county, more particularly at Steel-Forge Land,
Warbleton, and at Robertsbridge. The steel was said to be of good
quality, resembling Swedish--both alike depending for their excellence
on the exclusive use of charcoal in smelting the ore,--iron so produced
maintaining its superiority over coal-smelted iron to this day.

When cannon came to be employed in war, the nearness of Sussex to
London and the Cinque Forts gave it a great advantage over the remoter
iron-producing districts in the north and west of England, and for a
long time the iron-works of this county enjoyed almost a monopoly of
the manufacture. The metal was still too precious to be used for
cannon balls, which were hewn of stone from quarries on Maidstone
Heath. Iron was only available, and that in limited quantities, for
the fabrication of the cannon themselves, and wrought-iron was chiefly
used for the purpose. An old mortar which formerly lay on Eridge
Green, near Frant, is said to have been the first mortar made in
England;[6] only the chamber was cast, while the tube consisted of bars
strongly hooped together. Although the local distich says that

"Master Huggett and his man John
They did cast the first cannon,"

there is every reason to believe that both cannons and mortars were
made in Sussex before Huggett's time; the old hooped guns in the Tower
being of the date of Henry VI. The first cast-iron cannons of English
manufacture were made at Buxtead, in Sussex, in 1543, by Ralph Hogge,
master founder, who employed as his principal assistant one Peter
Baude, a Frenchman. Gun-founding was a French invention, and Mr. Lower
supposes that Hogge brought over Baude from France to teach his workmen
the method of casting the guns. About the same time Hogge employed a
skilled Flemish gunsmith named Peter Van Collet, who, according to
Stowe, "devised or caused to be made certain mortar pieces, being at
the mouth from eleven to nine inches wide, for the use whereof the said
Peter caused to be made certain hollow shot of cast-iron to be stuffed
with fyrework, whereof the bigger sort for the same has screws of iron
to receive a match to carry fyre for to break in small pieces the said
hollow shot, whereof the smallest piece hitting a man would kill or
spoil him." In short, Peter Van Collet here introduced the manufacture
of the explosive shell in the form in which it continued to be used
down to our own day.

Baude, the Frenchman, afterwards set up