74
NUMBER 212
2
Nathanael Nye, The Art of Gunnery (London, 1647), 5. For the history of gunpowder and explosives, see E. A. Brayley Hodgetts (ed.), The Rise and Progress of the
British Explosives Industry (London, 1909); J. R. Partington, A History of Greek Fire and
Gunpowder (Cambridge, 1960); Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, v,
Chemistry and Chemical Technology, pt 7, Military Technology: The Gunpowder Epic
(Cambridge, 1986); Brenda J. Buchanan (ed.), Gunpowder: The History of an
International Technology (Bath, 1996); Glenys Crocker, The Gunpowder Industry, 2nd
edn (Princes Risborough, 1999); Brenda J. Buchanan, The Art and Mystery of
Making Gunpowder: The English Experience in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries, in Brett D. Steele and Tamera Dorland (eds.), The Heirs of Archimedes:
Science and the Art of War through the Age of Enlightenment (Cambridge, Mass., 2005);
Robert A. Howard, Realities and Perceptions in the Evolution of Black Powder
Making, in Brenda J. Buchanan (ed.), Gunpowder, Explosives and the State: A
Technological History (Aldershot, 2006), 225. For gunpowder recipes, see Niccolo`
Tartaglia, Quesiti et inventioni diverse (Venice, 1546), sig. L; Nye, Art of Gunnery, 49,
19; Thomas Henshaw, The History of Making Gun-Powder, in Tho[mas] Sprat, The
History of the Royal-Society of London, for the Improving of Natural Knowledge (London,
1667), 278; Henry Stubbe, Legends no Histories: or, A Specimen of Some Animadversions
upon the History of the Royal Society (London, 1670), 945, 11416. For accessible
accounts of burning rates, shock waves, physico-chemical phenomena and combustion reactions, see E. Gray, H. Marsh and M. McLaren, A Short History of
Gunpowder and the Role of Charcoal in its Manufacture, Jl Materials Science, xvii
(1982); Jaime Wisniak, The History of Saltpeter Production with a Bit of Pyrotechnics and Lavoisier, Chemical Educator, v (2000).
3
Charcoal came from English woodlands, ideally from alder, willow, hazel or
beech. According to William Harrison there was great plenty of sulphur in Elizabethan England: William Harrison, The Description of England, ed. Georges Edelen
(Ithaca, 1968), 289, 362. Advisers to the Muscovy Company in 1580 recommended
that their merchants carry brimstone, to try the vent of the same, because we
abound of it in the realm: Richard Hakluyt, Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of
America, and the Ilands adjacent unto the Same (London, 1582, STC 12624), sig. I4.
Sulphur could be extracted from mineral springs, but most was imported cheaply from
volcanic regions in southern Italy.
was made. The charcoal provided solid substance for combustion, the sulphur allowed immediate ignition, while saltpetre provided oxygen for the explosion (strictly speaking, a deflagration
rather than a highly exothermic combustion). The proportions
varied with use and changed over time, but by the late sixteenth
century most English cannon powder mixed six parts saltpetre to
one part each of brimstone and charcoal. This combination,
claimed the seventeenth-century gunner Nathanael Nye, produced the strongest powder that can be made.2
Charcoal and sulphur, the minority ingredients of gunpowder,
were easily and cheaply found,3 but saltpetre proved scarce and
expensive. Known to contemporaries as the soul, the foundation or the mother of gunpowder, it was either imported from
distant lands or extracted at high cost from soil rich in dung
75
4
John Bate, The Mysteryes of Nature and Art (London, 1634, STC 1577), 55;
National Archives, London, Public Record Office (hereafter PRO), SP 12/286/42;
SP 16/180/3; A. R. Williams, The Production of Saltpetre in the Middle Ages,
Ambix: Jl Soc. Hist. Alchemy and Chemistry, xxii (1975); Stephen Bull, Pearls from
the Dungheap: English Saltpetre Production, 15901640, Jl Ordnance Soc., ii (1990).
5
On the subterranean treasures belonging to the crown by royal prerogative, see
Sir John Pettus, Fodinae regales: or, The History, Laws and Places of the Chief Mines and
Mineral Works in England, Wales, and the English Pale in Ireland (London, 1670), 5, 21,
28. The royal mines were primarily of gold and silver, but Pettus included saltpetre
among minerals and other products . . . beneficial to the kingdom (p. 5).
6
The Correspondence of Robert Boyle, i, 163661, ed. Michael Hunter, Antonio
Clericuzio and Lawrence M. Principe (London, 2001), 424; Robert Boyle, A
Physico-Chymical Essay, Containing an Experiment, with Some Considerations Touching
the Differing Parts and Redintegration of Salt-Petre (1661), in The Works of the Honourable
Robert Boyle, 6 vols. (London, 1772), i, 359.
7
By the King: A Proclamation for the Better Making of Saltpeter within this Kingdome
(London, 2 Jan. 1627, STC 8848); PRO, SP 12/275/76.
8
A Remonstrance of the State of the Kingdom (London, 1641), 15.
9
Thomas Henshaw, The History of the Making of Salt-Petre, in Sprat, History of
the Royal-Society of London, 274.
76
NUMBER 212
10
77
13
Kelly DeVries, Sites of Military Science and Technology, in Katharine Park and
Lorraine Daston (eds.), The Cambridge History of Science, iii, Early Modern Science
(Cambridge, 2006), 311.
14
Conrad Russell, Parliaments and English Politics, 16211629 (Oxford, 1979), 2,
374; Conrad S. R. Russell, Monarchies, Wars, and Estates in England, France, and
Spain, c.1580c.1640, Legislative Studies Quart., vii (1982), 21011, repr. in Conrad
Russell, Unrevolutionary England, 16031642 (London, 1990), 127.
