Part 36

“Brice,” says Cooke, “posted me about the streets with halfpenny papers; and the poor hawkers got many pence through me; but all that he could do or say was to degrade my orthography; but to lessen my loyalty or character he could not; from his art or out of burlesque he said my letters were after the manner of Junius, and at the same time said I was of Grub-street. I winked at all this, whilst the people read my bulletins. I confess I did not know Junius’s Letters or Grub-street then, but I know them now. At the attack and at different times he wanted to run aground my loyal advertisements; but, poor man, he ran himself aground dead.”

The bulletins and advertisements animadverted upon by Brice were handbills issued by Cooke opposing the republican inflammatory pamphlets that were put in circulation, as also bulletins of the news with comments of his own which he pasted up outside his shop. There was at the time a noisy party in England in favour of Bonaparte, and this was the Radical and Republican party. Cooke was taunted by these as a bull-calf. He replied that he gloried in the name of John Bull. “Even when the friends of one of the candidates at the recent general election at Exeter came to solicit my vote (I thank God I vote for six members) I told them that I would not vote for a man of such principles if they would give me £500. When I came to give my vote at the Guildhall, Mr. Sergeant Pell rose up out of fancy or fun, and said to me, Are you not a Frenchman? I said, A Frenchman! No, sir, I am a true John Bull. He said, Of the calf kind. I said, It must be a calf before it’s a bull. The Sergeant sat down.”

In 1789 Cooke was made captain to the sheriff’s troop. “About this time there were commotions by the mobility in London against his Majesty’s minister, Mr. Pitt. I went into the pot-houses at Exeter, and treated with mugs round, and gave loyal toasts and sentiments--my own motto, Any income-tax sooner than a French-come-tax; a long pull and a strong pull and a pull altogether-mind how the fox served the chicken, and said the grapes were sour--a speedy necklace to all traitors--Old England for ever, and those who don’t like it, leave it.

“There has been but one small riot in Devonshire, to its honour and credit, and that was stopped in its infancy. It was for breaking into a miller’s house to get corn by violence; one Campion, a blacksmith, a young man called out from his work inadvertently to join the mob; from farmhouse to house they got liquor, got inebriated. He became a leader and carried a French banner, the old story. Campion was desired to desist by gentlemen; but he would not. He was apprehended in a day or two, committed to gaol, and tried at the Assizes, 1795, before the late Justice Heath; the jury found him guilty of the felony--riot and sedition. He suffered death. This prompt measure put an end and stopped the contagion in the West. There were thousands of spectators on the road, besides a thousand military of dragoons, artillery and volunteers of the district, who escorted him thirteen miles to the place of execution, Bovey-heathfield, in sight of his own village, Ilsington, as a rescue was talked of.

“At a foolish County Meeting in 1797, to petition his Majesty to remove his late Minister, Mr. Pitt, I called up my apprentices at 3 o’clock in the morning; we got a ladder, and scaladed the walls of the Castle of Exeter, got in unperceived, I wrote conspicuously _No petition, no civil war_, and at many more lofty hazardous places in the city, that the freeholders might read it when they came to the meeting; we (had) done the whole before the people were up. I again put out handbills warning the mobility of Exeter of riot; and at the show of hands by the Sheriff the mob held up both their hands, and there was a great majority of legal (loyal) votes.

“At another County Meeting a few violent gentleman wanted to turn out one or both of our old staunch County Members, Col. Bastard and Sir Laurence Palk. An orator, a Protestant Dissenter, took an elevated station and was haranguing; I perceived that the orator spared neither powder nor shot with his tongue. I being a freeholder mixed with the yeomanry freeholders; I fired a shot from my mouth, having good lungs it gave a loud report. I exclaimed ‘Palk’s no presbyterian I’ll sware [_sic_].’ It hit him, it had the desired effect, the orator was struck tongue-tied, he thought it came from higher authority. He attempted again in vain; the yeomanry caught flash from my pan and they fired a feu-de-joy with their tongues for Bastard and Palk, a loud clamour for question was called, and the old members were returned unanimously.

