RootsChat.Com

Thanks Flattybasher - Wiki tells me that Caplocks were known as Percussion Locks in Europe?  Would I be right in thinking that it was manufactured some time between 1820 and 1840 or could it be earlier?

Can any of you eagle-eyed contributors help me with this or point me in the right direction.  A local history group is working in a museum for gunsmiths and cutlers and we have a pistol which we are trying to attribute to a particular gunmaker and we need to know roughly the year it was made.  Don't know much about pistols but we do know it is possibly early 19th century.  It does not seem to have a trigger which seems odd and not sure how the firing mechanism works.  See photo attached - which I am afraid is not very clear.

Hi Flattybasher.  I was aware of the Felicity Beard research - we have even been in touch about her research.  She is tentatively in agreement with me that the tomb may be that of William Tournay.  However, I had not read her paper before although I was aware of it.  But your reply has helped me to solve another puzzle.  I had made another post on this site about another coat of arms in the church roof which I was trying to identify.  I finally found it yesterday from an old book on Church Heraldry printed in 1911.  It is the coat of arms of the "All Saints".  I could not work out why there was coat of arms for the All Saints in a church dedicated to St John the Baptist.  Felicity's paper answers the question as it says that the church was rededicated to St John when the brothers appropriated it on 17 July 1304 and they were responsible for the church repairs.  So thank you again for drawing my attention to it.

David Appleton - hi - it is me that raised the query directly a year ago!  I thought I would try a wider forum to see if anyone else recognised it.

In response to the other queries - the church is St John the Baptist of North Baddesley.  It was the church within the manor of North Baddesley which was held by the Knights Hospitallers between the 11 century and the reformation.  William Tournay was preceptor there in the 1450's but became the Prior of England in 1472 after the execution of the previous Prior, John Langstrother, following the Battle of Tewkesbury.  The knights were on the losing side as they were trying to prevent King Edward from appointing his Neville brother-in-law as the Prior.  Tournay got pardoned for his involvement and ended up as Prior but died shortly after.  He is supposed to be buried at the Knights Hospitaller chapel in London but there is a suspicion that maybe part of his body was buried in the North Baddesley church.  George Gilbert Scott (Victorian architect) has opined that the tomb is late 14th century and others believe that the tomb (which bears  the Maltese cross carved into the tomb sides) must be of somebody important connected to the Preceptory but there are no other clues apart from the stylised T carved on the tomb and in the window.