Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/33

 B. v. JAN. is, 1906.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

21

LONDON, SATURDAY, JANUAEY 13, 1006.

CONTENTS.-No. 107.

NOTES : "Brown Bess " as applied to a Musket, 21 Mag- dalen College School, 22 An Unknown Fleetwood Pedi- gree, 23 "Propitious" " Antequations," 24 Albert Durer's Name Ben Jonson's ' Underwoods ' The Juvenile Theatre, 25 Ayesba: its Pronunciation, 26.

QUERIES : "Pightle": " Pikle," 2i 'Ri-liquise Wot- tonianai 'Classical Quotations" Quam nihil ad genium, Papiniane, tuum ! " Sheffield Plate " Bbl." Mrs. Blackai re -Thomas Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, 27

Mr. Brownley, Journalistic Orator The King of Bath

Records Wanted Lord Cromartie's Is?ue Colet on Peace and War, 28 -Oil Painting, c. 1^2-5 Po^t-mortem Exami- nationsMiserere Carvings Bridewell: its History Newchapel Church Johnson's ' Vanity of Human Wishes ' Selling Oneself to the Devil" Brelan," 29.

REPLIES : -Lord Mayor's Day, 30 -Samuel Whitchurch, Poet -Ben Jonson and Bacon Splitting Fields of Ice " Tnese are the Brirons" Prisoner suckled by his Daughter Bay ham Abbev, 31 Mrs. Fitzherbert Toby's j) g __ Ainsty Affery Flintwineh in 'Little Dorrit' " Was you ? " and "You was " Enigma by C. J. Fox "passive Kesister." 32 "Famous" Chelsea, 33 Romney Portrait Heraldic Bells, 34 *' Sjambok " Cbaloner : the Fortunate Boy Fulham Bridge -The Boar's Head- Seven Sacrament Fonts, 35 -Dogs in War Melton Cloth : Melton Jacket Final " e" in Chauc3r, 35 Melchior Guy- dickens Punch, the Beverage George III.'s Daughters " Photography "John Penhallow, 37.

NOTES ON BOOKS : ' India' Bike's ' Lyrical Poems' Wordsworth as Literary Critic Biese on the Feeling for Nature ' The Extinction of the Anrient Hierarchy' ' Oscar Wilde ' Dod's Peerage 'The Clergy Directory' ' Fry's Guide to the London Charities 'Sir Harry Poland on 'Canning's Rhyming Despatch ' ' Neighbours of North Wyke.'

Obituary : -Mr. Henry Gerald Hope.

Notices to Correspondents.

<> BROWN BESS" AS APPLIED TO A MUSKET.

IN 1855 a query appeared in ' N. & Q.' (1 st S. xi. 284) as to the origin of this term. A reply was given to the effect that "Bess" was really the Dutch word bus, which signifies barrel, and is found in the sixteenth century " harquebus," a hand gun that took the place of the long bow. No one can find any fault with the above derivation ; but no satisfactory explanation has yet been given as to the word "Brown" when it precedes " Bess." The present writer, after a brown study, is strongly of opinion that the early British musket was not called " Brown Bess" because the barrel was of a brown colour (2 nd S. v. 259), but for the simple reason that Queen Elizabeth's gunfounder, during the last twelve years of her reign, was a certain Thomas Brown. This gentleman, who was evidently an artificer of no mean order, was also gunfounder to the East India Company, and did a large export business with Holland on his own account.

Curiously enough, the first mention of Brown the gunfounder in the State Papers

appears in a letter from James VI. to the English Council of State, dated from Stirling, 22 August, 1599, relative to "certain ships laden with muskets, <fec., which Mr. Brown was bringing from Flanders to Scotland " (' Cal. S.P.D., Scottish Series '). When King James ascended the English throne he appointed Brown his gunfounder. The follow- ing letter from Brown's son John to Solicitor- General Heath supplies the approximate date of the elder Brown's appointment as gunfounder to Queen Elizabeth :

" December, 1621. My Father has for the last thirty years cast ordnance for the late Queen and the King, and for years maintained the trade alone. At the request of the ordnance officers and the East India Company, I was put to the trade that I might continue it if my father failed, which I have done, and produced lately two such pieces as I challenge others to do the like. If I may still cast for merchants, if the King wants 200 pieces I will cast them in 200 days. Mr. Crow has got a patent for making of ordnance to merchants ; this would con- fine me to the King's service, which only takes ten days a year." 'S P.D., Addenda, James I.'

The aforesaid John Brown had been ap- pointed *' Master Founder of the Iron Ordnance "in 1G20 ; and his letter just quoted was in consequence of Sackville Crow, a pro- tege of the Duke of Buckingham, having obtained the patent to which Brown takes exception. The Browns had their foundry at Brenchley, Kent, and employed 200 men. Milhall Wharf, being close to Brenchley, afforded facilities for export trade. Under date of 19 February, 1619, the elder Brown stated that " half of the ordnance manu- factured by him had been bought and ex- ported by the Dutch under licence" ('Cal. S.P.D.,' 1619). In the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries the manufacturers of muskets were not specially named in the Ordnance Lists, though a gunstock maker and a gun- smith appear in an Ordnance List of 1548 (Col. Cleaveland's ' Notes on the Early His- tory of the Royal Artillery '). It must, there- fore, be taken for granted that the gun- founders to Queen Elizabeth and King James cast musket- barrels as well as large ordnance.

The writer recently received the following information from Viscount Dillon, the Curator of the Armouries in the Tower of London :

"As to the Elizabethan muskets, we have a musket and a caliver of about 1590. They came from Penshurst, where there are several more. Those in the Tower have no names on them. The caliver has an indistinct stamp somewhat like a bird ; the musket has a crown stamped on the barrel."

It is reasonable to suppose that the Queen's gunfounder stamped his musket-barrels with