RUINS OF RAGLAN CASTLE.
[By Percival Skelton.]
CHAPTER II.
Sir Samuel Morland—Dr. Dionysius Papin.
After the death of the Marquis of Worcester, the Marchioness, his widow, made various efforts to turn his inventions to account. Sceptical though the world was as to their utility, she fully believed in them; and now that he was gone, it would have been dishonouring to his memory to entertain a doubt as to his engine being able to do all that he had promised. The Marchioness had not only to maintain the fame of her dear husband, but to endeavour, if possible, to pay the debts he had contracted in prosecuting his inventions. She accordingly sought to interest persons of authority and influence in the water-commanding engine, and seized every opportunity of bringing it into notice.
To such an extent did the Marchioness carry her zeal, that her friends began to fear lest her mind was becoming disordered; and her father-confessor was requested to expostulate with her as to the impropriety of her conduct. He accordingly implored her to desist from her vain endeavours to get “great sums of money from the King to pay her deceased lord’s debts, enriching herself by the great machine, and the like.” He added that he feared “the devil, to make his suggestions the more prevalent, doth make use of some motives that seem plausible, as of paying your lord’s debts, of founding monasteries, and the like;” pointing out that the end did not justify the means, and that such undertakings were improper for her ladyship, and by no means likely to be attended with success. It is not improbable that these representations had their effect; the more especially as the Marchioness was no more successful in inducing the public to adopt the invention than the Marquis himself had been. Accordingly, the water-commanding engine very shortly dropped out of sight, and in the course of a few years was almost entirely forgotten.
The steam-engine project, however, did not die; it only slept. It had been the fruit thus far of noble effort, of persevering self-denial, and unquestionable skill. What was good in it would yet live, and reappear perhaps in other forms, to vindicate the sagacity and foresight of its inventor. Even during the Marquis’s lifetime other minds besides his were diligently pursuing the same subject. Indeed, his enthusiasm was of a kind especially calculated to inflame other minds; and the success he had achieved with his engine, imperfect though it might be, was of so novel and original a character that it could not fail to excite a warm interest amongst men of like mechanical genius.
One of the most distinguished of these was Sir Samuel Morland, appointed Master of Mechanics to Charles II. immediately after the Restoration. He had been for some time previously in the employment of the Protectorate. He formed one of the embassy to Sweden, with Whitlocke, in 1653. Some years later he took an active part in the relief of the sufferings of the persecuted Protestants of Piedmont—whose history he afterwards wrote,—having been appointed Commissioner Extraordinary for the distribution of the collected moneys. For some time he officiated as assistant to Thurloe, Cromwell’s secretary; and it was while acting in this capacity that he became cognisant of a plot against the life of Charles II., then in exile. Morland divulged the plot to the king’s friends, and thereby perhaps saved his life. For this service, Charles, on his Restoration, presented him with a medal, as a badge of his signal loyalty, and also appointed him Master of Mechanics.
From that time until the close of his life, Morland devoted himself entirely to mechanical studies. Among his various inventions may be mentioned the speaking-trumpet;[17] two arithmetical machines, of which he published an illustrated description; the capstan to heave ships’ anchors; and various kinds of pumps and water engines. His pumps were of a very powerful and effective kind. One of them, worked by eight men, forced water from the Thames at Blackmoor Park, near Winkfield, to the top of Windsor Castle. He also devoted himself to the improvement of the fire-engine, in which he employed a cylinder and piston, as well as a stuffing-box. Towards the later years of his life, he applied himself more particularly to the study of the powers and uses of steam.[18] In 1677, we find him taking a lease of Vauxhall, most probably the identical house occupied by the Marquis of Worcester, where he conducted a series of experiments as to the power requisite to raise water by cylinders of different dimensions.[19] It is not, however, known that he ever erected a steam-engine. If he did, no account of its performances has been preserved.