Henderson experienced the same difficulty that Watt had done in managing the adventurers, and during his stay in Cornwall he was never done calling upon Boulton to hasten to his assistance and help him, as he said, “to put them in good spirits and good temper.” As the annual meetings drew near, Henderson anticipated a stormy time of it, and pleaded harder than ever for Boulton to come to him. It seemed as if it would be necessary for Boulton to take up his residence in Cornwall; and as the interests at stake were great, it might be worth his while to do so. By the summer of 1780, Boulton and Watt had made and sold forty pumping-engines, of which number twenty were erected and at work in different parts of Cornwall; and it was generally expected that before long there would scarcely be an engine of the old construction at work in the county. This was, in fact, the only branch of Boulton’s extensive concerns that promised to be remunerative.[184] He had become loaded with a burden of debt, from which the success of the engine-business seemed to offer the only prospect of relief. [184] It appears from a statement prepared by Zaccheus Walker, the accountant of Boulton and Fothergill, that on an invested capital of about 20,000_l._, the excess of losses over profits during the eighteen years ending 1780, had been upwards of 11,000_l._; and that but for the capital and credit of Matthew Boulton, that concern must have broken down. Boulton’s affairs seemed indeed fast approaching to a crisis. He had raised money in all directions to carry on his extensive concerns. He had sold the Patkington estate, which came to him by his wife, to Lord Donegal, for 15,000_l._; he had sold the greater part of his father’s property, and raised further sums by mortgaging the remainder; he had borrowed largely from Day,[185] Wedgwood, and others of his personal friends, and obtained heavy advances from his bankers; but all this was found insufficient, and his embarrassments seemed only to increase. Watt could do nothing to help him with money, though he had consented to the mortgage of the steam-engine royalties to Mr. Wiss, by which the sum of 7000_l._ had been raised. This liability lay heavy on the mind of Watt, who could never shake himself free of the horror of having incurred such a debt; and many were the imploring letters that he addressed to Boulton on the subject. “I beg of you,” said he, “to attend to these money affairs. I cannot rest in my bed until they [_i. e._ the mortgage and banker’s advance] have some determinate form. I beg you will pardon my importunity, but I cannot bear the uneasiness of my own mind, and it is as much your interest as mine to have them settled.”[186]