For mortars we are indebted to workmen of Henry VIII. as “one Peter Bawd and one Peter Vancollen, both the king’s feed men, devised and caused to be made certain mortar pieces, being at the mouth from eleven to nineteen inches wide, and also certain hollow shot of cast iron, to be stuffed with fire-work or wild-fire, for to break in pieces the same hollow shot.” And in the first year of Edward VI. the said Peter Bawd did make ordnance of iron of divers forms, as fawconet, fawkons, minions, sakers, &c. His servant, J. Johnson, did like make and cast iron ordnance cleaner and to better perfection, to the great use of this land. His son Thomas Johnson, in 1593, made forty two cast pieces of great ordnance for the Earl of Cumberland, demi cannon, weighing 5,000lbs. or three tons the piece. At Dover there is a culverine, presented to Queen Elizabeth, by the States General of Holland, and called Queen Elizabeth’s Pocket-pistol. It is 24 feet long, diameter of bore 4¹⁄₂ inches, weight of shot 12lbs.; it was manufactured in 1544, and is mounted on an ornamented iron carriage made in 1827, at the Royal Carriage Department, Woolwich Arsenal. (Plate 17, fig. 2.) ~Mons Meg.~ There is a large gun at Edinburgh Castle, called Mons Meg; it measures about 13 feet 4 inches in length, the diameter of the bore is about 1 foot 6 inches; it has a chamber about 4 feet long and 6 inches in diameter. (Plate 17, fig. 3.) ~Field-guns, 1554.~ The battle of Remi, in 1554, was the first action in which light field guns, having limbers, were used,--these guns accompanied the cavalry. ~Red-hot shot, 1580.~ Pere Daniel says that red-hot iron shot were used by Marshal Matignan, during the siege of la Fère, in 1580. ~Calibre, time of Queen Elizabeth.~ In a table of ordnance, given by Fosbrooke, as being a list of the guns used in the time of Elizabeth, and immediately preceding her, we find how little the calibres of iron guns have altered during the last two or three centuries, as these guns have all their antitypes among those of the present day. ~Origin of canister and grape.~ ~Improved mode of loading, by Gustavus Adolphus.~