To answer your questions, one has to look at the research and read between the lines a bit. By the time of King Phillips War, Benjamin Church had outlawed matchlocks with his company. This was due to the inability to do any sort of suprise attack coupled with the un reliable nature of matchlocks in many weather conditions.
The fact that he outlawed them, tells us that in 1675, many were still using matchlocks for militia drill and muster. By the second and third quarters of the 17th century, the newer matchlocks were trigger locks and a clubby musket type butt had supplanted the fish tail butt. Now, there were plenty of earlier fish tail butt muskets around. There are some surviving with English locks (early form of flintlock) and even true flintlocks, having been altered from matchlocks in later years.
The archaeological record tells us that a majority were trigger locks. Some of Dr. Kelso's work at the Jamestowne Rediscovery Project shows that there were lever lock muskets at Jamestown. The same feature produced several locks for lever locks and a complete musket sized snaphaunce lock.
Early mechanical locks (snaphaunce, English locks...)were around quite early. Look at the account of Myles Standish at Plymouth. He had a snaphaunce musket getting off the boat onto the rock that they never had contact with!
Read Bradford's account of the Pilgrims scouting on what is to this day known as First Encounter Beach. They were suprised by some Indians early in the morning. The party had been separated into two groups by about 50 yards or so. The group near the boat did not have a fire and did not have their matches lit. Standish was blazing away with his snaphuance while the others lit their matches. One brave soul ran out among the flying arrows to take an ember to the other group. Luckily he was un harmed.
My reaserch shows that the fish tail but is on the outs in a production standpoint, by about 1640. This is also about the time that we start to see a fair number of muskets in the colonies with mechanical locks. Inventories and writings from the colonies to those in Europe also mention the efficacy of non matchlock arms.
I am of the opinion that those making and supplying muskets acquired what they could and what they could as cheaply as possible. So, in Maryland, early on one would see fish tail butted muskets commonly. This is also supported by the fact that the majority of early matchlocks. had fish tail buts.
When looking at muskets of this time, rarely does one see one that is much below 70 caliber and the majority were more like 80.
Sorry, that got quite long. If you are still awake, forgive me.
If I can ever figure out how to post photos on here, I will post pix of the 1620 period matchlock that I scratch built, save for the Coleraine barrel.
Gotta love the early guns!
Thanks,
Yancey
