"By laying waste to the town and setting fire to many of its houses, Rupert's force provided parliament with a propaganda coup ... Charles rebuked Rupert for his men's behaviour — the prince had in fact done his best to curb his men ... but the damage was done: Birmingham had paid the price for supporting parliament and being seen to profit from it". Birmingham, continued to manufacture weapons of all kinds during this period and was heavily relied upon by Parliamentary armies for such wares. It remained on the borders between the largely Cavalier garrisoned Worcestershire and Roundhead garrisoned Warwickshire. Colonel Tinker Fox operated from Edgbaston House close to Birmingham and probably took place in the attack on Aston Hall on 28 December 1643, removing the main royalist base in the Birmingham. He and his garrison actively raided into Worcestershire during the First Civil War. Perhaps his most famous exploit was a commando style raid on Bewdley which resulted in the capture of Sir Thomas Lyttelton its governor. By the last quarter of the 17th century, the population of Birmingham was somewhere between 4,000 and 15,000. Birmingham's small arms manufacture continued and during the mid-to-late 17th century Birmingham smiths were renowned for their manufacture of quality weapons (Alexander Missen in his Travels on visiting Milan noted that "fine works of rock-crystal, swords, heads of canes, snuffboxes, and other fine works of steel" could be purchased in Milan but that "they can be had better and cheaper in Birmingham"). There is no evidence that firearms were manufactured in Birmingham until the 1690s when the Office of Ordinance issued a warrant to "pay John Smart for Thomas Hadley, and the rest of the Gunmakers of Birmingham, one debenture of four-score and sixteen pounds eight shillings, dated ye 14th of July 1690", but it is unlikely that guns were not manufactured in Birmingham before that date. It is more likely that when Sir Richard Newdigate approached manufacturers in the town in 1689 with the notion of supplying the British Government with small arms, it was important that they would need to be of high enough calibre to equal the small arms that were imported from abroad. After a successful trial order in 1692, the Government placed its first contract. On 5 January 1693 the "Officers of Ordnance" chose five local firearms manufacturers to initially produce 200 "snaphance musquets" per month over the