Part3_d
4/11/07
8:38 pm
Page 186
30. A Fine and Important English Cased Flintlock Seven-Barrel Volley Rifle by Henry Nock, London 1796 Formed of seven browned barrels, each rifled with seven grooves, arranged in a six-roundone configuration with one of the lower barrels stamped underneath with the serial number 2575, fitted with a case-hardened patent breech, with engraved false-breech tang, with single gold line and gold touch hole, central sunken rib with lozenge shaped foresight, standing rearsight with two leaves, and signed h . nock – london – gun – maker – to his majesty; the flat lock with stepped tail and bevelled edges, sliding rear safety, swannecked cock, gold lined pan, the lock plate signed with a recessed oval gold stamp marked h nock, the inner face stamped with the initials ap; highly figured walnut half-stock with integral cheekpiece, fine diamond chequering at both the hand and fore-end, gold barrel-bolt escutcheons and oval gold escutcheon engraved with the crest used by Alexander Davison (a dove, with a wheat-ear in its beak, rising from an earl’s coronet), with engraved and blued mounts comprising scroll trigger guard and butt plate; in its original, green baize-lined mahogany case with accessories including fourteen-cavity gang mould, seven-nozzle powder charger, flint wallet with turnscrew and pricker, with Henry Nock’s trade label for Ludgate Street, LONDON applied inside the lid and fitted with a brass carrying handle engraved with the owner’s name – alex r. davison esq r. Overall length: 36 1⁄2 in
Barrel length: 20 1⁄2 in
Our superb cased seven-barrel volley rifle was purchased by Alexander Davison directly from Henry Nock in 1796. He was Admiral Horatio Nelson’s prize agent, his treasurer and closest advisor in civilian affairs and, above all, his intimate friend. In March 1795 Alexander Davison had purchased Swarland House and its surrounding estate near Morpeth in Northumberland. This was to be his country house and during the ensuing months many items purchased by Davison in London were sent by sea to the nearby port of Alnmouth. A surviving inventory for 1796 confirms the purchase of a ‘7 barrel gun’ from Henry Nock on 21 July for £40 16s. 0d. This is our cased seven-barrel volley rifle, serial number 2575. It is the only known example of such a gun by Henry Nock in its original case and must represent a unique survival of a weapon of this type in such wonderful and complete condition. Henry Nock was born in 1741 at Tipton in Staffordshire and baptised on 17 May. He was the first son of Thomas Nock, a victualler, and his wife Ann and was the eldest of eleven children, all but three of whom survived infancy. Richard, a younger brother born in 1754, was the only other member of the family to follow a career in gunmaking. Indeed, apart from his sister who married a victualler, and one brother who was a nailer, all Henry’s other brothers were involved in the construction and management of canals in central England. There is no known record of Henry Nock’s early years and it was not until 1768, when he was twenty-seven years old, that he was recorded in London renting a workshop in Elm Street in the parish of St. Andrew, Holborn. However, although no supporting evidence has been found, it has been suggested that he probably served his apprenticeship as a gunlock-maker in or around Tipton and then worked in Birmingham. The evidence for this suggestion is that in 1778 Henry