Devonshire Characters and Strange Events

“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 saidIn the plain, honest BookOf 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.

Over this inscription is a shield of arms, with helmet, crest, and mantling, bearing the arms of Newcomen, of Saltfleetby, in Lincolnshire, with six quarterings. This is the monument of Elias Newcomen, rector of Stoke Fleming. The pedigree of the family commences with Hugo Newcomen, of Saltfleetby, in 1189–99. Elias Newcomen, rector of Stoke Fleming, had a brother Robert, who went to Ireland and was created a baronet.

The son of the Rev. Elias was Thomas, who settled in Dartmouth, and this Thomas had a son Elias, who was the father of the inventor Thomas, who was baptized at Dartmouth 28 February, 1663–4. He married Hannah, daughter of Peter Waymouth, of Malborough, Devon, in 1705, and died in 1729.

He left two sons, Thomas and Elias; and Thomas Newcomen, son of the inventor, compiled a pedigree with a view to proving his claim to the Irish baronetcy, but probably abandoned the attempt from want of funds to prosecute the claim.25

SKETCH OF NEWCOMIN’S HOUSE,LOWER STREET, DARTMOUTH,BEFORE IT WAS DEMOLISHED THE CHIMNEY-PIECE AT WHICH NEWCOMIN SAT WHEN HE INVENTEDTHE STEAM-ENGINEAlthough of gentle blood, Thomas Newcomen, son of Elias, and the inventor, was a tradesman in Dartmouth, variously described as a locksmith, an ironmonger, and a blacksmith; and probably combining all these trades. He lived in a picturesque gabled house, with overhanging stories sustained by carved-oak corbels, in Lower Street. As the street was very narrow, it was taken down by order of the Local Board, in 1864, and Mr. Thomas Lidstone became the purchaser of the most interesting portions of the old dwelling. These he afterwards erected in a new building for himself, which he called Newcomen Cottage. This Mr. Lidstone was greatly interested in the history of Newcomen, and in 1871 published A Few Notes and Queries about Newcomen, and in 1876 Notes on the Model of Newcomen’s Steam Engine (1705).

THE CHIMNEY-PIECE AT WHICH NEWCOMIN SAT WHEN HE INVENTEDTHE STEAM-ENGINEAlthough of gentle blood, Thomas Newcomen, son of Elias, and the inventor, was a tradesman in Dartmouth, variously described as a locksmith, an ironmonger, and a blacksmith; and probably combining all these trades. He lived in a picturesque gabled house, with overhanging stories sustained by carved-oak corbels, in Lower Street. As the street was very narrow, it was taken down by order of the Local Board, in 1864, and Mr. Thomas Lidstone became the purchaser of the most interesting portions of the old dwelling. These he afterwards erected in a new building for himself, which he called Newcomen Cottage. This Mr. Lidstone was greatly interested in the history of Newcomen, and in 1871 published A Few Notes and Queries about Newcomen, and in 1876 Notes on the Model of Newcomen’s Steam Engine (1705).

Although of gentle blood, Thomas Newcomen, son of Elias, and the inventor, was a tradesman in Dartmouth, variously described as a locksmith, an ironmonger, and a blacksmith; and probably combining all these trades. He lived in a picturesque gabled house, with overhanging stories sustained by carved-oak corbels, in Lower Street. As the street was very narrow, it was taken down by order of the Local Board, in 1864, and Mr. Thomas Lidstone became the purchaser of the most interesting portions of the old dwelling. These he afterwards erected in a new building for himself, which he called Newcomen Cottage. This Mr. Lidstone was greatly interested in the history of Newcomen, and in 1871 published A Few Notes and Queries about Newcomen, and in 1876 Notes on the Model of Newcomen’s Steam Engine (1705).

For some time Thomas Newcomen carried on his experiments in secret on the leads of his house. A letter extant of the time is quoted by Mr. Lidstone.

“When [Newcomen] was engaged on his great work, which took him three years from its commencement until it was completed, and was kept a profound secret, some of his friends would press Mrs. Newcomen to find out what her husband was engaged about, and, ‘for their part, they would not be satisfied to be kept in ignorance.’ Mrs. Newcomen replied, ‘I am perfectly easy. Mr. Newcomen cannot be employed about anything wrong; and I am fully persuaded, when he thinks proper, he will, himself, unasked, inform me.’”

When Thomas Newcomen had perfected his engine he associated with himself Calley or Cawley, a Dartmouth brazier, and How, another Dartmouth man, in applying for a patent.

Newcomen was a man of reading, and was in correspondence with Dr. Hooke, secretary of the Royal Society. There are to be found among Hooke’s papers, in the possession of the Royal Society, some notes of observations made by him for the use of Newcomen on Papin’s boasted method of transmitting to a great distance the action of a mill by means of pipes. Papin’s project was to employ the mill to work two air pumps of great diameter. The cylinders of these pumps were to communicate by means of pipes with equal cylinders furnished with pistons in the neighbourhood of a mine. The pistons were to be connected by means of levers with the piston-rods of the mine. Therefore, when the piston of the air pumps at the mill was drawn up by the engine the corresponding piston at the side of the mine would be pressed down by the atmosphere, and thus would raise the piston-rod in the mine and throw up the water. It would appear from these notes that Dr. Hooke dissuaded Newcomen from erecting a machine on this principle, of which he saw the fallacy.

It is highly probable that, in the course of his labours and speculations, it occurred to Newcomen that the vacuum he so much desired to create might be produced by steam, and that this gave rise to his new principle, and the construction of his steam engine. He saw the defects of Savery’s engine, and laboured to correct them. Savery, however, claimed the invention as his own, which lay at the root of Newcomen’s improvements; and Newcomen, being a Quaker, and averse from contention, and moreover glad to be assisted by Savery’s wide circle of acquaintances, was content to share the honours and the profits with Savery.

Switzer, who knew both, says: “Mr. Newcomen was as early in his invention as Mr. Savery was in his; only, the latter being nearer the Court, had obtained the patent before the other knew it, on which account Mr. Newcomen was glad to come in as a partner to it.”26

The STEAM ENGINE near Dudley Castle.Invented by Capt. Savery. & Mr. NewcomenErected by ye later. 1712delin. & Sculp by Tt Barney 1719.Reproduced by kind permission of Messrs. Macmillan & Co.(Click here to see a larger image)Click here to see a larger image)

Savery had created his vacuum by the condensation of steam in a closed vessel by dashing cold water against it. Papin had created his vacuum by exhausting the air in a cylinder, fitted with a piston, by means of an air pump. What Newcomen did was to combine both systems. Instead of employing Savery’s closed vessel, he made use of Papin’s cylinder fitted with a piston, but worked by the condensation of steam, still employing the clumsy system of dashing cold water against the cylinder.

Whilst the engine was still in its trial state an accident occurred that led to another change in the mode of condensation. It was this. In order to keep the cylinder as free from air as possible, great pains were taken to prevent it from passing down with the piston, and to keep the cylinder air-tight, water was employed to lie above the place where the piston passed up or down.

At one of the early trials the inventors were surprised to see the engine make several rapid strokes, and on looking into the cause found that there was a small hole in the piston, which allowed a jet of cold water to penetrate within, and that this acted as a rapid condenser of the steam.

A new light suddenly broke upon Newcomen. The idea of condensing the steam, and so producing a vacuum by injecting cold water into the receiver, instead of splashing it against the outside, at once occurred to him; and he proceeded to embody the principle which this accident had suggested, as part of his machine.