One of the most distinguished of these was Sir Samuel Morland, appointed Master of Mechanics to Charles II. immediately after the Restoration. He had been for some time previously in the employment of the Protectorate. He formed one of the embassy to Sweden, with Whitlocke, in 1653. Some years later he took an active part in the relief of the sufferings of the persecuted Protestants of Piedmont--whose history he afterwards wrote,--having been appointed Commissioner Extraordinary for the distribution of the collected moneys. For some time he officiated as assistant to Thurloe, Cromwell’s secretary; and it was while acting in this capacity that he became cognisant of a plot against the life of Charles II., then in exile. Morland divulged the plot to the king’s friends, and thereby perhaps saved his life. For this service, Charles, on his Restoration, presented him with a medal, as a badge of his signal loyalty, and also appointed him Master of Mechanics. From that time until the close of his life, Morland devoted himself entirely to mechanical studies. Among his various inventions may be mentioned the speaking-trumpet;[17] two arithmetical machines, of which he published an illustrated description; the capstan to heave ships’ anchors; and various kinds of pumps and water engines. His pumps were of a very powerful and effective kind. One of them, worked by eight men, forced water from the Thames at Blackmoor Park, near Winkfield, to the top of Windsor Castle. He also devoted himself to the improvement of the fire-engine, in which he employed a cylinder and piston, as well as a stuffing-box. Towards the later years of his life, he applied himself more particularly to the study of the powers and uses of steam.[18] In 1677, we find him taking a lease of Vauxhall, most probably the identical house occupied by the Marquis of Worcester, where he conducted a series of experiments as to the power requisite to raise water by cylinders of different dimensions.[19] It is not, however, known that he ever erected a steam-engine. If he did, no account of its performances has been preserved. [17] We are informed that Morland’s _Tuba Stentorphornica_, or speaking-trumpet, is still to be seen at Trinity College, Cambridge. Butler, in his ‘Hudibras,’ alludes to the invention:-- “I heard a formidable voice Loud as the stentorphornic noise.”