During the early days of artillery guns were constantly taken and retaken in battle after a first discharge, the process of reloading being so protracted that cavalry, or even infantry, were upon them long before the operation could be completed. The fourteenth or early fifteenth century bombardier was clad in chain-mail, when stone shot was fired. He ignited his charge with a hot iron, guarding his face with his left hand from the sparks thrown off by the old-fashioned powder. During the fifteenth century cannon were usually entrusted to the care of foreign mercenaries who were better disciplined than mere feudal or communal levies, and much less liable to panic. John Jedd was appointed Master of Ordnance in England, 1483, and the office was not abolished before 1852. Hand-grenades appear in 1536. Each gun was known by a special name, of which “Mons Meg” is a familiar example. The general estimation of the use of cannon in campaigning was for long discredited by reason of the manifold imperfections of the weapons, the frequency of their capture by the enemy, and the dangers attending their discharge; they were for long employed simultaneously with the more ancient projectile engines, and the latter were preferred by many commanders to the former; but the dawn of the sixteenth century saw such manifest improvements that artillery then began to take the first place among projectile weapons. The petard was an invention of the Flemings in the sixteenth century. Ordnance of the sixteenth century varies very much in size, cannon throwing a projectile of from thirty to forty pounds; culverins, bastard-culverins, falcons, falconets, and many other varieties discharging balls from sixteen pounds down to a single pound. Mortars were greatly used in the middle of the sixteenth century, and howitzers for throwing hollow balls a little later. Gunpowder first became granulated during the second half of the fifteenth century, up to which time the powder was of a fine dust, and divided from the stone projectile by a wooden wad. There were coarse and fine granulations made for charging and priming respectively. That made in the seventeenth century had become much more powerful, and a proportionate amount of metal had to be allowed in the construction of cannon. Mr. John Hewitt quotes the author of _Pallas Armata_, which states “that a culverin that shot 16 pounds of iron had but a hundred pound of metal allowed for every pound of her shot, and so she weighed then but 1,600 pounds; but now and long before this she weighs 4,300 pounds, and consequently hath the allowance of near 270 pounds of metal for every pound of shot.” All the gunlocks we are accustomed to associate with hand-guns were used with ordnance; they were fixed to the vent-field by pins passing laterally through it, or by side screws. The first mention of bombs occurs in 1588.