78
NUMBER 212
I
Written discussion of the properties of saltpetre filtered into
England following the publication of Vannoccio Biringuccios
De la pirotechnia in Venice in 1540.16 Generations of authors
plagiarized this text without acknowledging their source. Peter
Whitehornes Elizabethan treatise on warfare included chapters
derived from Biringuccio that explained the nature of saltpetre,
and the manner how to make and refine it, and how to make all
sorts of gunpowder.17 Cyprian Lucars Colloquies Concerning the
Arte of Shooting in Great and Small Peeces of Artillerie (1588) was
also heavily indebted to Biringuccio, with sections on saltpetre
word for word identical to those of Whitehorne.18
15
K. N. Chaudhuri, The English East India Company: The Study of an Early
Joint-Stock Company, 16001640 (New York and London, 1965); K. N. Chaudhuri,
The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company, 16601760 (Cambridge,
1978); James W. Frey, The Indian Saltpeter Trade, the Military Revolution, and the
Rise of Britain as a Global Superpower, Historian, lxxi (2009).
16
Vannoccio Biringuccio, De la pirotechnia (Venice, 1540); The Pirotechnia of
Vannoccio Biringuccio, trans. Cyril Stanley Smith and Martha Teach Gnudi (New
York, 1942).
17
Peter Whitehorne, Certain Waies for the Orderyng of Souldiers in Battelray (London,
1562), appended to his translation of Niccolo` Machiavellis Arte of Warr, repubd in
1574 (STC 17165) and 1588 (STC 17166).
18
Cyprian Lucar, Three Bookes of Colloquies Concerning the Arte of Shooting in Great
and Small Peeces of Artillerie (London, 1588, STC 23689), 513. Other influences
include Tartaglia, Quesiti et inventioni diverse; Girolamo Cataneo, Opera nuova di fortificare, offendere et difendere (Brescia, 1564); Georgius Agricola, De re metallica (Basel,
(cont. on p. 79)
79
(n. 18 cont.)
1556), book 12 of which deals briefly with saltpetre. See also William Bourne, The Arte
of Shooting in Great Ordnaunce (London, 1587, STC 3420), 57.
19
Whitehorne, Certain Waies for the Orderyng of Souldiers in Battelray, fos. 228; see
also Williams, Production of Saltpetre in the Middle Ages, 12730.
20
Lazarus Erckers Treatise on Ores and Assaying Translated from the German Edition of
1580, trans. Anneliese Grunhaldt Sisco and Cyril Stanley Smith (Chicago, 1951). The
work was reprinted in Frankfurt in 1598, 1629 and 1672. The first English translation
appeared in Sir John Pettus, Fleta minor: The Laws of Art and Nature (London, 1683).
John Rudolph Glauber, The Works of the Highly Experienced and Famous Chymist
(London, 1689), 34559, also reproduced Erckers treatise on the manner of boiling
salt-petre. According to Stubbe, Legends no Histories, 878, Thomas Henshaws
History of the Making of Salt-Petre was heavily plagiarized from Ercker. See also
R. J. W. Evans, Rudolf II and his World: A Study in Intellectual History, 15761612
(London, 1997), 215.
80
NUMBER 212
21
Historical Manuscripts Commission (hereafter HMC), Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Honourable the Marquis of Salisbury . . . at Hatfield House, 23 vols.
(London, 18831973), xiv, 339; Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC,
microfilm 164.70, partially transcribed in Gary C. Grassl, Joachim Gans of Prague:
The First Jew in English America, Amer. Jewish Hist., lxxxvi (1998). For Gaunzs very
blasphemous speeches against our saviour, see PRO, SP 12/226/40.
22
Whitehorne, Certain Waies for the Orderyng of Souldiers in Battelray, fos. 21v22.
23
Iosephus Quersitanus [i.e. Joseph Duchesne], The Practice of Chymicall, and
Hermeticall Physicke, for the Preservation of Health, trans. Thomas Timme (London,
1605, STC 7276), sig. Pv; Allen G. Debus, The Paracelsian Aerial Niter, Isis, lv
(1964); Anna Marie Roos, The Salt of the Earth: Natural Philosophy, Medicine, and
Chymistry in England, 16501750 (Leiden and Boston, 2007).
24
Francis Bacon, The Historie of Life and Death: With Observations Naturall and
Experimentall for the Prolonging of Life (London, 1638, STC 1157), 158.
81
25
Henshaw, History of the Making of Salt-Petre, 2745; Stubbe, Legends no
Histories, 45.
26
William Clarke, The Natural History of Nitre: or, A Philosophical Discourse of the
Nature, Generation, Place, and Artificial Extraction of Nitre, with its Vertues and Uses
(London, 1670), 19, 53.
27
Charles Webster, The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine and Reform, 1626
1660 (New York, 1976), 37881; Charles Webster, Benjamin Worsley: Engineering
for Universal Reform from the Invisible College to the Navigation Act, in Mark
Greengrass, Michael Leslie and Timothy Raylor (eds.), Samuel Hartlib and
Universal Reformation: Studies in Intellectual Communication (Cambridge, 1994),
21517; Robert Boyle, The Sceptical Chymist (1661), in Works, i, 566; Boyle,
Physico-Chymical Essay, in Works, i, 359. See also Samuel Worsley, De nitro theses
quaedam, in The Hartlib Papers, 2nd edn (University of Sheffield, CD-ROM, 2002),
39/1/16A, and Samuel Worsley, Animadversions upon the Fore-Said Observations,
ibid., 39/1/11B.
28
Hartlib Papers, 13/223A; 39/1/11B; see also William Eamon, Science and the
Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Princeton,
1994); William R. Newman, From Alchemy to Chymistry , in Park and Daston
(eds.), Cambridge History of Science, iii; Tara Nummedal, Alchemy and Authority in the
Holy Roman Empire (Chicago and London, 2007); Roos, Salt of the Earth.
82
NUMBER 212
29
Thomas Chaloner, A Shorte Discourse of the Most Rare and Excellent Vertue of Nitre
(London, 1584, STC 4940); Clarke, Natural History of Nitre. See also George
Hakewill, An Apologie of the Power and Providence of God in the Government of the
World (Oxford, 1627, STC 12611), 2612; Edward Jorden, A Discourse of Naturall
Bathes, and Minerall Waters (London, 1632, STC 14792), 48; Joseph M. Levine,
Between the Ancients and the Moderns: Baroque Culture in Restoration England (New
Haven and London, 1999), 28. Modern scholarship concludes that ancient nitre
was most likely soda (i.e. sodium carbonate), and that the properties of saltpetre were
unknown in Europe before the thirteenth century: Partington, History of Greek Fire and
Gunpowder, 298314.
