Breech loading flintlock rifle with round barrel with maker's name; walnut stock, hollow within; sliding cover on butt plate; steel mounts decorated with foliate motifs, hunting scenes (hares & hunter shooting at a target), houses & birds.

Robert Rowland was made free of the Gunmakers’ Company in 1715, so it is not clear why a foreigner’s mark was used on the breech of this gun, as these were usually reserved for any gunmaker who did not belong to the London Company. Rowland was a noted maker of breech-loading guns and pistols, although this mechanism is unusual. The breech contains a detachable steel cartridge which may be pre-loaded. It is one of a small group of such guns – another by Rowland and a third by the Huguenot maker, Henry Delany (active 1715-46), of c.1720 being the only others of this type. As the inscription makes clear the gun was made for John Tournay, a London merchant, with a property in Esher, Surrey, known as Sandy Chapel. It may be that this is the residence engraved on the butt of the gun. According to Blackmore Tournay ‘commissioned unusual guns bearing his name and address’.

The stock of the gun contains a hollow ‘patch-box’ or covered cavity in which the accoutrements for shooting could be stored. In this instance the cover is engraved with a figure firing at a target and it is possible that this rifle was made for target shooting.

Text adapted from The First Georgians; Art and Monarchy 1714 - 1760, London 2014