“Charles R.
“Our pleasure is, That William Lambert, Founder for our Works at Ffoxhall, shall and may, with his family and servants, abide in and possess to our use, our house at Ffoxhall aforesaid, together with the outhousing and appurtenances of the same, and there proceed in the work as formerly he hath done, without any molestation to him or his, until further express order from us.
“Given at our Court at Oatlands, the 20th day of August, 1647.”[V]
These documents are highly interesting, as they establish, beyond a doubt, the Marquis’s early connection with gunnery and with water-work operations at Vauxhall, and account for the practical character of inventions mentioned in the “Century,” which might reasonably be thought to be beyond the scope of a private individual.
Kaltoff died in, or before, the year 1664, and it is not unlikely, therefore, that the Marquis countenanced Lambert’s present application. For more on Vauxhall and Kaltoff, see [Appendix G.]
The Marquis of Worcester had principally in view, in this invention, raising water for private and public purposes, and the general draining of mines or other inundated property. Its great value was evidently to supply cities and towns with water, and to drain mines of their superfluous quantity. The mineral wealth of this country was drowned treasure, until the steam engine’s powerful aid placed it within the power of man to eject the water in greater volume than it entered. Until the 17th century, this apparently obvious application of the steam engine was entirely overlooked, and had Savery done no more than impress on public notice its applicability for that invaluable purpose, he would still deserve the highest commendations of posterity. Many remarkable works were, no doubt, effected even with ordinary appliances, and men do not willingly abandon the experience of generations. We find that in the middle of the 16th century, viz.—July 2, 1565, Wm. Humfrey wrote to Sir William Cecil, concerning the working of copper mines; recommending an Almain engineer, who, he represents, can raise water one hundred fathoms high, by a newly invented engine.—Cal. State Papers, Dom. Series, 1547–1580. Edited by R. Lemon, F.S.A., 8vo. 1856, page 254. No. 73.
That the ordinary draining of land had made no material progress in the 17th century, we gather from the correspondence collected in “Samuel Hartlib his Legacie: or an enlargement of the Discourse of Husbandry,” 4to. 1651; where there is a letter written by Cressy Dymock, in which he remarks—“I went into the Isle of Ely, to see one of the Holland-mills, for dreyning; though set up there and kept by certain Frenchmen. The Invention seemed to me but mean and rude, and Mr. Wheeler’s way much more ingenious.” “I saw at Wicklesen the manner of your Holland sluices. The ruines also of a cochlea, for the emptying and dreining of water, of which Ubaldus hath writ a whole treatise.”—Pages 109, 110.
The Act of Parliament, of May, 1663, states in regard to the Marquis’s Invention, that he “hath by long and indefatigable pains and study, and with great and vast expenses, invented and found out a Secret in Nature, never heretofore discovered, being a Water-commanding engine, of greater force and advantage than hitherto hath been known; and being no pump or force now in use, nor working by any suckers, barrels, or bellows heretofore used for the raising and conveying of water; which said Engine will yield very great benefit and advantage to the Commonwealth, by draining of all sorts of Mines, Marish, Oazie, or overflown Grounds, by furnishing of Rivers and Cutts with water to make them Navigable and Portable from Town to Town; by improving of Lands wanting water; by the supplying and bringing in of water into the City of London, or into any other places; and by divers other ways and means whereby great Encouragement will be given to the People of the Nation, to undertake to work rich Mines, to drain and gain in many Marish, Oazie, and surrounded Grounds, which hitherto they have been deterred to endeavour the improvements of, by reason of the vast sums of money which must be necessarily expended by the draining and conveying away the water out of the same. * * * * * And that a Model thereof be delivered by the said Marquis, or his Assignes, to the Lord Treasurer, or Commissioner for the Treasury, for the time being, at or before the 29th of September, 1663.”—See [Appendix C.]
We trace the early use of steam in some of the simple apparatus of various forms, called Æolipile, to a period anterior to the Christian era. Greece and Rome, France, Holland, and Germany, have each contributed some instrument or other indicative of a knowledge of the expansive property of steam, pent up in close vessels, to give slight motions to, or force water from small delicately constructed apparatus, designed for amusement, or at most only to occasion a strong blast for blowing a fire, as figured in “Vitruvio de Architectura,” folio, 1521. Some of these early stages of progress we shall further notice here.
Besson, in his folio work on Instruments and Machines, 1578, among other contrivances shows, in plate XVIII, a cylindrical vessel, containing a coiled spring, above which is a close fitting disc, secured underneath to a cord, which, passing through the coiled spring, passes out at the bottom of the vessel, by which means it can be used to pull down the disc, so as to compress the spring, while the vessel is being filled with water, and its cover, with a jet in the centre, secured; on releasing the spring, we have here a piston acting from below upwards, to produce a fountain.