brest two large and two smaller 
engines called (C canons ” six hundred stones for these and other engines; 
3001b. saltpetre, 1001b. sulphur, and a cask of willow charcoal. The 
original document is as follows :— 
1 The Merchant and the Friar, by Sir Francis Palgrave, 2nd Edition. London, 1844. 
Preface, p. 11. 
2 Brit. Mus. Sloane MSS. 335 and 795: printed by Mr Hewitt, Ancient Armour &c. Pol. II. 
p. 293, and noticed by Mr Albert Way, in Promptorium Parvulorum, sub voce “ Gonne.” 