30
Henshaw, History of the Making of Salt-Petre, 260, 267. Henshaws account
was popularized in [ John Houghton (ed.)], A Collection for Improvement of Husbandry
and Trade, nos. 2247, 13 Nov. 4 Dec. 1696, and repeated in subsequent collections
of the Royal Societys Transactions.
31
Stubbe, Legends no Histories, 44, 76.
32
Clarke, Natural History of Nitre, epistle dedicatory, 15, 19, 2331. R. Abraham
Portaleone, Shilte ha-Gibborim [Shields of the Heroes] (Mantua, 1612; Jerusalem,
1970), ch. 41, claimed that ancient Hebrews were familiar with gunpowder I owe
this reference to Matt Goldish. For the counter-view that gunpowder was wholly
unknown to the ancient Greeks and Arabians, and only recently Latinized as sal
bombardicum, see William Salmon, Seplasium. The Compleate English Physician: or,
The Druggists Shop Opened (London, 1693), 90.
83
II
33
For Bosworth battlefield archaeology, see Guardian, 28 Oct. 2009; for the period
more generally, see Michael Prestwich, Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages: The
English Experience (New Haven and London, 1996), 287, 2923; Mark Charles Fissel,
English Warfare, 15111642 (London, 2001), 44, 52; DeVries, Sites of Military
Science and Technology, 30811; Bert S. Hall, Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance
Europe (Baltimore and London, 1997).
34
Cal. Pat. Rolls, 148594, 395.
35
James Raymond, Henry VIIIs Military Revolution: The Armies of SixteenthCentury Britain and Europe (London, 2007), 3, 28; Fissel, English Warfare, 44.
36
Fissel, English Warfare, 416; C. G. Cruickshank, Army Royal: Henry VIIIs
Invasion of France, 1513 (Oxford, 1969), 76; Paul E. J. Hammer, Elizabeths Wars:
(cont. on p. 84)
84
NUMBER 212
(n. 36 cont.)
War, Government and Society in Tudor England, 15441604 (Basingstoke and New York,
2003), 18. For the impact of artillery at Flodden in 1513, see Ranald Nicholson,
Scotland: The Later Middle Ages (Edinburgh, 1974), 604. For the gradual change
from bows to guns, see Steven Gunn, Archery Practice in Early Tudor England,
Past and Present, no. 209 (Nov. 2010), 747.
37
The Anthony Roll of Henry VIIIs Navy, ed. C. S. Knighton and D. M. Loades
(Navy Records Soc., ii, Aldershot, 2000), 41106; N. A. M. Rodger, The Safeguard of
the Sea: A Naval History of Britain, 6601649 (London, 1997), 485.
38
Bourne, Arte of Shooting in Great Ordnaunce, 72; Ronald Edward Zupko, A
Dictionary of English Weights and Measures from Anglo-Saxon Times to the Nineteenth
Century (Madison and London, 1968), 91.
39
PRO, STAC 2/15, fo. 29. See also PRO, SP 1/7, fos. 16872, for accounts of
expenditure on gunpowder and its ingredients in 1514.
40
PRO, SP 1/10, fo. 154; Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of
Henry VIII, v, 152.
85
41
Cal. State Papers, Foreign, 15623, 2289, 239; John William Burgon, The Life and
Times of Sir Thomas Gresham, 2 vols. (London, 1839), i, 294; Hammer, Elizabeths
Wars, 56.
42
PRO, SP12/223, fo. 77; SP 12/228, fo. 101; SP 12/253, fo. 149; Cal. State Papers,
Foreign, 155960, 18, 544; Cal. State Papers, Foreign, 15612, 319; HMC, Calendar of
the Manuscripts of the . . . Marquis of Salisbury, ii, 394.
43
PRO, SP 15/24, fo. 141; see also E. W. Bovill, Queen Elizabeths Gunpowder,
Mariners Mirror, xxxiii (1947); Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voyages,
Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, 2nd edn (15981600), 12 vols.
(Glasgow, 19035), iii, 369; vi, 6, 2901.
44
Geoffrey Parker, The Dreadnought Revolution of Tudor England, Mariners
Mirror, lxxxii (1996), 273, 287; Rodger, Safeguard of the Sea, 4867. Cf. Hammer,
Elizabeths Wars, 149, where Elizabeths thirty-four ships sport 883 cannon. For the
1603 survey, see British Library, London (hereafter BL), Royal MS 17 A XXXI, fos.
25v26.
86
NUMBER 212
45
Bourne, Arte of Shooting in Great Ordnaunce, 723; Richard Winship Stewart, The
English Ordnance Office, 15851625 (Woodbridge, 1996), 923.
46
BL, Royal MS 17 A XXXI, fo. 31rv.
47
Cal. State Papers, Venetian, 16037, 35, 274, 313; Cal. State Papers, Domestic,
Addenda, 15801625, 114; BL, Cotton MS Ortho EVII, fo. 78.
48
Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 161923, 189; Acts of the Privy Council, 161921, 177.
49
Acts of the Privy Council, 16235, 215. See also PRO, SP 14/158/78; SP 16/361/9
( John Evelyns review of Ordnance contracts, 162135); Stewart, English Ordnance
Office, 8892.
50
By the King: A Proclamation for the Maintenance and Encrease of the Mines of
Saltpeter, 13 Apr. 1625; Acts of the Privy Council, 16256, 14, 18; Cal. State Papers,
Domestic, 16256, 4, 9. See also Richard W. Stewart, Arms and Expeditions: The
Ordnance Office and the Assaults on Cadiz (1625) and the Isle of Rhe (1627), in
Mark Charles Fissel (ed.), War and Government in Britain, 15981650 (Manchester
and New York, 1991), 118, 125; Andrew Thrush, The Ordnance Office and the
Navy, 162540, Mariners Mirror, lxxvii (1991).
87
51
PRO, SP 16/180/3 and 10. The saltpetre assignment in 1629 was 5,234 hundredweight or 218 lasts, enough to furnish almost 325 lasts of gunpowder; but the total
delivered in the year ending April 1629, a year of maximum effort, was only 3,462
hundredweight, which indicates that production was one-third below target: Cal. State
Papers, Domestic, Addenda, 162549, 340; PRO, SP 16/530/45.
