BY JACQUES GORGO, LONDON, CIRCA 1690

Jacques Gorgo, a Huguenot immigrant gunmaker of Swiss origin, is first recorded in this country in 1686, and resided on the east side of Grafton Street by 1691. He is mentioned in the Huguenot church registers, 1689-1727. His premises were searched by the Gunmakers' Company on 13 May 1692, and two unproved guns and a pair of pistols were confiscated. Similarly in July 1698 a four-chambered gun was seized. Both Gorgo and Dolep produced very high quality three-shot breech-loading pistols with funnel-shaped breeches, as well as multi-shot weapons. The last include a funnel-breeched double-locked two-shot gun in the Royal Armouries, Leeds (inv. no. XII. 4094), and a two-shot gun with turn-over chambers formerly in the Clay P. Bedford Collection (exhibited in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1971, no. 134). Like Dolep, Gorgo produced a four-chambered gun in 1698, but nothing is known of its construction

For further information on this maker see Neal and Back, op. cit., pp. 249-253, and J.F. Hayward, 'The Huguenot Gunmakers of London', J.A.A.S., vol. VI, no. 4 (December 1968), pp. 123, 125-6