So soon as Watt had got fairly settled at Cosgarne, in the summer of 1781, he proceeded to work out the plan of a rotary-working engine. Boulton was making experiments with the same object at Soho, communicating to him the results from day to day. He was stimulated to prosecute the inquiry by the applications which he received from many quarters for steam-engines suitable for driving mills. He therefore urged Watt to complete the invention, and to prepare the drawings and specification, declaring his readiness at any time to provide the money requisite for taking out a patent. “The people in London, Manchester, and Birmingham,” said he, “are _steam-mill mad_. I don’t mean to hurry you, but I think that in the course of a month or two we should determine to take out a patent for certain methods of producing rotative motion from the vibrating or reciprocating motion of the fire-engine,--remembering that we have four months in which to describe the particulars of the invention.”[210] [209] Washborough was much mortified by the decision of the Navy Board, and alleged that he had been badly used by them. The anxieties occasioned by his failure, and the pecuniary losses he had sustained, preyed heavily upon his mind, and he was seized by a fever which carried him off in October, 1781, when only in his 28th year. He was unquestionably a young man of much ingenuity and merit, and had he lived would have achieved high eminence and distinction as an engineer. [210] Boulton to Watt, 21st June, 1781. Watt proceeded to put his ideas in a definite shape as fast as his bad health and low spirits would allow. Every now and then a fit of despair came upon him about his liability to the bankers, and so long as it lasted he was unmanned, and could do nothing. At the very time that Boulton was writing the letter last quoted, Watt was thus bewailing his unhappy lot:-- “When I executed the mortgage,” said he, “my sensations were such as were not to be envied by any man who goes to death in a just cause; nor has time lessened the acuteness of my feelings.... I thought I was resigning in one hour the fruits of the labour of my whole life,--and that if any accident befell you or me, I should have left a wife and children destitute of the means of subsistence, by throwing away the only jewel Fortune had presented me with.... These transactions have been such a burden upon my mind that I have become in a manner indifferent to all other things, and can take pleasure in nothing until my mind is relieved from them; and perhaps, from so long a disuse of entertaining pleasing ideas, never may be capable of receiving them any more.”[211] [211] Watt to Boulton, 21st June, 1781.