A much greater Surrey industry than paper-making is the manufacture of gunpowder. Indeed, whenever England was at war, from the days of Elizabeth to those of the Parliament, the control of the Surrey powder works was a vital point in the struggle. The first gunpowder manufactory seems to have been established at Rotherhithe, where Henry Reve had a mill in 1554. We were then getting a considerable quantity of our gunpowder from abroad, and that was a state of affairs which continued till the coming of the Armada. When the Armada came, England was dangerously unprepared for war. It was lucky that Howard's and Drake's fireships ended the fleet so quickly, for anything like a prolonged sea campaign would have been out of the question. We had not enough powder. Accounts made up in the year 1600 show that up to the day when the Armada sail was sighted, there was never more than twenty or thirty lasts (a last was about a ton) of English powder delivered yearly into the Queen's stores. After the Armada, the Queen's Ministers set to work to put the gunpowder supply on a proper basis, and it was then that Surrey and a great Surrey family became inseparably associated with the making of explosives. George Evelyn (grandfather of a more famous grandson, John Evelyn of Wotton) and John, his son, were first licensed in 1589 to dig saltpetre in Great Britain and Ireland, and set up their first powdermills on the little Hogsmill River, which joins the Thames at Kingston. Later, George Evelyn retired, and John, having transferred his mills to Godstone, took his brother Robert and three others into partnership and started on a contract by which they supplied the Queen with a hundred lasts of powder yearly at 7d. the pound. In 1604 the firm was practically reduced to John and Robert Evelyn, and a partner named Hardinge, the others being dead or doing no work. The firm was now employing a thousand hands, and was given twenty-one years' contract to supply 120 lasts yearly at 8d. per pound--nearly L10,000 worth of powder. But James I soon broke this contract, and after three years the contract was given to the Earl of Worcester; though whether the Earl ever made any powder, or what he did with his contract, nobody knows. The progress of the manufacture of gunpowder now becomes very obscure, though probably John Evelyn kept his mills running at Godstone, making reduced quantities. It is not till 1621 that we find John Evelyn making another large contract with the Government, but after that date the contracts were renewed every two or three years, until the Evelyns in 1636 ceased to supply the Government altogether. Their difficulties must have been almost intolerable. John Evelyn and his son, also named John, who succeeded him in 1627, appear to have been always punctual and trustworthy in supplying the powder required, but the King would not or could not pay for it. The history of each contract is always the same; for a few months all goes swimmingly,