52
PRO, SP 16/292, fo. 38rv; Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 16378, 242; J. R. Powell,
The Navy in the English Civil War (London, 1962), 79; Kenneth R. Andrews, Ships,
Money and Politics: Seafaring and Naval Enterprise in the Reign of Charles I (Cambridge,
1991), 7, 143, 152; Thrush, Ordnance Office and the Navy, 33954; By the King: A
Proclamation against the Unnecessary Waste of Gunpowder (London, 13 Apr. 1628, STC
8882). James Scott Wheeler, The Making of a World Power: War and the Military
Revolution in Seventeenth-Century England (Stroud, 1999), 328, shows naval expenditure rising from 174,596 a year in 16259 to 209,395 a year in 16359.
Caroline state used more gunpowder than any of the Tudors. The
trained bands alone needed ninety-four lasts a year for musters
and training.51
Though England remained aloof from European conflict in
the 1630s, the threat of military involvement had not abated.
Invasion by Catholic powers was not unthinkable. There were
foreign foes to be countered, Dunkirk raiders, Barbary corsairs,
and ragtag pirates to be pursued. The crown needed supplies for
its forts and forces, the garrisons at Portsmouth, Hull and
Berwick, and for the re-formed militia. Above all, Charles
needed powder for the rebuilt royal navy. With thirty-four ships
the navy of the ship money era was no larger than in the days of
the Armada, but its tonnage and firepower nearly doubled. King
Charless ships by 1640 carried almost 1,200 heavy guns. Though
not called to hostile action, celebratory shots and salutes ate up
supplies so much that the practice had to be curtailed. By estimates of February 1638, before the start of the Scottish war,
Charles I needed 292 lasts of gunpowder a year, more than
three times the requirements of the wartime Elizabethan
regime.52
The Bishops Wars of 163940 and the decade of civil war that
followed put extraordinary pressure on military procurement.
The Wars of the Three Kingdoms militarized the British economy
and put tens of thousands of men in arms. A military forecast on
the eve of the Civil War estimated that a field army of ten thousand
men would need seven and a half tons of gunpowder for its foot,
and ten tons more for its artillery. Actual campaigns showed these
estimates to be inadequate. Civil War armies ranged up to thirty
thousand strong, and at Marston Moor in 1644 there were more
than 46,000 men on the battlefield. The demand for gunpowder
88
NUMBER 212
III
From the mid-Tudor period to the Interregnum English governments supervised a procurement system for saltpetre that
53
Peter Edwards, Gunpowder and the English Civil War, Jl Arms and Armour
Soc., xv (1995); Peter Edwards, Dealing in Death: The Arms Trade and the British Civil
Wars, 163852 (Stroud, 2000); The Royalist Ordnance Papers, 16421646, ed. Ian Roy,
2 vols. (Oxfordshire Record Soc., xliii, xlix, Oxford, 196475); Buchanan, Art and
Mystery of Making Gunpowder , 2425.
54
James Scott Wheeler, Logistics and Supply in Cromwells Conquest of Ireland,
in Fissel (ed.), War and Government in Britain; Powell, Navy in the English Civil War,
79; Arthur W. Tedder, The Navy of the Restoration from the Death of Cromwell to the
Treaty of Breda: Its Work, Growth and Influence (Cambridge, 1916), 1214, based on
Bodleian Library, Oxford, Carte MS 73; Wheeler, Making of a World Power, 456.
55
Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 168990, 195; By the King and Queen: A Proclamation
to Prohibit the Exportation of Salt Petre (London, 25 July 1689).
56
H. C. Tomlinson, Guns and Government: The Ordnance Office under the Later
Stuarts (London, 1979), 112; Frey, Indian Saltpeter Trade, 5212; Jenny West,
Gunpowder, Government and War in the Mid-Eighteenth Century (Woodbridge, 1991),
163, 212, 2247.
89
57
For the administration of this system, see Stewart, English Ordnance Office;
Tomlinson, Guns and Government. For characterizations of the saltpetremen, see
The Lord Cookes Charge Given at Norwiche Assizes the 4 of August 1606 against
the Abuses and Corruptions of Officers, amongst whom Saltpeter Menn: BL, Harley
MS 6070, fo. 413v; Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, A Faire Quarrell
(London, 1617, STC 17911), Act I, Scene i; Letters of Mr. Boyle to Several
Persons, in Boyle, Works, vi, 40.
58
Cal. Pat. Rolls, 15603, 98; PRO, SP 12/91/44; Cal. State Papers, Domestic,
154780, 511; Cal. State Papers, Domestic, Addenda, 156679, 495; PRO, SP 15/24,
fo. 141; BL, Lansdowne MS 31, fo. 188; Lansdowne MS 57, fo. 144.
59
BL, Lansdowne MS 24, fo. 139.
90
NUMBER 212
Royal rights in this regard were beyond question because the sole
making of saltpetre and gunpowder within her majestys dominions pertaineth to the crown by her highnesss prerogative royal.
Anyone who shall seditiously or contemptuously call in question
the power or validity of her majestys prerogative royal in this
regard risked severe punishment according to their desert.63
Constitutional questioning of the saltpetre enterprise continued in James Is reign. When landowners refused to allow prospectors to enter their grounds in 1603, claiming that their
Elizabethan warrants had expired, the patentees for saltpetre
and gunpowder reminded the king that their grant was no monopoly, but a matter by royal prerogative inseparably belonging to
60
BL, Lansdowne MS 61, fo. 188; Acts of the Privy Council, 15991600, 818.
By the Queene: A Proclamation for the Calling in and Frustrating All Commissions for
the Making of Salt-Peter (London, 13 Jan. 1590, STC 8190; repr. 1595, STC 8189.7).
62
BL, Lansdowne MS 84, fos. 1456.
63
PRO, SP 12/286/42; another version in BL, Cotton MS Ortho EVII, fos. 949,
rv
105 . The royal privilege of digging saltpetre for the defence of the realm was confirmed in Darcy v. Allen, Kings Bench, Easter 1602, in Sir Francis Moore, Cases Collect
and Report (London, 1688), 67.
