Lot Essay
Sold with two manuscript notes by the original owner, one listing the contents of the case, the other giving instructions for the use of the rifle, including a recommendation to "pick up the birds quick", confirming that it was intended for geese. Also in the case is a manuscript letter from H. Nock's shop about the rifle, written by Nock's clerk James Wilkinson, who later married his daughter and set up in business on his own as James Wilkinson, gunmakers, a firm that survives today as Wilkinson Sword Ltd.
Seven-barrel rifles were made popular by Colonel Thomas Thornton's A Sporting Tour through the Northern Parts of England and A Sporting Tour through France, were he described their use on roedeer as well as birds, Thornton even commissioned a fourteen-barrel example, preserved to-day in the Musée d'Armes in Liège
For further information on rifles of this type see W. Keith Neal & D.H.L. Back, Great British Gunmakers 1740-1790, pp. 109-110
Seven-barrel rifles were made popular by Colonel Thomas Thornton's A Sporting Tour through the Northern Parts of England and A Sporting Tour through France, were he described their use on roedeer as well as birds, Thornton even commissioned a fourteen-barrel example, preserved to-day in the Musée d'Armes in Liège
For further information on rifles of this type see W. Keith Neal & D.H.L. Back, Great British Gunmakers 1740-1790, pp. 109-110