On pl. VI a and b are photographs of a pair of flint-lock pistols, dating from the end of the eighteenth century. On the top of the barrel, near the rear sight, they bear the inscription: H. W. Mortimer & Son, London. Gun Makers To His Majesty; and the maker's name is repeated, without addition, on the side, below the cock. The maker's address, 89, Fleet St., is engraved on the outside of the trigger-guard. The pistols are in good order: the springs of the cocks are as strong as ever, and the original flints and ramrods survive. There is, however, nothing remarkable about the pistols as pistols, either in design or execution. They are a good, sound brace, neither fine nor expensive. And when we have said that Mortimer is known to have been in business at this address in Fleet Street in or about the year 1780, we have given all necessary details regarding the weapons themselves.

Their interest lies in a short inscription on an oval brass plate screwed into the wooden stock of each pistol above the trigger, on the side remote from the cock (pl. VI c). This inscription runs: ‘Lord Byron's Pistols, given to me by Count Dionysius Salomos [sic] of Zante. 1834.’ The recipient of the gift, who composed the inscription, was Lord Nugent, Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands from 1832 to 1835. The donor was Dionysius Solomós, author of The Hymn to Liberty.