“When Mr. Pitt armed this country I became a volunteer in the infantry, before the cavalry were equipped by my brother tradesmen, that they should not say my loyalty was for trade. After this, I joined the second troop of the first Devon Royal Cavalry.

“I may say John Cooke, the saddler of Exeter, is known from England to the Indies, on the Continent, Ireland and Scotland; from Berwick-upon-Tweed to Penzance. I had two direction posts at my door during the War, that no one had in the kingdom besides--one to the various places and distances from Exeter to London; the other a large sheet of paper written as a daily monitor, gratis, a bulletin of news, to cheer people in the worst of times, to guide them in the Constitutional Road, which both citizens and country-folks of a market-day looked up to Cooke’s bulletin as natural as they look at their parish dial.

“I knowing the city and county of Exeter is the county town of the second county of England, I even made myself a direction-post when commotions were in London by the mobility, against the late Mr. Pitt, who was the people’s friend, instead of their enemy; I being a public officer at the Assizes, having had the honour to serve thirty Sheriffs of the County, sixty Assizes, and 1817 I commanded two Sheriffs troops, Devon and Cornwall. In 1795 I wore a conspicuous breast-plate painted with this motto, _Fear God, honour the King, and revere his Ministers_; which made not only the auditory, but the Judges, Sheriffs, and Counsel stare at me; which my heart did not mind being for the public good. Twice I had two escapes for my life in my achievements. I went from Exeter to London, to the funeral of Lord Nelson, the hero of the Nile, in 1805. In my going into the painted hall at Greenwich to see the corpse lie in state, I was nearly squeezed to death against the stone pillars. I might as well holloa in the bottom of the sea, as in a London throng. I have the pain to this day.

“I saw Mr. Pitt at his lodging window at Bath, a few weeks before he died; he looked very weak and thin. I had a tablet made to his memory and hung it over my door.

“In 1800, in consequence of that dearth year, potatoes were sixteen pence a peck. The poor grumbled, noisy, clamorous in the market. I went in the country and bought 500 bags, and sold them at a shilling a peck. The rumour that I had got all the potato trade; it lowered the market to a shilling a peck.

“In honour of his Majesty, on the Jubilee, 1809, I gave all the poor men, women and children of my parish, above 200, a good dinner in the long cloth hall of Exeter. My wife ripped sheets for tablecloths, and what is worth recording, in the evening the men would carry me home on their shoulders. They carried me by the Old London Inn, where a large party, it being a holiday, in our passing we were not halted.[23] In the centre of a 50 feet street, I saw a decanter thrown from the dining-room twelve feet high; I was bare pate, my hat being off, to make obedience to this company; I miraculously caught the decanter by its neck with my right hand, it was full of port wine; it came with such velocity not a drop was spilt. I thought no harm meant, I jocosely drank all their healths and gave the spectators the rest. I bought the decanter of Miss Pratt, of the Inn, in memory of such an event; which, if it had took me by the head, must have stun me.”

Besides having done much for his King and country, Cooke flattered himself that he did much for the city of Exeter. He says: “We are indebted to Mr. S. F. Milford for the Savings Bank, and wholesome prisons in Exeter. We had no common sewers until 1810, it was like old Edinburgh before. About twelve years since, I rose one morning before the people were up, and numbered every house in Fore Street with chalk, which made the people stare. I was told I had not begun at the right end, with the sun. I went over the ground again. My house being a corner one, I got it properly numbered, and the street labelled, which soon led to be general. I paid for seven label boards at the street. Who would have done it beside? Our market days had ever been on Wednesdays and Fridays, only one day between. I wrote a requisition on the propriety of altering the Wednesday’s market to Tuesday. I carried it for signatures to the principal inhabitants, and sent it to the Chamber, who upon perusing of their charters found they had a bye-law; the market was altered with unanimous approbation in 1812.” He also introduced watering-carts for the streets in summer. In 1809 he issued a catalogue of a hundred and ten nuisances in the city of Exeter, which he exhorted the Corporation to get rid of. He urged on the Dean and Chapter the pulling down of the gates into the Close, which unhappily was done. “At present,” said Cooke, “you have none but a dangerous way to the Cathedral. A coach-passenger was killed going under Catherine-Gate.”

