Artillery had now become an important and independent arm in all campaigning, and it will be seen how numerous cannon had become when it is stated that the train of guns attached to the army of the Emperor Ferdinand in 1556 consisted of fifty-four heavy and one hundred and twenty-seven light pieces of artillery. Rifled cannon, the principle of which was first applied to hand-arms in Germany, were introduced in this century; examples of which may be seen in the arsenal at Berlin, and in the museums of Nuremberg and the Hague. Viscount Dillon, P.S.A., writing in _Archæologia_, vol. li., quotes Lord Herbert of Cherbury, who consulted the records for the compilation of his history of the reign of Henry VIII. Lord Herbert writes that “great brass ordnance, as cannons and culverins, were first cast in England by one John Owen in 1535; and that about 1544 iron pieces and grenades were first cast.” Viscount Dillon remarks “that the facts as to time and place seem to be different, for in September 1516 there occurs a payment of £33 6s. 8d. to John Rutter of London, for “hurts and damages by him sustained in a tenement to him belonging wherein the king’s great gun called the ‘Basiliscus’ was cast, and for rent.” In 1532 Carlo Capello, the Venetian, writes that Henry “visited the Tower daily to hasten the works then going on there, and was founding cannon and heavy gunpowder made.” This was in anticipation of the Scottish war. A valuable account of the guns in the Tower, numbering 64 of brass and 351 of iron, of which follow some abridged extracts, may be seen in some notes by Viscount Dillon, appearing in _Archæologia_, vol. li., pp. 223–225. He states “that there are two bronze guns, octagonal externally, with bores 2½ and 2¾ inches, corresponding in form with types of 1500–1530, presumably of Venetian make. The ‘Brode Fawcon, shooting iij shotte,’ is rectangular externally, has three bores side by side, and the three spaces for placing the three chambers, as in early breech-loading cannon. The ‘French gonnes of Brasse’ may have been part of the spoils of Boulogne in 1554, or else the work of the same Peter Bawde who cast brass guns for King Henry at Houndsditch as early as 1525.” His lordship is of opinion that the seventeen “Scottishe gonnes of Brasse” would include some of the pieces taken at Flodden, which, according to Hall, consisted of “5 great curtalls, 2 great culverynges, 4 sacres (hawks), and 5 serpentynes, etc.” Viscount Dillon mentions in his notes that the Scotch made cannon in 1460, and that the iron guns in the Tower comprise eleven of the numerous varieties in use in Henry VIII.’s time, and he gives the names of makers of that period, both English and foreign. These notes, of which this is but a very imperfect outline, should be read _in extenso_ by all specially interested in the subject. PART XXV. EARLY HAND-GUNS.