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THE MASTER-GUNNERS OF ENGLAND. 
the faded, original data of past ages, out of which history is builded; 1 
and in thus being enabled in viewing the circumstances of to-day to 
recognise whence they sprang, with the motives and developments 
which have conspired to produce them—a feeling akin to that with 
which, for instance, any one who has sat much at the feet of the 
discoursers in the Platonic dialogues readily identifies the pabulum 
which supplies so much of what is called advanced thought of to-day, 
and detects the leavening influences on human history. But one cannot 
rise out of such abstraction without being weighted with the conscious¬ 
ness that the history of Artillery is not so much that of ‘ f civilisation 
and progress” as that of “ individualism 2 3 and that the proud title 
and potentialities of the office of Master-Gunner of England —England’s 
Master-Gunner-in-Cliief — have been magnified or marred, not by 
“ civilisation and progress,” but by the ability or otherwise of the 
individual incumbents, from which their successors have profited or 
suffered (“for no man liveth unto himself,” even in this respect). 
Both the hour and the man met, for instance, in Christopher Morris 
(A.D. 1523): a greater hour was before Bichard Leake, the aged 
(A.D. 1677); but the man was unequal to it, and his bishopric was 
taken away and given to another order of incumbents—the office itself 
degenerating into that of the Master-Gunner of the Royal Parks. 
L’Histoire de VArtillerie est Vhistoire du progr.es des sciences el partant 
de la civilisation 3 is synthetically true, couched in Imperial language; 
but did Artillery owe as much to civilisation and progress as to Gustavus 
Adolphus or to Napoleon the Great, or to the genius of Yon Moltke ? 4 
Even so, the history of the development, organisations and progress of 
the Royal Artillery, when it comes to be written impartially and com¬ 
prehensively, will be epoched in much by the Arts, but in much more 
by the dominant individnalisms of Legge, Borgard, Belford, Dickson, 
Boss, Campbell, Bingham, Cole, and one or two of their successors 
who have made the Royal Artillery of to-day. 
*■■'**'■*■**'''■'*'* 
In my contribution to the archgeology of Artillery—referred to above 
as The Master-Gunner of England —the following passage on page 96 :— 
“ Hence the origin of the first motto of the Board of Ordnance (instituted 
as the Ordnance Office by Queen Elizabeth, 1602), Sua Tela Tonanti —■ 
a motto which, for the Ordnance Arm, was changed by King William 
1 Indeed, a writer in the Spectator asserts : “I have heard one of the greatest geniuses this age 
has produced, who had been trained up in all the polite studies of Antiquity, assure me, upon his 
being obliged to search into several rolls and records, that, notwithstanding such an employment was 
at first very dry and irksome to him, he at last took an incredible pleasure in it.”— Spectator, 
No. 447. 
-The “Law of Wills and Causes,” and the influence of individualism on human progress are 
splendidly handled by John Beattie Crozier in his Civilisation and Progress (Longmans); and in 
Samuel Laing’s Modern Zoroastrian, whose “ Law of Polaritv ” is the equation of Crozier’s 
“ Wills.” 
3 Napoleon III. Tide “ The Master-Gunner of England,” page 13. 
4 So recently as during the Crimean War (1854) the Isle of Wight entrances to the Solent 
were guarded by two toy forts (built temp. Henry VIII.), and manned by Henry VIII’s. brass 
6-prs.; and the heaviest ordnance for Fort George, Freshwater, in replacement, were 18-pr. M.L. 
guns of George II. (the 32-pr. being only a carronade). Had “Science and civilisation” slept 
during this long interval ? 
