Progress was made in the classification of pieces and in the reduction of the number of different types carried; a change was also made in the forms of the guns, in order to enhance the fighting value of the gun armament in certain circumstances. The great guns were made still shorter than before; the quicker-burning powders now in use allowed this to be done. By which expedient the ratio between gun-weight and weight-of-metal-thrown was reduced; more guns could be carried for a given weight of metal; they could be more easily manipulated; and if they were of small ranging power they yet possessed a power of penetration sufficient for close-quarter fighting. Moreover, the reduction in length enabled an increase in calibre to be made; and this was one of the factors which led to the reintroduction of larger types than had formerly been considered suitable: the cannon-serpentine, the cannon, and even the cannon-royal, with its sixty-six pound shot and its eight thousand pounds of metal.[56] In the Dutch Wars the preponderance in the size and weight of the unit shot lay with the English ships, and was in itself undoubtedly a great advantage in their favour; though complaints were made of the great weight and clumsiness of the pieces, “which caused much of the straining and rolling at sea.” Writing of naval ordnance in the year 1690, Sir Cloudesley Shovell recorded that, “our lower-deck guns are too big and the tackles ill fitted with blocks, which makes them work heavy; the Dutch who have light guns have lignum vitæ sheaves. The Dutch guns are seldom larger than twenty-four pounders.” By this time, it will be noted, the more scientific nomenclature had come into vogue; the cannon-petro was now known as the 24-pounder, and the heavy lower-deck guns referred to were the old bastard-cannons, known since the reorganization of the Commonwealth navy as 42-pounders. The founding of guns continued to be, throughout the seventeenth century, an affair of private enterprise. Proof was carried out under the supervision of the Board of Ordnance. In 1619 a decree was issued that gun-founding was to be confined to Kent and Sussex, that guns were to be landed at or shipped from the Tower Wharf only, and that East Smithfield was to be the one market-place for their sale or purchase. Guns could be proved only in Ratcliff fields, and all pieces were to have on them at least two letters of the founder’s name, with the year and the weight of the gun. Exportation was illegal; nevertheless the illicit traffic went on just as in Elizabeth’s time. The royal forts themselves were turned into marts for these and other unlawful transactions, and Upnor Castle is described as having been “a staple of stolen goods, a den of thieves, a vent for the transport of ordnance.”[57]