Within a mile of Willey Hall a tenant of Squire Forester, and, as we have seen, an occasional guest—John Wilkinson, “the great ironmaster”—was urging his men day and night to push the manufacture of shot, shell, howitzers, and guns, which Mr. Forester believed were for the government of the country, but many of which were designed for its enemies. Night and day heavy hammers were thundering, day and night the “great blast” was blowing. He was well known to the French government and French engineers, having erected the first steam engine there in 1785, for which he was highly complimented by the Duke d’Angouleme, M. Bertrand, and others, and treated to a grand banquet, given to him on the 14th of January, 1786, at the Hôtel de Ville. Arthur Young, in his travels in France, tells us that until this well-known English manufacturer arrived the French knew nothing of the art of casting cannon from the solid, and then boring them. When Wilkinson returned to England, he continued to send guns after war had been declared. This clandestine proceeding came to the knowledge of Squire Forester, who swore, and roared like a caged lion. Here was the Squire, who boasted of his loyalty to good King George, having the minerals of his estate worked up into guns for those wretched French, whom he detested. He declared he would hunt Wilkinson out of the country; but the latter took care to keep out of his way. The exposure ended in a seizure being made. But Wilkinson, a money-getting, unprincipled fellow, finding he could not send guns openly, sent best gun-iron in rude blocks, with a pretence that they were for ballast for shipping, but which, like some of his water-pipes, were used for making guns. His warehouse was at Willey Wharf, on the Severn, by which they were sent, when there was sufficient water, in barges, which took them out into the British Channel, and round the coast to French cruisers; and it was at this wharf he built his first famous iron barge. The proprietors of the Calcutts furnaces, at which young Cochrane, afterwards Earl Dundonald—one of the last of our old “Sea Lions”—spent some time, when a boy, with his father, Lord Dundonald, {171} were also casting and boring guns; but, in consequence of refusing to fee Government servants at Woolwich, the manufacturers had a number of them thrown upon their hands, which they sold to a firm at Rotherham, and which found their way to India, where they were recognised by old workmen in the army, who captured them during the Sikh war. At the same time cannon which burst, and did almost as much damage to the English as to their enemies, were palmed off upon the nation. Mr. Forester wrote to the Duke of York, who came down, accompanied by the Prince of Orange, to examine the guns for himself; and a number of 18 and 32-pounders were fired in honour of the event. Others were subjected to various tests, to the entire satisfaction of the visitors.