The most ancient gun made in Britain is undoubtedly that bombarde known as Mons Meg in Edinburgh Castle. An inscription on the _new_ stock, cast at Woolwich in 1835, states that the gun "is _believed_ to have been forged at _Mons_, in 1486." But this is proved now to have been a gross mistake, an assertion which is utterly without warrant, as an elaborate "History of Galloway" shows from proofs indisputable that it was made by a smith of that county, in 1455, for the service of James II. (then besieging the Castle of Threave), at a place still named Knockcannon. It weighs six tons and a half, is composed of malleable iron bars hooped together, and its balls, which are all of Galloway granite, are twenty-one inches in diameter. Two of these shots fired from it compelled the castle to surrender in the summer of 1455, and _both_ were found in 1841 amid the ruins--one in the wall, the other in the draw-well; and both lay in a _direct line_ from Knockcannon to the breach in the huge donjon tower. For his work, M'Kim received the forfeited lands of Mollance, pronounced in Scottish parlance, _Mowance_, and hence the tradition of "Meg" being forged at _Mons_. In 1497, it accompanied the Scottish army into England in the cause of Perkin Warbeck; to the siege of Dumbarton in 1489, and many other scenes of strife. In 1681, the gun burst, when firing a royal salute for James Duke of Albany, as two of the fractured hoops still show. On these occasions, like the old bombardes of the Dardanelles, it was generally _shotted_, as the Royal Treasurer's Accounts contain many entries of payments, for "finding and carrying _her_ bullet from Wardie Mure to the Castell." In 1509--thirty-four years before Ralph Hogge began to cast guns in Sussex--James IV. employed Robert Borthwick, his master gunner, to _cast_ a set of brass ordnance for Edinburgh Castle. Seven of these were named by the king the _sisters_ of Borthwick--being all alike in size and beauty. They were inscribed--- "_Machina sum, Stoto Borthweick Fabricata Roberto._" With ten other brass field-pieces, these guns were all taken by the English at the battle of Flodden, where Borthwick was killed, and the Earl of Surrey, who saw them, asserted that there were none finer in the arsenals of King Henry. Several of these guns were retaken by the Scots from the Earl of Hereford's army in 1544, and were long preserved in the Castle of Edinburgh, on the walls of which, in the siege of 1573, were a number of guns that bore the crowned salamander, the badge of Francis I., and had perhaps been brought from France by the Regent Duke of Chatelherault. An old cannon named _Dundee_, which had been used in war by the Viscount of that name, was long preserved in the Castle of Kilchurn; but has now disappeared.