Stockton pistol’s link to French King Louis XIII is revealed

THE astonishing secrets of a pistol which has been part of a North-East museum’s collection for nearly 100 years have finally been revealed.

Today’s Object of the Week is a wheel-lock pistol – an item that has, for the most part, been a hidden gem in Preston Park Museum, in Stockton.

Only recently, have the secrets from its extraordinary past been revealed – including how it is believed to have belonged to King Louis XIII of France.

The pistol was bequeathed to Stockton Borough Council in 1925 by Colonel Gilbert Omerod Spence, along with many of the other weapons, armour and paintings that you can see on display in the museum today.

Not much was known about the gun, other than Spence had marked it as an “important example of its type”.

It was only after closer inspection in 2018, that the pistol was found to be engraved with the numbers ‘214’.

The wheel-lock pistol marked with the number 214, which led researchers to Paris and its pair in the Musée de l’Armée

This led to further investigations, which revealed that the weaponry in the Cabinet D’Armes, the personal collection of King Louis XIII of France, were engraved in the same way.

What’s more, the pistol would have been part of a pair, with one now on display in the Musée de l’Armée in Paris and the other in Stockton.

This research is due to be published next year in the Journal of Arms and Armour Society.

Louis XIII, known as the ‘Gun King’ due to his love of weapons, was king of France from 1610 to 1643. Under his reign, France became a leading European power.

He was also the King who was ‘protected’ in the fictitious tales of The Three Musketeers, the 1844 novel by Alexandre Dumas.

King Louis XIII pistol close up

The gun at Preston Park is made with a walnut stock and an iron barrel and is inscribed with ‘VIS EST ARDENTIOR INTVS’.

This Latin inscription translates roughly to ‘the fire that burns inwardly is more to be feared’.

This is possibly in reference to the fact that it is a left-handed gun, and so when fired the flash would blow inwards across the body rather than outwards as in a right-handed gun.

The pistol has recently been on display in Preston Park Museum’s spotlight exhibition on Colonel Spence, alongside other notable items from his collection.

The exhibition focused on Col Spence as both a military man and a civic dignitary, who amassed a large collection of militaria.

Preston Park Museum is currently closed due to Covid-19, but the park, toilets, play area and café (takeaway service) are open as usual. V

isit prestonparkmuseum.co.uk for further details.