The early naval guns were called “crakys of war.”[23] They included cannon-paviors, or guns which threw round stone shot, and appropriately named murtherers, which were smaller weapons and were loaded with anything that could be fired out again. An inventory of the _Great Barke_ as “vyeuwyd” in the twenty-third year of King Henry VIII., is preserved in the Cotton Library at the British Museum. The following are extracts:-- “Hereafter followeth the ordinances pertayning to the sayde shype, item, in primis, two brazyn pecys called kannon pecys on stockyes which wayith The one 9 c. 3 q. 11 lb., the other 10 c. 1 q. 17 lb., whole weight 20 c. 28 lb.: Item 2 payer of shod wheeles nyeu: item two ladyng ladells. “Starboard side. Item oon port pece of yeron cast with 2 chambers: item a port pece of yeron, with one chamber. Item a spruyche slyng with one chamber. “Larboard side. Item oon port pece with 2 chambers: Item another port pece, with oon chamber, whyche chamber was not made for the sayd pece. “In the forecastell. Item a small slyng with 2 chambers. Item another pece of yeron with two chambers, the oon broken.” Even in Queen Elizabeth’s day much of the artillery had to be imported from Germany. It was not until about 1531 that iron guns were first cast in England, and brass guns were cast three or four years later. Guns were made of greater weight and bore when it was discovered how to cast them instead of building them, and muzzle-loaders gradually superseded the old breechloaders. The change, however, was slow, and was probably retarded by the reluctance of those ship owners who had breechloaders to discard them while they could yet be fired, a reluctance which no doubt extended, owing to the paucity of weapons, to the rulers of the various states.