Product Details
CHARLES LANCASTER
THE ORIGINAL ROYAL WARRANT APPOINTING THE COMPANY AS GUNMAKER TO KING EDWARD VII,
given by the then Keeper of His Majesty's Privy Purse, General Sir Dighton Probyn, V.C. to Henry Alfred Alexander Thorn, trading under the title of Charles Lancaster and dated 23rd July 1901 in the first year of His Majesty's reign and bearing the seal of the Privy Purse, the warrant set within a heavy mount and glazed, hardwood frame, the whole being 26in. x 20in.
Provenance: Henry Alfred Alexander was born April 1854 in Kensington to Frederick and Emily Thorn. His father was a well-thought of coach builder based in Norwich and it is, perhaps, surprising that the young Henry wasn't apprenticed to his father.
Instead, he went to work for Charles William Lancaster in 1870, and it is thought that he may have been directly indentured to him although he did not serve a formal apprenticeship through the Gunmakers' Livery Company. Five years later, and by then describing himself as a gunsmith, Thorn married Annie Cooke, who came from a moneyed background. She was to die after only two years later leaving her husband with a deal of money and a son. The following year Lancaster passed away, and Thorn was to purchase the company a mere eight years after joining it.
Thorn was an industrious and forward-thinking man who improved upon some of Lancaster's patents as well as adding his own, perhaps most notably his multi-barrelled shotguns and cape rifles, and the single-trigger fitted to them. Indeed, Sir Ralph Payne Gallwey took an improved quad-barrel shotgun onto a grouse moor in 1890 and wrote, "I used the four-barrel gun the other day grouse driving. I consider it admirable both in theory and practice, and most useful as a third gun for packs coming over, as by its means four birds can then be shot without taking the gun from the shoulder. I was pleased to find the new gun similar to an ordinary one as to weight, handling, pull of triggers, etc., and that it is, besides, so easy of manipulation."
Charles Lancaster (the company) were patronised by a good number of respected sportsman of the time, and had already been granted Royal Warrants by both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. On the death of Queen Victoria in January 1901, Thorn respectfully celebrated the accession of the longest-serving heir apparent by presenting King Edward VII with a Lee-Enfield service rifle and a Charles Ross straight-pull rifle. So it was that in the July of 1901 the newly-crowned King personally presented Thorn (trading as Charles Lancaster) with his warrant. This was indeed an honour; Royal warrants were often presented by the Keeper of the Privy Purse rather than the Sovereign.
Estimate £2,000-2,500