His Lieutenant-General, Sir Henry Tichborne, has a hard place of it at this time. With so energetic a Master at the Board, his work hitherto has been of the lightest, and his head seems now to reel under the change. For a few weeks he holds out, but by the end of November in that eventful year matters came to a crisis with poor Sir Henry. He can no longer attend the meetings of the Board; a violent fit of the gout prevents him, which he carefully warns his colleagues will, in all likelihood, continue some time: and with a piteous prayer that, out of the small sum in hand, the Board will pay the salaries of the "poor gunners, as subsisting but from day to day," Sir Henry's name disappears from the Board's proceedings, and the History of the Ordnance knows him no more. After this time the Honourable Board seems, when its Master was absent, to have enacted the part of the Unjust Steward, for we find various debts remitted to creditors who could not pay, and not a small issue of debentures to those whose friendship it was desirable to retain. All through the records of their proceedings at this time is to be traced, like a monotonous accompaniment in music, the work of that immovable being the permanent clerk. From the dull offices in the Tower issue the same solemn Warrants, appointing this man an Ordnance labourer at six- and-twenty pounds a year, and that man a gunner at twelve-pence a day, just as if no Revolution were at hand, and no foreign foe were menacing the very existence of their King and Honourable Board together. Lord Dartmouth may be guilty of curt and feverish memoranda, but the permanent clerk never moves out of his groove, nor shall posterity ever trace any uneasiness in his formal work. And then comes the sudden gap in all the books; the blank pages more eloquent than words; the disappearance of the familiar signature of Dartmouth; and the student takes up a fresh set of books where England took up a fresh King. The duties of the Master-General, and the various members and servants of the Board of Ordnance, were first reduced to a systematic form in Charles II.'s reign, while Lord Dartmouth was in office. The Warrant defining these was confirmed by James II. on the 4th February, 1686; by William III., on the 8th March, 1689; by Queen Anne, on the 30th June, 1702; by George I., on the 30th July, 1715; and by George II., on the 17th June, 1727.