| Abstract: | Little attention has been paid by historians to the production of firearms in the Tower of London in the fifteenth century before the reign of Henry VII. This is due to the lack of surviving records for the office of the ordnance prior to the 1490s. The discovery of the earliest surviving set of accounts by a Master of the Ordnance based at the Tower, however, means that it is now possible to examine the manufacture and refurbishment of guns at the Tower in the early 1470s. This evidence demonstrates that Edward IV was responsible for the re-establishment of the Tower as the principle facility for the production and storage of firearms in England, which laid important foundations that his Tudor successors built upon. |
