Among the family papers is a letter bearing date this year, alluding to Lord Herbert, but addressed by Secretary Coke to his Lordship’s father:—
“Right Honourable,
“Upon a letter received from your noble son, the Lord Herbert, whereby he signifieth, that the Deputation is now come from the Lord President of Wales, I have according to his Lordship’s desire represented his thankfulness to his Majesty, and have order from his Majesty to signify to your Lordship that it is not only in this particular case; But hereafter also he will be graciously mindful of your good service done heretofore, in the Lieutenancies of Glamorgan and Monmouth, and your willing resigning of them. And he hath also commanded me to tell the Earl of Bridgewater, that he shall proceed therein with your Lordship in the same manner the Earl of Northampton his predecessor did, and not otherwise: which accordingly I have signified to his Lordship. And thus having imparted to your Lordship both his Majesty’s gracious favour towards yourself and your son, who in this business hath performed as much respect and duty as can be expected from a worthy son, I humbly take leave and so remain,
“Your Lordship’s humble servant,
“John Coke.
“Whitehall, December 3rd. 1635.
To the right honourable the Earl of Worcester, &c.”
It is not at all unlikely that after the funeral his Lordship returned to Worcester House. London would afford him many advantages for the gratification of his scientific pursuits, not to be obtained in the country. It appears, indeed, pretty evident that about this period he set up in the Tower his large wheel for exhibiting self-motive power, which the learned assume to be a mechanical fallacy, but which no one has yet proved to general comprehension to be an impossibility. In a scientific point of view, but particularly in connection with the life of this remarkable man, a subject of this nature cannot be lightly passed over. It affects his reputation more than appears on the surface, as we shall show in the course of our observations.
It was a machine, consisting of a wheel fourteen feet in diameter, carrying forty weights of fifty pounds each,[I] and is supposed to have rotated on an axle, supported on two pillars or upright frames. His Lordship has been very precise in describing all the circumstances under which it was shown. There were present Charles the First, accompanied by two extraordinary Ambassadors, the Duke of Richmond, the Duke of Hamilton, with most of the Court; and Sir William Balfour was at the time Lord Lieutenant of the Tower. Now the latter circumstance would fix the date as not being later than 1641, while other facts make it reasonable to suppose the experiment took place at least two or three years earlier. Up to 1638 Charles the First had reigned for ten years in comparative peace and leisure. May it not have been during this lull in the portending storm of public discontent that royalty deigned to inspect a singular piece of mechanism, supposed to move of itself without any aid from external agency? In 1642, Sir John Byron was made Lord Lieutenant of the Tower; and Sir William Balfour[J] was in command of the Parliamentary forces at Edge-hill.
This wheel experiment may have been made in 1638–9, prior to the decease of his lady, and during the most peaceable portion of his Majesty’s reign; and indeed while his Lordship’s own domestic affairs were wearing their most cheerful and agreeable aspect.
His Lordship has been charged with dealing in paradoxes, and none greater than the one under consideration need be sought for. It relates to a problem which for 2000 years has not only perplexed mathematicians, but likewise been a stumbling-block to many ingenious mechanicians during at least five centuries. What mathematicians fail to prove and what mechanicians fail to produce, every modern philosopher demands shall be stamped as an impossibility, as absurd as it is impossible. Now the dilemma is, How has the author of the “Century of Inventions” fallen into the common, vulgar error of believing in the possibility of perpetual motion; and not only so, but publicly exhibiting a machine pretending to that character?