61
interrupt the work.60 A proclamation of January 1590 acknowledged the forcements and exactions on peoples carriages,
houses, grounds and woods, to the great grievance and disturbance of her majestys loving subjects, but military exigencies
required the project to go forward, under legal and administrative
scrutiny.61 Attorney-General (later Sir) Edward Coke complained to Lord Burghley in August 1597 about the grief and
discontentment occasioned by the saltpetremen, and sought to
limit their worst abuses.62
Tudor governments assumed to themselves the responsibility
as well as the right to collect saltpetre in the national interest. Only
when this right was challenged did they need to cloak it in theory.
When monopolies were attacked in 1601, Privy Councillors defended the saltpetre system as altogether without [i.e. outside]
the compass of monopolies, and congruent with common law
and equity. It rested, they said, on the twin poles of necessity and
prerogative:
91
64
92
NUMBER 212
67
By the King: A Proclamation for the Better Making of Saltpeter within this Kingdome,
2 Jan. 1627; Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 16278, 303.
68
BL, Sloane MS 1039, fo. 93rv; Commons Debates, 1628, ed. Robert C. Johnson
et al., 6 vols. (New Haven, 197783), ii, 2, 47; iv, 348, 350.
69
Acts of the Privy Council, July 1628 Apr. 1629, 235; Cal. State Papers, Domestic,
162931, 219, 238.
70
PRO, SP 16/320/40. See also Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 1635, 511, 568, 596;
Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 16356, 410, 449; Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 16367, 217,
294; PRO, SP 16/292, fo. 52v; SP 16/354/4.
71
PRO, SP 16/169/46 and 47.
72
PRO, SP 16/165/38; Gloucestershire Archives, Gloucester, D7115/1, 38.
73
Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 162931, 318; PRO, SP 16/171/79.
93
74
By the King: A Proclamation for Preservation of Grounds for Making of Saltpeter, and
to Restore Such Grounds as Are Now Destroyed, and to Command Assistance to Be Given to
his Maiesties Saltpeter-Makers (London, 14 Mar. 1635, STC 9033).
75
Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven and London, 1992),
195; Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 16356, 448; Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 16367, 238,
372, 431, 458; PRO, SP 16/376/146.
76
PRO, SP 16/70/12; Acts of the Privy Council, Jan.Aug. 1627, 408; Acts of the Privy
Council, July 1628 Apr. 1629, 33940; Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 16378, 96.
kingdom.74 Although, as Kevin Sharpe notes, Charles was willing for the saltpetre men to dig up his own house at Woodstock
(the Council observed in May 1636 that the king likes it well),
the repeated applications by saltpetreman Richard Bagnall to dig
in the kings hunting lodge were repeatedly blocked by the housekeeper and Lord Chamberlain.75
Complaints arose wherever saltpetremen worked, but were
more likely to carry weight when coming from an aristocrat.
Robert Leigh, a saltpetreman in Flintshire, made the wrong
enemy in 1627 when he intruded on the property of the powerful
Lord Strange. He broke locks to enter his lordships stables, tore
up the planking on the floor, and dug so deep that he endangered
the foundations. He followed this feat by digging in Hawarden
Castle, despite being expressly forbidden to enter. Living riotously, on pretence of being the kings servants, Leigh and his
men terrorized the town. At night, in their pots, they cried out,
the town is ours . . . to the great grief and amazement of the
poor inhabitants, whose lodgings they took without paying
rent. Returning to the same ground within three years of its last
digging, they left everything in a ruinous manner. Lord Strange
leaned on the earl of Totnes and master of the ordnance, who
wrote to Secretary Coke to seek punishment for these abuses
and insolences. The Council summoned Leigh to answer
charges, and eventually he acknowledged his miscarriage and
abuses and withdrew from the saltpetre service.76
In April 1628 the earl of Danby brought the case of the
Oxfordshire saltpetreman Nicholas Stephens to the attention of
the duke of Buckingham, who was joint holder of the saltpetre
patent. Having grievously oppressed the people of these parts,
Stephens had been cited at the Quarter Sessions for his manifold
abuses, but claimed protection through the dukes commission.
Danby was willing to suspend proceedings against the saltpetremen, he said, if Buckingham would take care to reform their lewd
94
NUMBER 212
77
PRO, SP 16/101/46.
PRO, SP 16/165/38; Commons Debates, 1628, ed. Johnson et al., iv, 347.
Commons Debates, 1628, ed. Johnson et al., ii, 41, 387; iii, 623, 629; iv, 347, 350,
353, 355; Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 162931, 206, 386; PRO, SP 16/162/40; SP 16/
169/46; SP 16/169/47. For William Lauds reaction to similar sacrilegious abuse in
Wales in 1624, see his diary in The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William
Laud, iii, ed. J. Bliss (Oxford, 1853), 155.
80
For example, Oxfordshire Record Office, Oxford, PAR 207/4/F1/1, fos. 116,
182, for the pissing place at St Martins, Oxford I owe this reference to John
Craig. The natural philosopher Henry Stubbe later explained that unpaved floors of
churches or seats that are loosely boarded could be rich in saltpetre because those
places allowed long putrefication where the earth be animated and impregnated by
the air: see his Legends no Histories, 51, 85. In 1635 (under the influence of Archbishop
Laud), A Proclamation for Preservation of Grounds for Making of Saltpeter declared,
we will not have any sacred ground be stirred, digged, or opened by authority of
the saltpetre commission.
78
79
95
81
(cont. on p. 96)
Aggressive in his defence, Stephens flourished his royal warrant, and threatened challengers with Star Chamber. His refusal
to answer charges in parliament prompted Sir John Eliot and Sir
Robert Phelips to speak out against the boldness of the saltpetremen and their contempt for the House of Commons. A commission to break up churches and lay illegal charges upon the country
suits well with the unlimited power of some mens commands,
which is most unjust, protested Eliot. Debate on the Petition of
Right in 1628 was sharpened by these concerns, which resurfaced
in the Grand Remonstrance.81
Grievances arose throughout the 1630s, even with no parliament in which to air them. A four-page report in 1630 complained that the saltpetremen had dug in all places without
distinction, as in parlours, bed-chambers, threshing floors, malting houses and shops; yea, Gods own house they have not forborne, but have digged in churches, hallowed chapels and
churchyards, tearing mens bones and ashes out of their graves
to make gunpowder of. They worked without regard to time or
season, upsetting dovecotes, undermining foundations, and
seldom or never fill up or repair the places they have digged in,
but leave the houses and rooms full of great heaps of earth, rubbish, dirt, and mire. In placing their tubs by bedsides of the old
and impotent, sick and diseased, of women with their children
sucking at their breasts, and even of women in childbed and of
sick persons lying on the deathbeds, they operated beyond the
bounds of common decency, and caused more scandal by their
profane and impious proceedings, in ringing of bells and disorderly drinking in the church.82
Especially notorious was Thomas Hilliard, whose territory
included much of the south-west. In Wiltshire Hilliards men
dug where they pleased, in any mans house, in any room, and
at any time. They spoiled malthouses, interfered with agriculture, and paid too little for transport. Among many oppressions,
Hilliard allegedly warned opponents he would strike such an
everlasting despair into the heart of the country, as they will
never attempt to complain again.83
96
NUMBER 212
(n. 83 cont.)
Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, and he also had commissions for Cheshire, Lancashire,
Cumberland and Westmorland: PRO, PC2/39, 258.
84
Acts of the Privy Council, May 1629 May 1630, 318; Cal. State Papers, Domestic,
16313, 76, 152, 365, 371; Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 16334, 299, 451; PRO, SP 16/
193/83; SP 16/260/21; SP 16/169/46.
85
Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 16334, 451; PRO, SP 16/260/20 and 21; BL, Add.
MS 11764, fos. 6v8; BL, Harley MS 4022, fo. 2v.
86
Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 1635, 605; Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 16356, 150,
152; PRO, SP 16/303/56; SP 16/305/2; SP 16/305/64; SP 16/311/27.
87
PRO, SP 16/535/108. See also the general complaint of the county against the
practices of the saltpetremen in 1637, in State Papers Relating to Musters, Beacons,
Shipmoney, etc. in Norfolk, ed. Walter Rye (Norwich, 1907), 2323.
97
88
Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 1637, 129, 2223; PRO, SP 16/361/110 and 11; SP
16/320/40 and 41; SP 16/320/30; SP 17/D/19 (saltpetre commission, 30 Nov. 1637).
89
Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 16367, 53, 449; PRO, SP 16/328/31.
90
Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 1637, 61, 187, 259; PRO, SP 16/355/55; SP 16/361/8;
SP 16/362/101. On the economic benefits and seigneurial privileges of pigeonkeeping, see John McCann, Dovecotes and Pigeons in English Law, Trans. Ancient
Monuments Soc., xliv (2000). It was widely though perhaps falsely believed that pigeon
dung produced the best nitre of all others: Quersitanus [Duchesne], Practice of
Chymicall, and Hermeticall Physicke, sig. P2.
98
NUMBER 212
91
Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 1637, 353, 531; Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 16378,
37, 1445; PRO, SP 16/371/67; SP 16/378/21.
92
Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 16313, 5578, 573; Cal. State Papers, Domestic,
16334, 85, 98, 108, 120; PRO, SP 16/233/23; SP 16/240/21; SP 16/241/713.
93
Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 1635, 605; Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 16356, 150,
152; PRO, SP 16/303/56; SP 16/305/2; SP 16/305/64; SP 16/311/27.
94
J. P. Ferris, The Saltpetremen in Dorset, 1635, Proc. Dorset Nat. Hist. and
Archaeol. Soc., lxxxv (1963), 1601; PRO, SP 16/318/40.
95
Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 16334, 282, 4023, 436.
96
Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 1635, 33, 449; SP 16/300/49; SP 16/300/63; SP 16/
301/61.
97
Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 16378, 453.
98
Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 163940, 176, 473. For more complaints, see Cal.
State Papers, Domestic, 16378, 159, 174, 180, 190, 344, 372, 375, 513, 589; Cal. State
(cont. on p. 99)
architect Christopher Wren junior, who was five years old at the
time of the pigeon-house incident, may have learned something
about politics, and about the solidity of buildings.91
Commoners who lacked the advantages of the political elite
were reduced to private grumbling, but some used more inventive
means to thwart the intruders. In Surrey in 1633 the servants of
George Mynnes of Croydon set chains across the highway and
denied the saltpetremen access to his pigeon house. Armed with
pitchforks and bills, they laughed when the saltpetremen sought
water from Mynnes well, and said that they knew no service that
the king had there; but if the king came that way he should have
the key.92 Angry citizens at Norwich not only barred the saltpetremen from access to water but also used reproachful
speeches and threatened to throw one of the workers in a
well.93 Opponents of the saltpetremen in Dorset obstructed the
carriage of liquids to the boiling house at Sherborne.94 In Essex
they refused to rent barns or warehouses to the saltpetreman
Hugh Grove, and diverted all the ash he needed to the soap
works.95 Almost everywhere, said the Berkshire saltpetreman
Richard Bagnall, was unwillingness among most of his majestys
subjects to do anything for the advance of this service.96
Saltpetremen reported a mutiny against them in Hertfordshire in May 1638, whereby his majestys said officers were in
danger of being killed.97 Midnight raiders in Lincolnshire overthrew saltpetre tubs and spoiled their mixtures, while local magistrates turned blind eyes to the offenders. In Kent in December
1639 malignants with cudgels beat up the saltpetre operatives
and locked them in the stocks, saying the king employed more
rogues in his works than any man.98 Property-owners found
99
(n. 98 cont.)
Papers, Domestic, 1639, 2623; Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 1640, 912, 348; PRO, SP
16/361/110; SP 16/445/79.
99
Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 1639, 157; Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 163940, 594;
Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 1640, 62; PRO, SP 16/420/146; SP 16/449/25; SP 16/450/
36 and 45; SP 16/451/25.
100
John U. Nef, Industry and Government in France and England, 15401640
(Philadelphia, 1940), 65.
101
Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 1638, 118, 448, 472; Cal. State Papers, Domestic,
1639, 12; Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 163940, 102, 424; Cal. State Papers, Domestic,
16401, 313.
