A Very Rare Early Flintlock Blunderbuss-Pistol
With 7½ inch two stage brass barrel flared at the muzzle, octagonal breech becoming polygonal, signed along the top flat and engraved with foliage, tang with lightly engraved decoration, signed border engraved rounded lock decorated with foliage, the cock engraved ensuite, artificially figured full stock (small chip in front of the lock, fore-end partly replaced) with apron around the tang, mounts comprising cast and pierced copper serpentine side-plate, long eared brass pommel engraved with foliage and with a wreath centred on the retaining screw, border engraved trigger-guard with trefoil-shaped finial and decorated with foliage on the bow, baluster brass ramrod-pipe, and later ramrod, London proof marks and Trulock’s barrelsmith’s mark.
Provenance: The J.C.L. Knapton Collection
Literature: J.N. George, English Pistols and Revolvers…, 1938, p.33, pl.IV, fig.5
Note: George 1 Trulock was apprenticed to Harward Darke and turned over to his father William 1 (mentioned in Pepys’ Diary 29 March 1667 ‘One Trulocke the famous gunsmith, that is a mighty ingenious man and he did take my gun in pieces and made me understand the secrets thereof’) in 1680. He was allowed to prove guns under his father’s mark in 1687 and was free of the Gunmakers’ Company the following year. He was Gunmaker to Ordnance between 1695 and 1708, and supplied gun barrels and Barbary locks ‘finely wrought for presents to the emperor of Morocco’ in 1704