There were still three gates left; three had already been destroyed.

Poor Allhallows, Goldsmith Street, was levelled with the dust but last year, so as to widen High Street. Cooke urged its destruction in 1809, as “useless and dormant.”

Cooke built himself a villa residence, which he dubbed “Waterloo Cottage.” He was a very plain man, with thick, coarse mouth, and a broken nose. A portrait, a profile, is prefixed to his pamphlet, _Old England for Ever_, but there is one much finer of him, in colour, representing him in uniform. This is in the library of the Institution at Exeter.

That the man had enormous self-confidence and conceit _saute aux yeux_, but that he was a useful man to his country, to the county, and to the city is also clear.

Cooke assures us that he had been in 400 out of the 466 parishes of Devon, “having the heartfelt satisfaction of being respected” in all of them, “and knowing fifteen lords, four honourables, twenty-two baronets, and three knights, and most of the clergy and gentry” of the county.

Universal suffrage will never, never do, So experience tells me--and I tell you. It would break down the barriers of our Constitution, And plunge both high and low in cut-throat revolution. You see, in the murder of the Constable Birch, The means they’d employ to destroy King and Church. The King is the head--the constable the hand-- For preserving peace and order in this happy land. They who’d cut off the hand, would cut off the head-- So, a word to the wise; remember what’s said In the plain, honest Book Of your humble servant,

/Cooke/.

SAVERY AND NEWCOMEN, INVENTORS

When a commission was sent by the Parliament to search Raglan Castle for arms, a jet of water was sent pouring over them in a way to them extraordinary. It was from a steam-propelled fountain, invented and executed by Edward Somerset, Lord Herbert, the son of the Marquess of Worcester. In 1646 the castle stood a siege from the Parliamentarians, under Sir Trevor Williams and Colonel Morgan, and finally under Sir Thomas Fairfax. It surrendered on 17 August. No sooner was the castle abandoned than the lead and timber of the roofs were carried off for the rebuilding of Bristol Bridge, and the peasantry of the neighbourhood began to dig in the moats, drain the fish-ponds, and tear down the walls in quest of treasures supposed to be concealed there, and to rip up pipes, and pull to pieces lead and iron work to appropriate the metal. Then it was that Lord Herbert’s steam fountain was destroyed.

The old Marquess died in December of the same year, and Edward Somerset became second Marquess of Worcester. Whilst in the Tower, in 1652-4, the Marquess wrote his _Century of the Names and Scantlings of Inventions_, but it was not published till 1663. “He was a man,” says Clarendon, “of a fair and gentle carriage towards all men (as in truth he was of a civil and obliging nature).” He died 3 April, 1667. In his remarkable book he anticipated the power of steam, and indeed may be said to have invented the first steam engine. His object in his steam-fountain was to throw up or raise water to a great height. His words are as follows: “This admirable method which I propose of raising water by the force of fire has no bounds if the vessels be strong enough; for I have taken a cannon, and having filled it three-fourths full of water and shut up its muzzle and touch-hole, and exposed it to the fire for twenty-four hours, it burst with a great explosion. Having afterwards discovered a method of fortifying vessels internally, and combined them in such a way that they filled and acted alternately, I have made the water spout in an uninterrupted stream forty feet high, and one vessel of rarefied water raised 40 of cold water. The person who conducted the operation had nothing to do but turn two cocks, so that one vessel of water being consumed, another begins to force, and then to fill itself with cold water, and so on in succession.” By means of his contrivance he proposed “not only with little charge to drain all sorts of mines, and furnish cities with water, though never so high seated, as well as to keep them sweet, running through several streets, and so performing the work of scavengers, as well as furnishing the inhabitants with sufficient water for their private occasions, but likewise supply rivers with sufficient to maintain and make them portable from town to town, and for the bettering of lands all the way it runs, with many more advantageous and yet greater effects, of profits, admiration, and consequence--so that deservedly I deem this invention to crown my labours, to reward my expenses, and make my thoughts acquiesce in the way of further inventions.”

