THE ROYAL ARTILLERY INSTITUTION. 
25 
* 
MONS MEG, 
THE ANCIENT BOMBARD, PRESERVED AT EDINBURGH CASTLE. 
[Extracted from No. 37 of the Archaeological Journal, with the consent of the Council of the 
Archaeological Institute, and with the permission of the author, J. Hewitt, Esq., War Office.] 
Cannon, constructed of iron staves bound together with hoops of the 
same material, were in use for so long a period that it becomes very difficult, 
in the absence of written testimony or well-authenticated tradition, to assign 
a date to any particular examples that may have come down to us. Of the 
great gun of Ghent, which, except in its dimensions, is almost identical with 
Mons Meg, 1 2 Captain Fave has recorded his belief that it is in all probability 
the very “ bombarde merveilleusement grande ” mentioned by Froissard as 
employed by the citizens of Ghent against their neighbours of Oudenarde. 3 
And that cannon of this fashion were still in use in the days of Henry VIII., 
is a fact familiar to us all from the well-known operations upon the wTeck of 
the Mary Rose . 3 
Famous guns, like famous nations, begin their history in the faltering 
accents of tradition. The early days of Mons Meg are ‘chronicled in a 
Galloway legend; which, however, had so much weight with Sir Walter 
Scott that he wrote to Mr Train, a distinguished Scottish antiquary, who 
had communicated to him the local story with such corroborative facts as he 
could collect: “ You have traced her propinquity so clearly as henceforth to 
set all conjecture aside.” 
The legend in question has been preserved in Wilson's “ Memorials of 
Edinburgh in the Olden Time.” 4 
“The Earl of Douglas having seized Sir Patrick M'Lellan, Tutor of 
Bomby, the Sheriff of Galloway and chief of a powerful clan, carried him 
prisoner to Threave Castle, where he caused him to be hanged on ‘ The 
Gallows Knob/ a granite block which still remains, projecting over the main 
gateway of the Castle. The act of forfeiture, passed by Parliament in 1455, 
at length furnished an opportunity, under the protection of government, of 
throwing off that iron yoke of the Douglases under which Galloway had 
groaned for upwards of eighty years. When James the Second arrived with 
an army at Carlingwark, to besiege the Castle of Threave, the M f Lellans 
1 A representation of this bombard may be found in the Vade Mecum du Peintre, par Felix De 
Vigne, Gand, 1844, plate C. 
2 Du reste, il existe encore aujourd’hui a Gand une enorme bombarde qui, selon toute proba¬ 
bility est celle dont a parle Froissard .”—Du feu Gregeois, &c., p. 174. 
3 Of the wrought-iron bar-and-hoop guns recovered from this vessel, sunk at Spithead in 1545, 
several very perfect specimens remain. One is preserved in the Museum of the Royal Military 
Repository at Woolwich; another is in the Tower; and a third is figui’ed and described by Sir 
Charles Lemon in the Reports of the Royal Institution of Cornwall for 1844. All these retain 
their wooden carriages, with the blocks by which the chambers were wedged close to the chase. 
4 Vol. I., page 130. 
[VOL. IV.] 
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