The Marquis himself continued to be as confident as ever of the ultimate success of his scheme. He believed that it would yet realise him an immense fortune. Writing of the engine to the Earl of Lotherdale, he described it as “the greatest invention for profit that I ever yet heard of vouchsafed to a man, especially so unworthy and ignorant as I am.” But the Marquis was not so humble as he affected to be, believing in his heart that he had invented, without exception, the most wonderful machine of the age. Still it remained a mere project. Without the means of erecting an engine, it promised to remain such; and all his efforts to raise the necessary funds had thus far proved unavailing.
The Restoration of Charles II., in 1660, revived his hopes. Now that the King enjoyed his own again, the Marquis believed that he, too, would come into possession of the means for carrying out his project. For thirteen years he had lived in exile, in prison, and in poverty: but brighter days had dawned at last; and he indulged in the hope that compensation would at length be made to him for his sufferings in the cause of the Stuarts, and that he would now bask in the sunshine of Royal favour. He made all haste to represent his case to the king, and to claim restitution for his heavy losses in the late war. But there were thousands of like suppliants all over the kingdom, and redress came slowly. The Marquis was, however, shortly put in possession of such parts of his estates as had not been sold by the Protector; but he found them for the most part cleared of their timber, and comparatively valueless. The castle at Raglan was in ruins. He himself was heavily burdened with debt, and his creditors were becoming increasingly importunate for money. It was thus long before he could shake himself clear of his embarrassments, and devote himself to the great object of his life, the prosecution of his water-commanding engine.
One of his first cares, on the partial recovery of his property, was to obtain a legal protection for his inventions; and in the year following the Restoration we find him taking out a patent for four of his schemes,—a watch or clock, guns or pistols, an engine to give security to a coach, and a boat to sail against wind and tide. In the session of Parliament, 1662–3, he obtained an Act securing to himself the profits of the water-commanding engine. About the same time he gave to the world his famous ‘Century,’[10] which contains his own account of his various inventions. In the second dedication of the book to the members of both Houses of Parliament he states that he had already expended the large sum of 10,000l. on experiments; but he professed that he esteemed himself sufficiently rewarded by the passing of “the Act of the Water-commanding Engine,” and, his debts once paid, he intended to devote the rest of his life to the service of his King and country. The ‘Century’ is a mere summary of things alleged to have been tried and perfected, conveyed in vague and mysterious language, and calculated rather to excite wonder than to furnish information. The descriptions were unaccompanied by plans or drawings, so that we can only surmise the means by which he proposed to carry his schemes into effect. It is possible that he purposely left the descriptions of his inventions vague, in order that he might not be anticipated in their application; for it is certain that at the time the book was written the Marquis had not taken out his first patent, nor obtained the Act securing to him the profits of his engine.
There can, however, be no doubt that, vague and mysterious though the ‘Scantlings’ be, they indicate a knowledge of mechanical principles considerably in advance of the age, as well as a high degree of mechanical ingenuity. The hundred Articles into which the book is divided contain suggestions, in shorthand descriptions, of things so various as ship-destroying machines, telegraphs, combination and escutcheon locks,[11] improvements in fire-arms, universal alphabets, seals and watches, various kinds of cipher, a boat rowing against wind and tide, automata, and mechanical appliances of different kinds, including the “stupendious and semi-omnipotent” engine. Some of them read like descriptions of conjuring tricks, such as the artificial bird, the hour water-ball, the flying man, the brazen head, the dicing-box, and various automata. Others are full of prophetic insight, and contain anticipations of mechanical marvels, which, however wonderful they may at that time have appeared, have since been fully realised. The style in which the treatise was written, however, presented so remarkable a contrast to the contemporary writings of Newton, Boyle, Pascal, Guericke, and others, that it is not improbable it had the effect of prejudicing the minds of scientific men against the writer, and led them to regard his schemes as those of a wild projector, and hence to treat his propositions with neglect, if not with contumely.
