FOR COMMONWEALTH AND CROWN: ENGLISH GUNMAKERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. By John S. Cooper.

1993 1st edition. 4to (174 x 242mm). Pp237. Colour frontis, b/w photographs, illustrations. Orange-red cloth, spine titled in gilt.

"The 350th Anniversary of the beginning of the English Civil Wars falls in 1992 - an appropriate year for the appearance of this book, which is centred round the Civil War and Commonwealth period and singles out some of the more interesting and important gunmakers who worked during those years". Chapters include: An early English flintlock pistol - the rescue, barrel stock and furniture, the lock, decoration, the marks, the date and the maker; Ralph Venn; William Parsons; The Littlecote affair; The Murdens; The Watsons; The work of William and John Watson; Surviving examples of the Watson's work; The gun lock in seventeenth century England.