With turn-off cannon barrel, breech engraved 'London' and with a band of foliage behind, waisted foliate engraved tang, border engraved action signed beneath the steel-spring, figured globose butt carved with a shell behind the tang, and trigger-guard engraved with a cross-hatched oval within a panel on the bow, London proof marks and Foreigner's mark, together with a barrel-wrench.

FOOTNOTES

John Hurst was apprenticed to Jonathon Herring of Darnton, Yorkshire and by 1747 was working for Clarke in London. He is recorded as Gunmaker at the Two Cross Guns 'in the passage leading from Little Tower Hill to East Smithfield' from 1744. He was Contractor to Ordnance between 1746-74 and was one of the largest gun setters-up employing a reported thirty-four workers in 1755. In 1772 he supplied the royal princes with a set of boys military arms. On his death in 1776 he left estates in Essex, Yorkshire, Hertfordshire and London.