“Do not mistake me, I would fain be of service to the Proprietors of the Engine for Raising Water by Fire,” Daniel had insisted, on the twelfth day of Christmas, after Newcomen had stoked the boiler, and the Engine he had wrought, sucking and hissing like a dragon, had begun to pump water up out of Lostwithiel’s mill-pond, and into a cistern on the roof of his house. “But I do not have money.”
“Consider that stop-cock by which Mr. Newcomen brings the machine to life,” the Earl had said, pointing to a hand-forged valve-wheel mounted on a pipe. “Does that stop-cock make steam?”
“Of course not. Steam is generated in the boiler.”
“The trade of this country is a boiler that raises all the steam-which is to say, all the capital-we require. What is wanted is a valve,” the Earl had said, “a means of conducting some of that capital into an engine where it may do something useful.”
THE JUMBLE OF SHRUGGED-OFF slabs afforded natural benches, podia, lecterns, and balconies that served the tin-men as well as the same furnishings in a proper meeting-house. The Court of Stannary was convened there, as it had been for half a millennium, by reading certain decrees of King Edward I. Immediately the most senior of the gentleman of this Tin Parliament stepped forward and proposed that they adjourn, without delay, to a certain nearby Inn, the Saracen’s Head, where (Daniel inferred) refreshments were to be had. This was proposed without the least suspicion that it would be refused. ’Twas like the moment at a wedding when the Priest polls the congregation for objections to the union. But the Earl of Lostwithiel astonished them all by refusing.
He had been seated on a mossy bench of stone. Now he clambered up onto it and delivered the following remarks.
“His Majesty King Edward I decreed that this Court meet in this place, and it has been phant’sied ever since that he did simply thrust the royal finger at a Map, indicating a place equidistant from the four Stannary Towns that surround the Moor, and never suspecting that by so doing he was choosing one of the most remote and horrible places in Britain. And so it is customary to adjourn to the comforts of Tavistock, on the supposition that the King of yore would never have intended for his gentlemen to hold their deliberations in a place like this. But I give King Edward I more credit. I daresay that he had a suspicion of Courts and Parliaments and that he wanted his Tin-men to spend their days in producing metal and not in carrying on tedious disputes, and perhaps forming Cabals. So he chose this place by design, to shorten our deliberations. I say that we ought to remain here, and profit from the King’s wisdom. For the tin and copper trades have fallen on hard times, the mines are flooded, and we have no real business to transact, other than what we gin up. I mean to gin some up now, and to go about it directly.
“My grandfather was John Comstock, the Earl of Epsom, and the scion of that branch of our ancient line, known vulgarly as the Silver Comstocks. As you know he came to ruin, and my father, Charles, fared little better, and even had to leave over the Earldom and immigrate to America when James I was overthrown. I make no bones about my ancestors.
“But even those of you who suppose that we are Jacobites (which we are not) and call us inveterate Tories (which we are) and who say that Queen Anne made me an Earl, only to pack the House of Lords with Tories when she needed to break Marlborough’s power (which may be true)-I say, even those among you who think nothing of me and my line, except what is deprecating and false, must know of the Royal Society. And if you think well of that Society and its works-as every sapient gentleman must-you may not take it amiss, if I remind you of the old connexions between that Society and my grandfather. John Comstock, though wedded to many of the old ways, was also a forward-thinking Natural Philosopher, who introduced the manufacture of gunpowder to England, and whose great distinction it was to serve as the first President of the Royal Society. During the Plague Year he succoured them as well, by offering them refuge on his estate at Epsom, where discoveries too many to list were made by John Wilkins, by the late Robert Hooke, and by him who stands at my right hand: Dr. Daniel Waterhouse, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Fellow of the Royal Society, and Chancellor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony Institute of Technologickal Arts. Dr. Waterhouse has very recently re-crossed the Atlantic and is even now on his way to London to confer with Sir Isaac Newton…”
The mention of Daniel’s name caused a sparse ripple of curiosity to propagate through the company of cold, irritable Gentlemen. The mention of Isaac’s created a sensation. Daniel suspected this had less to do with Isaac’s invention of the calculus than with the fact that he was running the Mint. The suspicion was confirmed by the next words of William Comstock, Earl of Lostwithieclass="underline" “It has been years since silver coins were to be seen in the market-places of this land. As many as are minted are taken to the furnaces of the money-goldsmiths and made over into bullion and sent into the East. Golden guineas are the currency of England now; but that is too great a denomination for common folk to use in their dealings. Smaller coins are wanted. Will they be minted of copper? Or of tin?”
“Copper,” shouted a few voices, but they were immediately drowned out by hundreds shouting, “Tin!”
“Never mind, never mind, ’tis no concern of ours, for our mines will not produce!” proclaimed the Earl. “Else, we would have never so much to talk about. To the Saracen’s Head we should adjourn, so as not to starve or freeze during our deliberations. But as all of our mines are flooded with water, the copper, or the tin, for the next English coinage shall perforce be imported from abroad. ’Twill be of no concern and no profit to us. The doings of this ancient Parliament shall remain a mere antiquarian curiosity; and so why not convene for a few ticks of the clock on a freezing moor, and have done with it?
“Unless-gentlemen-we can pump the water out of our mines. I know how you will object, saying, ‘Nay, we have tried man-engines, horse-engines, mill-wheels and windmills, none of them profit us!’ Even though I am not a miner, gentlemen, I understand these facts. One who understands them better is this fellow standing at my left hand, Mr. Thomas Newcomen, of Dartmouth, who being an humble man styles himself blacksmith and ironmonger. Those of you who have bought mining-tools from him know him thus. But I have seen him work on mechanical prodigies that are, to a mining-pick, as the Concertos of Herr Handel are to the squeaking of a rusty wheel, and I recognize him by the title of Engineer.
“Now, those of you who have seen the apparatus of Mr. Savery may hold a low opinion of engines for raising water by fire; but that of Mr. Newcomen, though it comes under the same patent as Mr. Savery’s, works on altogether different principles-as is evidenced by the fact that it works. Dr. Waterhouse is plucking at my sleeve, I can keep him quiet no longer.”
This came as a surprise to Daniel, but he did in fact find something to say. “During the Plague Year I tutored this man’s father, the young Charles Comstock, in Natural Philosophy, and we spent many hours studying the compression and rarefaction of gases in the engines conceived by Mr. Boyle, and perfected by Mr. Hooke; the lesson was not lost on young Charles; two score years later he passed it on to young Will at their farm in Connecticut, and it was my very great pleasure to visit them there, from time to time, and to witness those lessons being taught so perfectly that no Fellow of the Royal Society could have added what was wanting, nor subtracted what was false. Will took up those lessons well. Fate returned him to England. Providence supplied him with a lovely Devonshire wife. The Queen gave him an Earldom. But it was Fortune, I believe, that brought him together with the Engineer, Mr. Newcomen. For in the Engine that Newcomen has fabricated at Lostwithiel, the seed that was planted at Epsom during the Plague, England’s darkest hour, has flourished into a tree, whose branches are now bending ’neath the burgeoning weight of green Fruit; and if you would care to eat of it, why, all you need do is water that Tree a little, and presently the apples shall fall into your hands.”