The Life, Times, and Scientific Labours of the Second Marquis of Worcester: To which is added a reprint of his Century of Inventions, 1663, with a Commentary thereon.Dircks, Henry
History
The Life, Times, and Scientific Labours of the Second Marquis of Worcester: To which is added a reprint of his Century of Inventions, 1663, with a Commentary thereon.
Dircks, Henry
Industrial arts -- History; Inventions; Worcester, Edward Somerset, Marquis of, 1601-1667
Go on therefore chearfully (my Lords and Gentlemen) and not onely our
gracious King, but the King of Kings, will reward you, the Prayers of
the People will attend you, and His Majesty will with thankful arms
embrace you. And be pleased to make use of me and my endeavours to
enrich them, not my self; such being my onely request unto you, spare
me not in what your Wisdoms shall find me useful, who do esteem my
self not onely by the Act of the Water-commanding Engine (which so
chearfully you have past) sufficiently rewarded, but likewise with
courage enabled to do ten times more for the future; and my Debts
being paid, and a competency to live according to my Birth and
Quality setled, the rest shall I dedicate to the service of our King
and Countrey by your disposals: and esteem me not the more, or rather
any more, by what is past, but what’s to come; professing really from
my heart, that my Intentions are to out-go the six or seven hundred
thousand pounds already sacrificed, if countenanced and encouraged by
you, ingenuously confessing that the melancholy which hath lately
seized upon me (the cause whereof none of you but may easily guess)
hath, I dare say, retarded more advantages to the public service than
modesty will permit me to utter: And now revived by your promising
favours, I shall infallibly be enabled thereunto in the Experiments
extant, and comprised under these heads practicable with my
directions by the unparallel’d Workman both for trust and skill,
_Caspar Kaltoff’s_ hand, who hath been these five-and-thirty years as
in a school under me imployed, and still at my disposal, in a place
by my great expences made fit for publick service, yet lately like to
be taken from me, and consequently from the service of King and
Kingdom, without the least regard of above ten thousand pounds
expended by me, and through my Zele to the Common good; my Zele, I
say, a field large enough for you (my Lords and Gentlemen) to work
upon.
The Treasures buried under these heads, both for War, Peace, and
Pleasure, being inexhaustible; I beseech you pardon me if I say so;
it seems a Vanity, but comprehends a Truth; since no good Spring but
becomes the more plentiful by how much more it is drawn, and the
Spinner to weave his web is never stinted but further inforc’d. The
more then that you shall be pleased to make use of my Inventions, the
more Inventive shall you ever find me, one Invention begetting still
another, and more and more improving my ability to serve my King and
you; and as to my heartiness therein there needs no addition, nor to my
readiness a spur. And therefore (my Lords and Gentlemen) be pleased to
begin, and desist not from commanding me till I flag in my obedience
and endeavours to serve my King and Country.
_For certainly you’l find me breathless first t’ expire,_
_Before my hands grow weary, or my legs do tire._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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