bridge, at Ashburton, in 1765. Ashburton, says Cooke, was not only
famous as producing Dunning, Lord Ashburton, but also for its Pop. “I
recollect its sharp feeding good taste, far richer than the best small
beer, more of the champagne taste, and what was termed a good sharp
bottle. When you untied and hand-drew the cork it gave a report louder
than a pop-gun, to which I attribute its name; its contents would fly
up to the ceiling if you did not mind to keep the mouth of the stone
bottle into the white quart cup; it filled it with froth, but not over
a pint of clear liquor. Three old cronies would sit an afternoon six
hours, smoke and drink a dozen bottles, their reckoning but eightpence
each, and a penny for tobacco. The pop was but twopence a bottle. It is
a great loss to the town, because its recipe died with its brewer about
1785.”
[Illustration: CAPTAIN COOKE, 1824, AGED 58
_Drawn from Nature, on the stone by N. Whittock_]
Another drink of the past was white ale. This derived its name from
its appearance, not unlike tea freely diluted with milk and having
considerable quantities of some white curdy substance floating about
in it, which had a tendency to settle at the bottom of the glass. The
secret of its composition lay in the nature of the ferment employed,
called “grout.” At one time white ale was a common drink in South
Devon; now it is as dead as Ashburton Pop and John Dunning.
John Cooke’s father was a plasterer and “hellier”--i.e. slater--but
turned publican and maltster, and kept the tavern in which his son
was born. John’s grandfather brought the water into the town to the
East Street conduit. At the age of fifteen his mother, then a widow,
put John apprentice to Chaster, a saddler in Exeter, and on the death
of Chaster, Cooke succeeded to the business at the age of twenty-one,
and was highly esteemed in the county for the excellence of his work
and his knowledge of how to fit the back of a horse. He made saddles
for Lord Rolle, Sir Stafford Northcote, Sir John Duntze, Sir Robert
and Sir Lawrence Palk, Sir Thomas Acland, and last, but not least,
for Lord Heathfield. “His lordship was allowed to be one of the best
judges of horses and definer of saddlery in the kingdom; his lordship’s
saddle-house consisted from the full bristed to the demi-pick, Shafto,
Hanoverian, to the Dutch pad-saddles; and from the snaffle, Pelham,
Weymouth, Pembroke, Elliott, Mameluke, and Chifney bridles. His
lordship’s saddle and riding-house was a school for a saddler and
dragoon.”
Cooke breaks into rhyme:--
As few began the world so I multiplied,
I’ve gratitude to all my friends, who’ve supplied.
Plain at twenty-one, I did begin,
Which in my manuscript was seen,
Tho’ years at school with arithmeterians,
Who wrote well, but they are no grammarians,
Tho’ I did not know the use of grammar
I was well supported by my hammer.
I sticked to my King, leather and tools;
And for order wrote a set of shop rules.
It’s not what work is brought for to be only done,
Every think that’s necessary, buckle or tongue;
For instance, a saddle is brought to stuff, that’s all,
A stirrup-bar is wanted to prevent a fall;
All your work must be done well, not like fools,
For if it breaks on the road, there’s no tools.
Working with the hands only is but part,
The head’s the essential to make work smart.
Be John Bulls, true to your country and Church,
Always tell the truth and don’t never lurch.
John Cooke’s saddlery was better than his grammar and his orthography,
and his faults in these latter particulars called down upon him the
scorn of Andrew Brice, the printer and publisher of a weekly paper.
Cooke was a strong loyalist, and Brice was touched with republican
ideas.
“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.
[Illustration: _Drawn from Nature by Geo. Rowe. Printed by P. Simonau._
/The Noted John Cooke of Exeter./
Captain of the Sheriff’s troop at 74 Assizes for the County of Devon.
_Published by Geo. Rowe N^{n} 38 Paris Street Exeter._]
“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.”
[Illustration: THOMAS SAVERY]
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.