The Marquess of Worcester’s small book attracted some attention even in his own generation. About twenty years after his death, Sir Samuel Morland made some improvements on Worcester’s plan, raising water to a great height “by the force of Aire and Powder conjointly.” He endeavoured to draw the attention of the French King to the matter, but met with no encouragement.

Denis Papin was a French physician, born at Blois in 1647. He studied medicine in Paris, and visited England to associate himself with Robert Boyle in his experiments, and was admitted a member of the Royal Society in 1681. After the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, being a Huguenot, he could not return to France, so took refuge in Germany, where he was well received by the Landgrave of Hesse, who gave him the professorship of mathematics in the University of Marburg. He was the first to apply the safety-valve and the piston to the steam engine. He showed that the upward and downward alternate movement of the piston might be employed with effect for the transmission of force. If after the rise of the piston a vacuum could be created below, the piston would fall with the pressure of the atmosphere above. In order to create this vacuum he proposed to explode gunpowder under the piston; but he saw himself that this method of creating a void was clumsy and impracticable. He then sought to exhaust the air by means of an hydraulic engine moved by a water-wheel, and he proposed a machine of this sort to the Royal Society in 1687; but he also suggested a means of producing the required vacuum by condensation of steam.

Much about the same time the same idea occurred to Thomas Savery, a native of Modbury, a member of an ancient Devonshire family, coming originally from Halberton, whence John Savery moved to Totnes. Probably through the wool and clothing trade, he amassed a considerable estate in the reign of Henry VIII. In the sixteenth century the heiress of Servington of Tavistock married into the family. In 1588, Christopher Savery, the head of the family, resided in Totnes Castle, not then dismantled; and for a period of nearly forty years the town was represented in Parliament by members of the Savery family. One Christopher served as Sheriff of Devon in 1620. His son was a colonel under Oliver Cromwell.

The Saverys had acquired Shilston in Modbury at the end of the sixteenth century, and resided there till the middle of the nineteenth. Colonel Christopher Savery’s youngest son is said by Mr. Smiles, in his _Lives of Boulton and Watt_, to have been Richard. But Richard does not appear in the pedigree in Colonel Vivian’s _Visitations of Devon_. This is, however, no proof that Smiles is wrong. Richard Savery was the father of Thomas, who was born, according to Smiles, at Shilston about the year 1650. He was educated to the profession of a military engineer, and in course of time reached the rank of trench-master. The pursuit of his profession, as well as his natural disposition, led Savery to study mechanics, and he spent all his spare time in executing mechanical contrivances of various sorts. One of the first of these was a paddle-boat worked by men turning a crank. He spent £200 on this, and built a small yacht on the Thames to exhibit its utility. But when submitted to the Admiralty they would have nothing to do with it, as its practical utility was doubtful. The power of wind was better than hand labour in propelling a vessel; and although his machine might answer on a river, it was extremely doubtful whether it would succeed even in a moderately rough sea.

Dissatisfied at the reception of his paddle-boat by the naval authorities, Savery gave no more thought to it, and turned his attention in another direction.

The miners in Cornwall had been hampered by water flowing into their workings. When the upper strata had become exhausted they were tempted to go deeper in search of richer ores. Shafts were sunk into the lodes, and these were followed underground, but very speedily had to be abandoned through the influx of water. When the mines were of no great depth it was possible to bale the water out by hand buckets; but this expedient was laborious and ineffectual, as the water gained on the men who baled. Then whims were introduced, and by means of horse-power water was drawn up. But this process also proved to be but partially effective: in one pit after another the miners were being drowned out.

