XXXIV.—Proofs of the Early Use of Gunpowder in the English Army. By Joseph Hunter, F.S.A.

Extract

In the course of the researches which have been instituted at home and abroad into the history of an invention which has had in various ways most extensive influences on the state of society, and in particular on its application to the art of war, reference has been often made to a passage in an old Italian historian, John Villani, in which it is stated that instruments, which can only have been cannon in the ordinary sense of the word, were used by King Edward the Third at the Battle of Cressy. It has not been discovered that the statement receives any support from any of our own historians; and the utmost of the corroboration which it has received from the testimony of our Records amounts only to this, that persons named gunnarii occur in an account of the Expenses of the Siege of Calais, which ensued immediately on the Battle of Cressy.