The John Bargrave Collection

projector and confidence man, [who] had, in 1665, only recently arrived in England after nearly thirty years (1635-64) in Holland. According to Joachim Becher, he had left Rotterdam in great haste after his charlatanism had become notorious. How he had, within months of his arrival in England, gulled the good-natured Moray will be evident from his claim—-made nearly forty years after Weindl—-to be the inventor of gunpowder blasting. But knowledge of the technique on the practical, or any other, level was obviously then very novel in England as would appear from the decision to publish his description. Yet to do justice to du Son, his account when set against the continental evidence must be judged as accurately observed and in some respects indeed very up-to-date, while the engravings which accompanied his piece are in fact the earliest representations of boring tool and plugs that I have been able to find (45-6).