The gun was manufactured by the Duke's artillery maker
Jehan Cambier, and was successfully tested at Mons, Hainaut, Wallonia,
in June 1449; however, the Duke did not take delivery of the Mons Meg
until 1453. Desiring to "interfere in British affairs", the Duke decided
to help the Scots against the English.A
conflicting theory, based on limited evidence, suggests it was
constructed in order to aid James II in the 1452 siege of Threave Castle
in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, when the Clan MacLellan used it to
batter the castle.
The 22" (56 cm) caliber cannon accepted balls that
weighed about 180 kg (396 lb); the Mons Meg could only be fired 8-10
times a day due to the tremendous heat generated by the powder charge
required. It has been suggested that Meg was one of the Armaments on
James IV's Carrack, the Great Michael, making that the ship with the
largest caliber gun in history.
From the 1540s Meg was retired from active service and
was fired only on ceremonial occasions from Edinburgh Castle, from where
shot could be found up to two miles distant. The gun was last fired in
1681 to celebrate the birthday of James Duke of Albany and York later
James VII of Scotland and II of England, when the barrel exploded and it
was left outside Foog's Gate at Edinburgh Castle. It was taken as a
souvenir to the Tower of London in 1754. It was returned to the Castle
in 1829 and sits outside St. Margaret's Chapel.
"Mons Meg was a large old-fashioned piece of ordnance,
a great favourite with the Scottish common people; she was fabricated at
Mons, in Flanders, in the reign of James IV. or V. of Scotland. This gun
figures frequently in the public accounts of the time, where we find
charges for grease, to grease Meg’s mouth withal (to increase, as every
schoolboy knows, the loudness of the report), ribands to deck her
carriage, and pipes to play before her when she was brought from the
Castle to accompany the Scottish army on any distant expedition. After
the Union, there was much popular apprehension that the Regalia of
Scotland, and the subordinate Palladium, Mons Meg, would be carried to
England to complete the odious surrender of national independence.
The
Regalia, sequestered from the sight of the public, were generally
supposed to have been abstracted in this manner. As for Mons Meg, she
remained in the Castle of Edinburgh, till, by order of the Board of
Ordnance, she was actually removed to Woolwich about 1757. The Regalia,
by his Majesty’s special command, have been brought forth from their
place of concealment in 1818, and exposed to the view of the people, by
whom they must be looked upon with deep associations; and, in this very
winter of 1828–9, Mons Meg has been restored to the country, where that,
which in every other place or situation was a mere mass of rusty iron,
becomes once more a curious monument of antiquity" Notes to Rob Roy, Sir
Walter Scott.
The gun is never called "Mons Meg" in any contemporary
references until the 17th century. The "Meg" may either be a reference
to Margaret of Denmark, Queen of James III of Scotland, or simply an
alliteration, while Mons was one of the locations where the cannon was
originally tested.
Evolution of the carriage. Evidently, when Mons Meg
was removed from Edinburgh Castle in 1754, her carriage had long since
rotted away. A contemporary account describes her as lying “on the
ground” near the innermost gate to the castle (Blair 1967). Presumably a
new carriage was fabricated by the Ordnance Board after her arrival at
the Tower.
In 1835, after the return of Mons Meg to Edinburgh
Castle, the London made carriage rotted away too and fabrication of a
cast iron replacement was undertaken.
As we see Mons Meg today, it is mounted on a
reproduction of the carriage depicted in a stone carving of ca. 1500 on
a wall of Edinburgh Castle.
