The transition of armament is plainly marked for us in the case of the _Mary Rose_, rebuilt in 1536, which nine years later came to an untimely end off Brading. At the time of her oversetting she carried, in fact, both types of ordnance. In the Rotunda at Woolwich are to be seen some of the guns recovered from her wreck: a built-up wrought-iron breech-loading stone-throwing gun on its baulk-of-timber carriage, identical in character with a serpentine illustrated in Napoleon III’s _Études sur l’Artillerie_ as having been taken by the Swiss from Charles the Bold in A.D. 1476; and a bronze cannon royal (with John Owen’s name on it), demi-cannon, culverin, and culverin-bastard, all of them finished specimens of the founder’s art, and of an offensive, instead of a merely defensive, value. “The system,” says Mr. Oppenheim of this growth of artillery armament, “was extended as the reign progressed, and in 1546 we find comparatively small ships like the _Grand Mistress_ carrying two demi-cannon and five culverins, the _Swallow_ one demi-cannon and two demi-culverins, out of a total of eight heavy guns; the _Anne Galant_ four culverins, one curtall, and two demi-culverins,” etc. etc. What were the dimensions of the various pieces? It is difficult to give an exact answer. Owing to the continuous development of ordnance throughout the century the pieces increased in size while they retained their class-names, and there is a wide variation between the table of ordnance of Tartaglia, for instance, compiled in 1537, and those drawn up by English authors at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Briefly, we may note that pieces could be grouped in four classes: viz. cannons, culverins, periers, and mortars. The cannons were large in calibre and of medium length; the culverins were of great length, to give them high ranging power; the periers, or stone-throwers, were a sort of howitzer; and the mortars, named probably from the apothecary’s utensil to which they bore a resemblance, were squat pieces used for projecting stones or iron balls at a high elevation. The old stone-throwing serpentine was a gun weighing about 260 pounds, which fired a stone “as big as a swan’s egg.” The curtall, or curtlow was (according to Mr. Oppenheim) a heavy gun of some 3000 pounds, hitherto only used as a siege-piece on land; “courtaulx” are mentioned by Napoleon III as having been, in A.D. 1498, fifty-pounders weighing 5500 livres. The slings were large breech-loaders, probably of the perier class.