Note 6 — Chapter I · Dawnings of Steam Power—The Marquis of Worcester.

Dr. Bayly, in his ‘Apothegms’ (1682), p. 87, describes the fright given to some Puritan visitors on the occasion of their searching Raglan Castle for arms, the Marquis of Worcester being a known Papist. “Having carried them up and down the castle, his lordship at length brought them over a high bridge that arched over the moat between the castle and the great tower, wherein the Lord Herbert had lately contrived certain water-works, which, when the several engines and wheels were set agoing, much quantity of water through the hollow conveyances of the aqueducts was to be let down from the top of an high tower.” When all was ready for the surprise, the water was let in, and it made such a hideous and fearful noise by reason of the hollowness of the tower, and the neighbouring echoes of the castle, that the men stood amazed and terror-struck. At this point up came a man staring and running, who exclaimed, “Look to yourselves, my masters, for the lions are got loose.” Whereupon the Puritans fled down the narrow staircase in such haste that they lost footing and fell, tumbling one over the other, and never halted until they had got the castle out of sight. Mr. Dircks, in his able and exhaustive ‘Life, Times, and Scientific Labours of the Marquis of Worcester,’ London, 1865, says that this hydraulic apparatus “probably depended for its operation on the influence of heat from burning fuel acting on a suitably constructed boiler, and so arranged as to be able to apply the expansive force of steam to the driving of water through vertical pipes to a considerable elevation.” But it does not seem to us that the facts stated are sufficient to warrant this assumption.