100
NUMBER 212
102
101
IV
106
For the furnishing of saltpetre in continental Europe, see Walter Panciera,
Saltpetre Production in the Republic of Venice from the Sixteenth to the
Eighteenth Century, Icon: Jl Internat. Committee for the History of Technology, iii
hslund, The Saltpetre Boilers of the Swedish Crown, in Buchanan
(1977); Bengt A
(ed.), Gunpowder: The History of an International Technology; Nef, Industry and
Government in France and England, 5868, 978; Surirey de Saint-Remy, The
Manufacture of Gunpowder in France (1702). Part 1: Saltpetre, Sulphur and
Charcoal, ed. and trans. D. H. Roberts, Jl Ordnance Soc., v (1993), 47; Robert P.
Multhauf, The French Crash Program for Saltpeter Production, 177694,
Technology and Culture, xii (1971).
107
Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, xx, pt 2, p. 16;
B. H. St. J. ONeil, Stefan von Haschenperg, an Engineer to King Henry VIII, and his
Work, Archaeologia, xci (1945); Williams, Production of Saltpetre in the Middle
Ages, 1256.
108
PRO, SP 12/16/29; Williams, Production of Saltpetre in the Middle Ages,
12830.
102
NUMBER 212
109
PRO, SP 12/16/30; BL, Lansdowne MS 5, fo. 98; Cal. Pat. Rolls, 15603, 98,
104.
110
PRO, SP 12 106/53.
HMC, Calendar of the Manuscripts of the . . . Marquis of Salisbury, xiii, 597. For
earlier efforts, see Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 154780, 53, 68; Cal. State Papers,
Domestic, 158190, 4; PRO, SP 12/106/1; SP 12/147/42; SP 15/24/68; BL,
Lansdowne MS 80, fo. 93.
111
had not been paid properly, and the project was taken over by
local entrepreneurs. The mercer Philip Cockeram and the haberdasher John Barnes secured a licence to supply saltpetre to the
crown, provided the new invention proved to be of such utility
and profit as is pretended.109 Instead of developing this invention, however, the government relied on its prerogative right to
take saltpetre from private properties.
In 1575 the London gentleman John Bovyat obtained an exclusive patent to manufacture saltpetre and gunpowder from
stone mineral. Having travelled abroad, at great cost and risk,
to find out the secret and hidden mystery of this mode of extraction, Bovyat secured a privilege for twenty-one years. The grant
entitled him to prospect on any subjects land within the queens
dominions, and promised him the assistance of all mayors, justices, constables, bailiffs and other local officers. However, it left
intact the rights of other projectors that have heretofore usually
made their saltpetre and gunpowder of mud walls or earth, by
more conventional methods.110 After twenty years of trying, this
project was still stalled in 1596 when Bovyat asked Lord
Burghley, whether he shall go forward with the same, or whether
so great a treasure shall be smothered and lost.111
Another German expert, Leonard Engelbreght of Aachen,
offered in 1577 to make industrial saltpetre in England, but
the deal collapsed when the Fleming Cornelius Stephinson presented more plausible and better-backed plans. Supported by
Sir Thomas Randolph, the royal postmaster, who praised
Stephinsons mastery of a near-secret art, the project called for
works on 400 acres of the New Forest to deliver twenty tons of
saltpetre a year, good perfect and well-refined. Cornelius (as
most of the records refer to him) actually set up his furnace and
tubs, but problems with equipment, labour and funding proved as
burdensome as objections from holders of traditional forest
rights. Several times he apologized for deficiencies and begged
for more time, and in 1580, amidst fears of a Spanish descent on
103
112
Acts of the Privy Council, 15778, 140, 142, 15961, 1701; BL, Lansdowne MS
24, fos. 137, 139; Lansdowne MS 25, fo. 138; Lansdowne MS 28, fos. 13, 23, 141,
145, 147, 149, 152; Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 154780, 658; PRO, SP 12/139/1. The
remains of this Elizabethan facility are described in E. C. Wrey, Saltpetre House,
Ashurst Wood, Colbury, Papers and Proc. Hampshire Field Club and Archaeol. Soc.,
xviii (1954), 3356.
113
PRO, SP 15/30, fo. 213; BL, Lansdowne MS 58, fo. 150.
114
HMC, Calendar of the Manuscripts of the . . . Marquis of Salisbury, xiv, 136; xii,
542.
115
Ibid., xiv, 136.
104
NUMBER 212
116
Acts of the Privy Council, 161921, 177, 188; Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 16235,
25.
117
105
119
Francis Bacon, Opera Omnia, 4 vols. (London, 1730), iii, 867. For the chemistry of urine, see John Emsley, The Shocking History of Phosphorus: A Biography of the
Devils Element (London, 2000), 18.
120
By the King: A Proclamation for the Better Making of Saltpeter within this Kingdome,
2 Jan. 1627; Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 16278, 303.
121
Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 16278, 2634; PRO, SP 16/71/54.
122
By the King: A Proclamation for the Maintaining and Increase of the Mines of
Saltpeter, and the True Making and Working of Saltpeter and Gunpowder, and Reforming
of All Abuses Concerning the Same (London, 23 July 1627, STC 8863).
106
NUMBER 212
123
Acts of the Privy Council, Sept. 1627 June 1628, 1923; PRO, SP 16/180/4.
Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 162931, 382, 483, 554; PRO, SP 16/175/58.
125
BL, Add. MS 4458, fo. 48, n.d.
126
Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 16345, 29; PRO, SP 16/268/24.
127
Proceedings in the Opening Session of the Long Parliament, ed. Jansson, ii, 306, 308,
309; [Thomas Brugis], The Discovery of a Projector (London, 1641).
124
107
V
Expensive and unreliable importation from Europe, vexatious
digging in private grounds, and ambitious schemes of projectors,
all became unnecessary by the later seventeenth century when
India supplied Englands saltpetre needs. Not quite a deus ex
machina, the new East Indian commerce procured an unexpected
external solution to the countrys security problem. This trade
alone furnisheth us with saltpetre, a commodity so necessary that
in the late kings time the nation suffered greatly by the want if it,
observed Sir Josiah Child of the East India traffic in 1681.129
From quiet beginnings under James I, the East India Company
revolutionized the English saltpetre enterprise, transformed the
gunpowder industry and helped make England a great power.
From their first shipment in 1624 for the service of the state,
the Company imported increasing amounts of saltpetre from
128
for parliament while simultaneously addressing social and economic problems. He invited the state to set up workhouses for the
poor, with separate lodgings for men and women, where all their
easing of excrement and urine could be collected and processed.