In the fen lands water was drawn up out of the drains and pumped into canals by means of windmills; and it is to this that Ben Jonson alludes in his play _The Devil is an Ass_, 1616, when he makes Fitzdottrell say: “This man defies the devil and his works. He does it by engines and devices, he! He has ... mills will spout you water ten miles off! All Crowland is ours, wife; and the fens, from us, in Norfolk, to the utmost bounds in Lincolnshire.”

But the use of wind as a motive power does not seem to have occurred to the Cornish miners, or perhaps it was thought to be too uncertain to be of much value for pumping purposes.

It is possible enough that Savery had read the suggestions of the Marquess of Worcester, and that this ingenious author gave him the first hint whither to turn to find the force required. But how he was led to steam is differently stated.

Desaguliers says that Savery’s own account was this: Having drunk a flask of Florence at a tavern, and thrown the bottle into the fire, he proceeded to wash his hands, when he noticed that the little wine left in the flask was converted into steam. He took the vessel by the neck and plunged its mouth into the water in the basin, when, the steam being condensed, the water was immediately driven up into the bottle by the atmospheric pressure.

Switzer, however, who was very intimate with Savery, gives another account. He says that the first hint from which he took the engine was from a tobacco-pipe, which he immersed in water to wash or cool it. Then he noticed how that by the rarefaction of the air in the tube by the heat, the gravitation or pressure of the external air, upon the condensation of the steam, made the water to spring through the tube of the pipe in a most surprising manner.

However it was that Savery obtained his first idea of the expansion and condensation of steam and of atmospheric pressure, he had now before him a new and untried power with which to deal, and he was obliged to approach it by several tentative efforts.

Before 1696 he had constructed several steam pumping engines to mines in Cornwall, and he described these as already working in his book entitled _The Miners’ Friend_.[24] He took with him a model to London and exhibited it to William III in 1698, and the King promoted Savery’s application for a patent, which was secured in July, 1698, and an Act was passed confirming it in the ensuing year.

Papin saw Savery’s steam engine, when exhibited before the Royal Society, he also witnessed the trial of his paddle-boat on the Thames. Returning to Marburg, of which university he was professor, he thought over what he had seen, and it occurred to him to combine the two contrivances in one, and to apply Savery’s motive power in the pump to drive Savery’s paddle-wheels. But it took him fifteen years to fit up a boat that worked to his satisfaction. “It is important,” he wrote to Liebnitz on 7 July, 1707, “that my new construction of vessel should be put to the proof in a seaport like London, where there is depth enough to apply the new invention, which, by means of fire, will render one or two men capable of producing more effect than some hundreds of rowers.” Papin’s boat that he intended to send to London was destroyed by some watermen, who feared the new invention might interfere with their trade.

Savery proposed to apply his engine to various purposes. One was to pump water into a reservoir for the production of an artificial waterfall for driving mills or any other ordinary machinery; that is to say, by means of steam he would lift a body of water which by flowing back might drive an overshot wheel, from the rotation of which the motive power for any other mechanical operations would be derived. This, however, was never done, and Savery’s engine continued to be employed only in the drainage of Cornish mines. But it had this disadvantage, that it could not heave water but to about eighty feet, and as the depth of mines was from fifty to a hundred yards, the only way to exhaust the water was by erecting several engines in successive stages, one above the other. But the expense of fuel and attendants and the constant danger of explosions rendered it clear that the use of his engine for deep mines was altogether impracticable. Such was the state of affairs when Thomas Newcomen, a blacksmith and ironmonger of Dartmouth, turned his attention to the matter.

Thomas Newcomen was a member of a very ancient family.

In the church of Stoke Fleming, near Dartmouth, is a brass with this inscription:--

Elias old lies here intombed in grave, But Newcomin to heaven’s habitation. In knowledge old, in zeal, in life most grave, Too good for all who live in lamentation. Whose sheep and seed with heavie plaint and mone, Will say too late, Elias old is gone! The 13th May, 1614.