Provenance Clay P. Bedford Exhibited Early Firearms of Great Britain and Ireland, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1971 Literature Herbert A. Sherlock, Early Grenade Launchers of Great Britain, in, Military Collector and Historian, June 1951, pp. 44-6. Early Firearms of Great Britain and Ireland, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1971, cat. No. 105. The present combined grenade thrower and flintlock musket is one of three known examples, the other two being preserved in the Royal Armouries, Leeds (Inv. Nos. XII 260 and 261), by James Peddell and Hartwell respectively.
John Tinker invented this combined musket and grenade thrower in 1681 and was awarded a pension of five pounds per quarter for it. The Ordnance Records include a minute referring to three gunmakers, Collins Groome, John Hartwell and James Peddell, for stocking and locking brass hand mortar pieces made by the Ordnance brass founder William Wightman at Moorfields. James (1) Peddell apprenticed to John Silke, became free of the Gunmaker’s Company, 1682; was elected assistant, 1699; and became Master 1703-4. He was Gunmaker to Ordnance, 16851717; The East India Company, 1716; The Hudson Bay Company 1687-1722 and the Royal African Company from 1721 until his death in 1723. See H. L. Blackmore 1961, pp. 35-36, for a detached grenade launcher see F. Grose 1801, vol. II, p. 363. ‡ £19000-24000
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