content_output-091_9 (Q6877)

The most reliable accounts state the flint-lock to have been of Spanish origin, and invented early in the seventeenth century, and prior to 1630. Immediately upon its introduction it was styled the Lock à la Miquelet, and so named, it is said, from a Spanish regiment composed of marauders (Miquelitos) of the Pyrenees; in which case the account of its invention will correspond somewhat with that given by Grose and other English writers, who state the flint-lock to have been of Dutch origin, and first used by robbers, or rather poultry stealers (snaaphans), who, it is said, invented the flint-lock from a study of the wheel-lock, the use of the matchlock exposing them, on their marauding expeditions, to great