So soon as the Marquis had become possessed of the requisite funds, he proceeded to erect an engine at Vauxhall to illustrate the uses of his principal invention. He was assisted, as before, by his old workman, Caspar Kaltoff. It is probable that the engine was erected by the beginning of 1663; for in the course of that year M. Sorbière paid his visit to England, and found the Marquis’s “hydraulic machine” at work. He describes it as capable of raising, by the strength of one man only, within a minute of time, four large buckets of water to a height of forty feet, through a pipe eight inches in diameter. He proceeds to compare it with another machine at Somerset House, worked by one or two horses, which he considers the more effective machine of the two.[12] This account of the Marquis’s invention is confirmed by another brief description of it, which occurs in the narrative of the travels of Cosmo, Grand Duke of Tuscany, in England, some years later. Count Magalotti, the narrator, says, “It raises water more than forty geometrical feet, by the power of one man only; and in a very short space of time will draw up four vessels of water through a tube or channel not more than a span in width, on which account it is considered to be of greater service to the public than the other machine at Somerset House.” It will thus be observed that the Duke’s secretary entertained a different opinion from that expressed by M. Sorbière as to the comparative merits of the two engines spoken of.
It is worthy of remark that the incidental accounts of these two foreigners contain almost the only contemporary information we possess as to the character of the Marquis’s invention. English writers of the time are almost entirely silent about it; and when Dr. Hooke, the learned Secretary of the Royal Society, refers to the contrivance, it is in a tone of ridicule rather than of praise. Writing to Mr. Boyle, in 1667, he characterises the definition or description of the water-commanding engine as “so purely romantic that it would serve one rarely to fill up half a dozen pages in the ‘History of Fortunatus his Wishing Cap.’” ... “I was,” he adds, “since my return to London to see this engine, when I found Caltrop [Kaltoff], his chief engineer, to laugh at it; and as far as I was able to see it, it seemed one of the perpetual-motion fallacies; of which kind Caltrop himself, and two or three others that I know, are labouring at this time in vain to make, but after several ways; and nothing but costly experience will make them desist.”[13]
It is difficult to gather from the statements of Sorbière and Cosmo de Medici what was the precise nature of the Marquis’s hydraulic apparatus. There is no mention whatever of steam, either in their accounts or in that of Dr. Hooke; but the latter does not seem to have been allowed to examine the details of the machine. From the mention by Sorbière of the “four large buckets of water,” and by Cosmo’s secretary, of “four vessels of water,” it might possibly have been only an improved hydraulic apparatus, worked by a man instead of a horse. In order, therefore, to obtain a clue to the real nature of the machine we find it necessary to resort to the Marquis’s ‘Scantlings’ for his own account of its action, and we find it in article No. 68, which runs as follows:—
“68. An admirable and most forcible way to drive up water by fire, not by drawing or sucking it upwards, for that must be as the Philosopher calleth it, Intra sphæram activitatis, which is but at such a distance. But this way hath no Bounder, if the Vessels be strong enough; for I have taken a piece of a whole Cannon, whereof the end was burst, and filled it three-quarters full of water, stopping and scruing up the broken end; as also the Touch-hole; and making a constant fire under it, within twenty-four hours it burst and made a great crack: So that having a way to make my Vessels, so that they are strengthened by the force within them, and the one to fill after the other, I have seen the water run like a constant Fountaine-stream forty foot high; one Vessel of water rarified by fire driveth up forty of cold water. And a man that tends the work is but to turn two Cocks, that one Vessel of water being consumed, another begins to force and refill with cold water, and so successively, the fire being tended and kept constant, which the self-same Person may likewise abundantly perform in the interim between the necessity of turning the said Cocks.”
From this account we gather that the Marquis had contrived a plan for raising water by the expansive force of steam, after the manner of De Caus, but with important modifications and improvements. It had obviously occurred to him, that by generating the steam in a separate vessel, and conveying it by means of a suitable pipe to a second closed vessel, he could thereby make it expel the water which the latter contained by pressing upon its surface, as in De Caus’s apparatus. The admission of the steam could easily be regulated by the turning of two cocks; one to admit the steam from the boiler, and the other to allow the exit of the water. On the expulsion of the water, and the production of a vacuum by the condensation of the contained steam, the empty vessel would at once be refilled by the action of the atmospheric pressure on the surface of the water to be raised. It is probable that this engine was—in the absence of a feed-pump, of which there is no mention—provided with two boilers as well as with the two cisterns in which the “forcing and refilling” went on, so as to maintain the “constant fountain-stream” which the Marquis describes. But the precise arrangement of parts by which he accomplished this object must ever remain a matter of mere conjecture.
We have other distinct indications of a steam-engine in the Marquis’s 98th, 99th, and 100th Articles, which ought to be read in connection with the 68th Article: they run as follows:—