Artillery.
Early B.L. Cannon
Culverin
B.L. Ship Gun, 1545 (Recovered 1836).
M.L. Burgundian (without trunnions) 1477.
M.L. Spanish (with trunnions & dolphins) 1800.
R.B.L. Field Gun 1896
But with the Stuarts had arisen a new power. To loyalty to the head of the State was to be added reverence for an asserted divine right to govern, of which little had been said before. With James I. arose the theory of the divine right of kings. How it came to be that his people, or a section of them, acquiesced in this assumption,—if they ever really did,—is one of the unexplained wonders of the time; but that the idea grew up and grew into full strength when Charles I., the best, if not the ablest of the Stuarts, was king, is clear.
With him the idea of the personal sacredness of majesty came to a head, and died with him, as men died for his “idea.” Again another stage in the army’s growth. Before this brave soldiers had died for “ideas” in battle; now they were to die for an idea translated, or crystallised, into a king. Out of this feeling came the men who fought for the cause and the country as well as the sovereign, and less than before for the personal duty due to the military chief or leader of a feudal family or clan. There were several reasons for this alteration in the causes that made men then join armies. During the Tudor dynasty there had been a vast extension of foreign trade, with foreign travel, which opened men’s minds and induced freedom in political thought. The theological revival which culminated in the Reformation had aroused a spirit, first of intolerance, and then of a desire for freedom in religious belief. To the latter a hatred to Roman Catholicism, a dread of popish interference in secular matters, the example given by the religious conditions of our great commercial antagonist, Spain, and the cruelties attributed to the Inquisition, largely contributed. To the former the increase of commercial wealth, with a corresponding decrease in the feudal power of the nobles, and a greater dependence on general taxation to support the Government and foreign wars, lent their aid. When Charles I. became king, he represented, in person, these conflicting elements; for though not a Roman Catholic himself, he was a High Churchman, his wife a Roman Catholic, and to an autocratic belief in his own divine right he added an untrustworthiness which was one of the many causes that led to his downfall. “From this inordinate reverence for the kingly office grew a great evil, for with a perverseness of reasoning which we name Jesuitical, Charles held that for the advancement of so holy a cause as that of the king must ever be, no means, however vile or mean to the common eye, could be in verity aught but virtuous and true. To this Moloch he sacrificed his children, as he had previously surrendered his home, his wife, and his happiness; to this idol he offered up the love of his subjects, the hope of his house, and the good of his country; for this he became an outcast, a vagrant, and a prisoner; and when love, friends, and liberty had been swallowed by the burning fiery furnace, he flung in with them his honour and his fair fame for ever. It was then no hard matter to die for the god. Let those only judge him for whom there exists a Truth so living.”[10]