Note 346 — Chapter IV

It is stated by many writers that no gunpowder was manufactured in England until the reign of Elizabeth. Camden's Elizabeth, in Kennett's History, vol. ii. p. 388, London, 1719; Strickland's Queens of England, vol. vi. p. 223, Lond. 1843; Grose's Military Antiquities, vol. i. p. 378. But Sharon Turner (History of England, vol. vi. pp. 490, 491, Lond. 1839) has shown, from an order of Richard III. in the Harleian manuscripts, that it was made in England in 1483; and Mr. Eccleston (English Antiquities, p. 182, Lond. 1847) states, that the English both made and exported it as early as 1411: compare p. 202. At all events, it long remained a costly article; and even in the reign of Charles I., I find a complaint of its dearness, ‘whereby the train-bands are much discouraged in their exercising.’ Parliament. Hist. vol. ii. p. 655. In 1686, it appears from the Clarendon Correspondence, vol. i. p. 413, that the wholesale price ranged from about 2l. 10s. to 3l. per barrel. On the expense of making it in the present century, see Liebig and Kopp's Reports on Chemistry, vol. iii. p. 325, Lond. 1852.