A Fine Early Pair of Flintlock Holster Pistols by John Cosens. 18” overall, 11” round three stage 20 bore barrels, decorated with geometric bands at the breeches, foliate engraved tangs, border engraved ‘banana shaped’ locks signed ‘I Cosens’ in capitals & decorated with scrolling foliage, cocks with slender bands engraved en suite, frizzens also engraved with foliage. Moulded artificially figured stock, with aprons around the barrel tangs, locks & steel mounts, with silver mounts comprising chiselled serpentine side plates, long eared butt caps with grotesque masks on the butts, steel trigger guards decorated with foliage on the bows, scroll triggers, baluster ramrod pipes & iron capped ramrods.
Circa 1680.
John Cosens (also Cosnes, Cosins, Cozens and Cussens) John Cosens, said to have ‘leant ~ye arte (of gunmaking) in ye City of Winchester~’, was admitted to the Freedom of the Gunmakers Company on 14th August 1662. By 1664 he was in business and received payments from the Ordnance board for the manufacture and repair of matchlock and snaphaunce arms during the period 1666-80. In 1670 he took over Harman Barnes shop in the Strand from his widow and he became Gunmaker in Ordinary to Charles II before 1669. The Wardrobe Account for 1680 shows that he delivered three pairs of pistols and one gun for £29 and in the same year he supplied pistols and one gun (stocked with ash) for £8 as part of the King’s presents for the Emperor of Morocco. The last reference to him is on 4th August 1698 when he was fined ten shillings for proving a birding barrel belonging to John May who was not entitled to have barrels proved.
See Neal and Back 1984, p. 139 and Blackmore 1999, pp. 58-9.