The scavengers of every city would bring more material to enrich
the earth and accelerate its nitrification. Each collective of 150
poor people would generate matter for ten ton of peter in a year,
which would more than pay for their keeping. The initial cost of
establishing this Mystery or Corporation of Saltpetremakers
could be met by confiscation of the lands of papists and delinquents. Worsleys scheme had elements in common with Thomas
Russells plans of the 1620s, though it was not primarily for profit.
Underlying the projected arrangement of privies and collecting
tanks, furnaces and factories, was confidence in mans ability to
translate corruption into policy and to unlock the secrets of
nature. An added benefit, common to all such schemes, was its
promise not to entrench upon the liberty or infringe the just
privilege of any subject whatsoever.128
108
NUMBER 212
130
Cal. State Papers, Colonial, East Indies, 16224, 202, 240, 476.
Acts of the Privy Council, July 1628 Apr. 1629, 395; Cal. State Papers, Domestic,
1635, 45, 246; Chaudhuri, English East India Company, 18990.
132
Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 1644, 94, 129; Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 16445,
51, 25. See also Bal Krishna, Commercial Relations between India and England (1601 to
1757) (London, 1924), 66, 68, for the Courten or Courteen company.
133
Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 164950, 74, 246, 306, 317, 548; A Calendar of the
Court Minutes etc. of the East India Company, iii, 16441649, ed. Ethel Bruce Sainsbury
and William Foster (Oxford, 1912), 343, 355, 378, 382, 385; Cal. State Papers,
Domestic, 1651, 396.
134
The English Factories in India, 16461650, ed. William Foster (Oxford, 1914),
99, 332, 337; The English Factories in India, 16511654, ed. William Foster (Oxford,
1915), 45, 119, 196; The English Factories in India, 16551660, ed. William Foster
(Oxford, 1921), 206, 308; Tomlinson, Guns and Government, 11213; Brenda J.
Buchanan, Saltpetre: A Commodity of Empire, in Buchanan (ed.), Gunpowder,
Explosives and the State.
135
Buchanan, Saltpetre, 7881; Frey, Indian Saltpeter Trade, 5224. Cal.
Treasury Books, 16607, 360, 648; Cal. Treasury Books, 166972, 153, 294;
131
(cont. on p. 109)
Bengal.130 By the mid 1630s they were shipping up to two hundred tons a year, mostly in ballast, disposing of it to the king, to the
Continent and to their own gunpowder mills.131 Interlopers also
made profits from the arms trade. In 1644 William Courten sold
parliament enough saltpetre to make six hundred barrels of gunpowder, and six months later he engaged to supply 12,000
worth of saltpetre at 4. 10s. a barrel.132 Company saltpetre
reached England intermittently in the 1640s, but soon after the
Regicide the Council agreed to import as much saltpetre as may
be needful for the service of the Commonwealth, and contracted
to buy all that the East India Company could provide. The state
established itself as a regular purchaser, and the Company took
steps to expand its supply. In September 1651, for example, the
Ordnance Office took delivery of 228 tons of Indian saltpetre,
more than the annual output of Charles Is saltpetremen.133
The Company agency in Bengal made saltpetre a prime object
of trade, consuming 50 per cent of available capital. Supply,
demand, and profit all remained high despite Dutch competition,
and open war with the Dutch made Indian saltpetre an even more
valuable commodity in London.134
Collected, leached and boiled from organic soils by a special
caste of nuniyas, East Indian saltpetre made fortunes for
Restoration-era investors. The Ordnance Office paid out
10,800 in 1662, 37,198 in 1665 and 40,000 in 1669 for
East Indian shipments. By 1676 they had more than 3,500 tons
in store.135 Huge cargoes came from workings near Patna, inland
109
VI
The saltpetremen faded in memory to a quaint and unsavoury
nuisance, and historians seem mostly to have washed their hands
of them. But they were notorious in early modern England for
their venality, rapacity and oppressive abuse. In the reign of
Charles I, in particular, they caused vexation to landlords and
tenants, gentlemen and clerics, and to owners and operators of
wagons and carts. Resentment against them may have surpassed
the grievances of billeting and ship money, and was surely more
widespread. Governments tolerated all but the worst excesses of
the saltpetremen because they produced an essential strategic
commodity. Until alternative means were found to procure saltpetre, either by industrial processing or large-scale imports, the
makers of gunpowder would depend upon their foraging and
digging.
(n. 135 cont.)
Tomlinson, Guns and Government, 135. For an early European account of Indian
saltpetre manufacture, see The Voyages & Travels of J. Albert de Mandelslo, in
Adam Olearius, The Voyages & Travels of the Ambassadors Sent by Frederick Duke of
Holstein, to the Great Duke of Muscovy, and the King of Persia, trans. John Davies
(London, 1662), separate pagination, 84.
136
PRO, WO 55/1759; Cal. State Papers, Domestic, Jan. 1686 May 1687, 342; The
English Factories in India, 16651667, ed. William Foster (Oxford, 1925), 139, 257;
The English Factories in India, 16681669, ed. William Foster (Oxford, 1927), 169. For
estimates under Charles I, see Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 16378, 242.
137
Figures recalculated from Chaudhuri, Trading World of Asia and the English East
India Company, 5312, and compared with Krishna, Commercial Relations between
India and England, 201, 3078; Frey, Indian Saltpeter Trade, 509, 5301. See also
West, Gunpowder, Government and War, 172, 221.
from the Bay of Bengal, and more came from the Coromandel
coast, Malabar and Bombay. Whereas Charles I in the 1630s set
targets of 240 lasts of saltpetre a year (288 tons), and was
hard-pressed to achieve those figures, his son, by contrast, imported 589 tons of saltpetre in 1664, 659 tons in 1665 and 1,037
tons in 1669. Average annual imports in the 1670s topped 632
tons, and over 733 tons a year in the 1680s.136 Even these impressive figures paled beside later imports, which averaged 840
tons a year in the 1730s and 1,399 tons a year in the 1740s. After
the Battle of Plassey in 1757 Great Britain controlled some 70 per
cent of the worlds saltpetre, enough to furnish a global military
empire.137
110
NUMBER 212
138
111
David Cressy