[525] W. L. Clowes, “The Royal Navy,” 1897, i. 149.
[526] Benedict. Veron., De Rebus Carol. VIII., in Eccardi, Script. Rer. Germ., ii (Jähns).
At the siege of Bilqan in Persia by the Moguls under Prince Hulágu in 1256, stones not being procurable for the machines, wooden shell filled with lead were employed with good effect.—Heft Iqlim, Persian MS. in Bib. Nat., Paris, No. 356, fol. 500.
[527] Average price, 1371-80. Rogers’ “Hist. of Agriculture and Prices,” i. 484.
[528] 90.5 per cent. copper and 9.5 per cent. tin; copper at 2s. 34d. per lb. (average, 1303-53); tin at 3.41d. per lb. (average, 1371-80). Mr. Rogers notices the rareness of copper, 1350-1400. Ib., i. 484; ii. 531. The bronze of an Egyptian mirror, cir. 1750 B.C., was found by M. Berthelot to consist of 91 per cent. copper and 9 per cent. tin.—Introd. Alchimistes Grecs, p. 221.
[529] Ib., i. 605 (average, 1371-80). There is some little uncertainty about the exact price of lead owing to the “fother” having three meanings. “In the Book of Rates it is said to be two thousand pound-weight; at the mines it is twenty-two hundred and a half; and among the Plummers at London, nineteen hundred and a half.” “The New World of Words,” 6th ed., by E. Phillips, London, 1706. I have taken the 2000 lbs. of the Book of Rates.
[530] There was no cast-iron in the fourteenth century.
[531] I have taken the proportions for bronze as given for shell by G. della Valle in his Vallo, Venice, 1521: 75 per cent. copper and 25 per cent. tin, which had a sp. gr. of 8.4 and cost 2.6d. per lb.
[532] This gives a sp. gr. of 3.1, and shows that the stone was probably limestone, although Nye objects to “freestone” for shot and recommends “marble, pibble stones, and hard blew stones,” p. 58. “Pibbilston” is found in Wiclif´s Bible, Prov. xx. 17, cir. 1383.
[533] Limestone sold in 1664 at 3s. 6d. a ton; Rogers, v. 508. But the wages of a gunstone-maker in Queen Elizabeth’s reign were 6d. a day, or about 3s. 6d. of our money. Brackenbury, v. 2 n..