In England, too, an independent development was at the same time taking place in yet another direction. Mr. Whitworth, having satisfactorily established the principles governing the design of rifles, felt confident of extending them to field and heavy ordnance. Adhering to the muzzle-loading principle and to his hexagonal form of rifling he manufactured, between the years 1854 and 1857, several guns which fired projectiles of from six to twenty-four pounds’ weight with great accuracy and to ranges greater than any yet attained. Events occurred which caused him to be given every encouragement by the government. The attitude of the French in these years was suspicious and unfriendly. Schemes of invasion were openly discussed in their press, and war vessels of various types equipped with armour plate were designed and actually built. Reports of their plans, following closely on the exposures of the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny, rendered the country increasingly restless and apprehensive as to the value of our offensive and defensive armaments. And then, although the new Armstrong gun was acclaimed as eminently suited for service in the field, doubts had been cast as to whether the principles of its design could be applied satisfactorily to the heaviest ordnance. Other rifled artillery had certainly failed to give the results expected from it. The Lancaster rifled gun, a muzzle-loading gun with a twisted bore of a slightly oval section, had failed lamentably at the Crimea owing to the tendency, according to one account, of the oval projectile to wedge itself against the slightly larger oval of the bore; according to another account, owing to the flames from the powder gases penetrating the interior of the welded shells which had been supplied for it. The breech-loading ordnance of Cavalli had failed the Italians. In Sweden several accidents had occurred with Wahrendorf’s breech-loading pieces. The French system, which had been copied by the majority of the powers, was that which appeared to be giving the least unsatisfactory results. In these circumstances every encouragement was given Mr. Whitworth to develop ordnance on his own lines. In ’58 a committee on rifled guns was appointed by parliament to examine and report on the relative merits of the various systems in use. The committee quickly set to work. No difficulty was found in eliminating all but two, on which attention was soon concentrated: the Armstrong and the Whitworth. The result of the final investigation was a report in favour of the Armstrong gun, which, as we have already seen, was adopted in the same year for field service. Mr. Armstrong, who had handed over his rights in the gun for the benefit of the nation, was knighted and his services were subsidized for the improvement of rifled ordnance generally. The title of “Engineer to the War Department” was conferred on him, and later he received the further appointment of “Superintendent of the Royal Gun Factory” at Woolwich.