The Small Armoury. To this noble room you are led by a folding door adjoining to the east end of the Tower chapel, which leads to a grand staircase of fifty easy steps. On the left-side of the uppermost landing-place is the workshop, in which are constantly employed about fourteen furbishers, in cleaning, repairing, and new placing the arms.
On entering the armoury you see what they call a wilderness of arms, so artfully disposed, that at one view you behold arms for near 80,000 men, all bright, and fit for service at a moment’s warning: a sight which it is impossible to behold without astonishment, and besides those exposed to view, there were before the present war sixteen chests shut up, each chest holding about 1200 muskets. Of the disposition of the arms no adequate idea can be formed by description; but the following account may enable the spectator to view them to greater advantage, and help him to retain what he sees.
The arms were originally disposed in this manner by Mr. Harris, who contrived to place them in this beautiful order both here and in the guard chamber of Hampton Court. He was a common gunsmith, but after he had performed this work, which is the admiration of people of all nations, he was allowed a pension from the crown for his ingenuity.
The north and south walls are each adorned with eight pilasters, formed of pikes sixteen feet long, with capitals of the Corinthian order composed of pistols.
At the west end, on the left-hand, as you enter, are two curious pyramids of pistols, standing upon crowns, globes, and scepters, finely carved and placed upon pedestals five feet high.
At the east, or farther end, in the opposite corner are two suits of armour, one made for that warlike prince Henry V. and the other for his son Henry VI. over each of which is a semicircle of pistols: between these is represented an organ, the large pipes composed of brass blunderbusses, the small of pistols. On one side of the organ is the representation of a fiery serpent, the head and tail of carved work, and the body of pistols winding round in the form of a snake; and on the other an hydra, whose seven heads are artfully combined by links of pistols.
The inner columns that compose the wilderness, round which you are conducted by your guides, are,
1. Some arms taken at Bath in the year 1715, distinguished from all others in the Tower, by having what is called dog locks; that is, a kind of locks with a catch to prevent their going off at half-cock.
2. Bayonets and pistols put up in the form of half moons and fans, with the imitation of a target in the center made of bayonet blades. These bayonets, of which several other fans are composed, are of the first invention, they having plug handles which go into the muzzle of the gun, instead of over it, and thereby prevent the firing of the piece, without shooting away the bayonet. These were invented at Bayonne in Spain, and from that place take their name.
3. Brass blunderbusses for sea service, with capitols of pistols over them. The waves of the sea are here represented in old fashioned bayonets.